230 FACTS AND THEORIES. 



As to the so called story of the creation found on the 

 Chaldean tablets, it is diflBcult to see how any person 

 with his mind free from bias, could imagine it the 

 original of the Mosaic account. For example the myth 

 begins with the heavens and earth as in existence before 

 any god, " before the great gods were made any one of 

 them. The sea was the mother of them all." On the 

 contrary the Bible represents God as before all, and as 

 the creator of heaven, earth and sea. Equal divergence 

 and positive contradiction run through the whole of the 

 myth. 



To nothing has the opposition of a certain class of 

 scientists been more pronounced, on nothing have their 

 attacks been more frequent, or their paens of victory 

 more loud than in reference to that brief chapter which 

 contains the Bible Annals of Creation. Again and 

 again, they have said that its statements are false and 

 their order wrong. And even to-day "liberal" theo- 

 logians are so impressed by these positive and oft-repeated 

 assertions, that they accept them as true, and point to 

 that chapter as glaring proof of the errancy of the Bible, 

 or, as others say, of its human origin. 



I do not propose now to discuss that "grand old chap- 

 ter," I have done that elsewhere, I would only point out 

 the fact that it is the traditional teachings — the glosses 

 of a more or less ancient "science," and not the account 

 itself, its verba ipsissima, that is in error. All I can now 

 do is to name briefly as possible certain facts in our 

 world's ante-human history on which all scientists are 

 agreed, leaving the reader if so inclined to collate them, 

 not with what Milton, or what the commentators have 

 said, but with the story itself in its own words, and 

 above all to compare the order as given by Grenesis with 

 that of the most advanced science, agnostic or not. 



Through centuries of observation and study, with 

 many mistakes and corrections, some solid results have 



186 



