I96 HUXLEY 



of the revelation it contains," and when Mr. Ottley 

 talks of the " inspiration which we justly attribute to 

 the Old Testament writers," they are each playing 

 with names to which there are no correspondent reali- 

 ties. As Professor Goldwin Smith puts it : — 



If it was from the Holy Spirit that these narratives 

 emanated, how can the Holy Spirit have failed to let 

 mankind know that in reality they were allegories ? 

 How could it allow them to be received as literal 

 truths, to mislead the world for ages, to bar the ad- 

 vance of science, and, when science at last prevailed, 

 to discredit revelation by the exposure ? Besides, to 

 maintain the symbolical truths of Genesis is almost 

 as hard as to maintain its literal truth. 1 



Obviously, the effort to retain the saving clause of 

 a revelation in a miscellaneous collection of writings 

 of uncertain date and authorship, and of disputed 

 meaning, is due to the fact that the Christian doctrine 

 of the Atonement is bound up with the story of the 

 Fall. The legend of Eden is the keystone of the 

 arch which supports the whole Christian scheme of 

 redemption, and the evidence of palaeontology has dis- 

 proved the Pauline teaching that "death came into 

 the world by sin." 



But, in the meantime, while the learned among 

 them still hesitate to follow facts to their only possi- 



1 Guesses at the Riddle of Existence, p. 55. 



