vi LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE 235 



The compiler of Genesis, in its present form, 

 evidently had a definite plan in his mind. His 

 countrymen, like all other men, were doubtless 

 curious to know how the world began ; how men, 

 and especially wicked men, came into being, and 

 how existing nations and races arose among the 

 descendants of one stock; and, finally, what 

 was the history of their own particular tribe. 

 They, like ourselves, desired to solve the four 

 great problems of cosmogeny, anthropogeny, 

 ethnogeny, and geneogeny. The Pentateuch fur- 

 nishes the solutions which appeared satisfactory 

 to its author. One of these, as we have seen, 

 was borrowed from a Babylonian fable; and I 

 know of no reason to suspect any different origin 

 for the rest. Now, I would ask, is the story of 

 the fabrication of Eve to be regarded as one of 

 those pre-Abrahamic narratives, the historical 

 truth of which is an open question, in face of the 

 reference to it in a speech unhappily famous for 

 the legal oppression to which it has been wrong- 

 fully forced to lend itself? 



Have ye not read, that he which made them from the be- 

 ginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause 

 shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife ; 

 and the twain shall become one flesh ? (Matt. xix. 5.) 



If divine authority is not here claimed for the 

 twenty-fourth verse of the second chapter of 



