NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 445 



attempt at reconciling Genesis with the exacting requirements of 

 modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without entail- 

 ing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to which, 

 in such a question, we should be wise to have no recourse." 



The revelations of another group of sciences, though some- 

 times bitterly opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theolo- 

 gians, have finally set the whole question at rest. First, there 

 have come the biblical critics earnest Christian scholars, work- 

 ing for the sake of truth and these have revealed beyond the 

 shadow of a reasonable doubt the existence of at least two dis- 

 tinct accounts of creation in our book of Genesis, which can 

 sometimes be made to agree, but which are generally absolutely 

 at variance with each other. These scholars have further shown 

 the two accounts to be not the cunningly devised fables of priest- 

 craft, but evidently fragments of earlier legends, myths, and the- 

 ologies, accepted in good faith and brought together for the 

 noblest of purposes by those who put in order the first of our 

 sacred books. 



Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the de- 

 voted students of ancient monuments and records ; of these are 

 such as Oppert, George Smith, the Rev. Prof. Sayce of Oxford, 

 Jensen, Schrader, and a noble phalanx of similarly devoted schol- 

 ars, who have deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially 

 the inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal at 

 Nineveh, and have discovered therein an account of the origin 

 of the world identical in its most important features with the 

 later accounts in our own book of Genesis. 



These men have had the courage to point out these facts and 

 to connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylo- 

 nian myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of 

 the Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we 

 have in our sacred books; and they have also shown us how 

 natural it was that the Jewish accounts of the creation should 

 have been obtained at that remote period when the earliest He- 

 brews were among the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew 

 poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred 

 traditions of these earlier nations or from antecedent sources 

 common to various ancient nations. 



In a summary which in its profound thought and fearless in- 

 tegrity does honor not only to himself but to the great position 

 which he holds, the Eev. Dr. Driver, Royal Professor of Hebrew 

 and Canon of Christ Church at Oxford, has recently stated the 

 case fully and fairly. Having pointed out the fact that the He- 

 brews were one people out of many who thought upon the origin 

 of the universe, he says that they " framed theories to account for 

 the beginnings of the earth and man " ; that " they either did this 



