0. B. WARRING. 125-(95) 



as to God's having made snn, moon and stars. It says 

 the stars establish the year, and that the moon presides 

 over the months. But Genesis does not establish the 

 year through the stars, while the month, so prominent in 

 the myth, is not mentioned. 



In this tablet, too, the parallelism • so " complete in 

 every feature " is conspicuous by its absence. 



In the seventh tablet there is a slight parallelism. — 

 The myth says the gods caused to come cattle of the 

 field, beasts of the field, &c, creeping things ; and 

 Genesis says. " The earth brought forth cattle, beasts and 

 creeping things." 



And this is all, absolutely all ! The parallelism is 

 indeed most extraordinary ! 



I know no way to bring out so clearly the vast differ- 

 ence in the character of the two accounts as to read them 

 in the tierce light of modern science, taking both to 

 mean literally what they say. 



In Genesis the statements are such that their success- 

 ful denial would result in the most serious consequences 

 to science itself. For if there was no beginning to the 

 universe, the doctrine of the dissipation of energy is 

 false ; there is no tidal friction to stop the earth's rota- 

 tion ; there is no resisting medium in space, and the sun 

 is not losing energy. If the earth never was without 

 form and void, it never was in a nebulous condition, and 

 every form of the nebular hypothesis is impossible. If 

 darkness did not precede motion, all theories of light 

 are disproved, the undulatory and the corpuscular go 

 out together. If the primordial light did not become 

 "good'' light before day and night began their altera- 

 tions, then what the spectroscope has told us as to nebular 

 and solar light — the one with its faint three banded 

 spectrum, the other with one broad and rich — is false. 

 We all can see that there is now an expanse, or open 

 space, separating the waters below it from those above 

 it. the seas from the clouds, but according to Genesis, 

 there once was a time when no such expanse existed. If 

 this is false, then our earth never was so hot that water 

 existed only as vapor, and the story which astronomy 

 and geology have conspired to tell of a once molten 

 earth is disproved. If the atmosphere which surround- 

 ed the earth before life began, or the continents had 



