334 THE YEN. ARCHDEACON POTTER, M.A., ON THE INFLUENCE 



that these Babylonian conceptions must have been known to 

 Abraham and the inhabitants of Palestine before the Exodus. I 

 suppose they might have come to the Hebrews independently of 

 Babylon, but it is difficult to see how. Others of my critics seem to 

 rely on the belief in a " primitive revelation." I suppose that means 

 that God chose out certain persons on the earth to convey to them 

 certain truths regarding the matters I referred to : viz., the creation 

 of the world, the flood, the eating of the apple, and so forth. I 

 confess I cannot picture the process ; nor can I conceive when it 

 occurred. Are we to take Adam's date as 6,000 years ago, or to 

 accept some million years for man's existence on the earth ? And if 

 God infallibly revealed these matters in olden time does he infallibly 

 reveal scientific facts now 1 Butler's argument from the known to 

 the unknown suggests that we may judge the past from the present. 

 Does the eternal God change his ways so vastly at different periods 

 of human life Then if Gen. i is the record of an infallible revelation 

 why does it state that the stars and sun were created afte7' the 

 earth ? 



One critic says I shake faith in the historical truth of the Old 

 Testament. Nothing can be further from my purpose. I believe 

 entirely in the historical veracity of our sacred books, but not in 

 their infallibility ; inspiration is one thing, infallibility another. 



Mrs. Maunder rightly contrasts the nobler beliefs of Judaism 

 with the inferior Babylonian ones : yet she somewhat mars her point 

 by omitting reference to the nobler Babylonian expressions which I 

 quoted, and also to such Old Testament passages as " blessed shall 

 he be that taketh thy children and throweth them against the 

 stones." 



I agree that it is difficult to understand the Jews adopting the 

 traditions of their captors. But I rather fancy cosmological concep- 

 tions may not have appeared to them so important from a religious 

 point of view as to some of us. 



I also agree that retrogression is a tendency in religion — an instance 

 of this seems to me to be the burning of witches and of heretics, 

 which really came from the worship of the letter of scripture and 

 tradition. If science leads us back from the letter to the spirit, 

 from barren dogma to living faith, it is doing a great work. Faith 

 surely is not knowledge, but believing in the good, where we do not 

 know. 



