weakened nor impaired if the story resolved itself into the poetry of tradition. Nor is the argument affected by the similarity between the Hebraic and the Babylonian accounts. A people naturally adopt some theory as to the beginnings of things. They carry the story of their own nation back to the pit from which they were dug. If the Hebrews had begun as an obscure tribe, an offshoot of Syria or Phoenicia, we should not have discovered the strong family likeness between Hebrew and Babylonian. There was no reason why the Hebrew should claim relationship with Chaldæa. Phoenicia and Syria possessed an advanced civilisation, and could have furnished him with quite as reputable an ancestry. In fact, the later writers of the Old Testament had every inducement to reject Babylonian associations as more humiliating than a purely Canaanite origin. The Babylonian Empire long threatened, and finally overthrew them. The captivity was a terrible breach in the life of the nation, a gulf of despair from which they were only rescued by the merciful providence of their own God. Why, then, should they have retained a Babylonian tradition derived from a people to whom they had grown naturally antipathetic. It must have emerged out of their own dark past, some fragment of history running on parallel lines to that of Babylon. The difference in dignity, simplicity and power between the two accounts does not forbid us tracing both stories to a common origin. The Hebrew writer has illuminated his record with inspired thought, whilst the Babylonian has fallen to the level of his grosser faith. It will be urged that this only

K

The Value of

upon

proves a mythic origin for both accounts, but it is equally possible that the myth itself was founded some facts of immense Myths. antiquity. A myth is rarely a pure invention. The first person who launches a story has to run the gauntlet of his own contemporaries, even if their criticism be restricted to a discussion round a watch-fire, or the searching investigation of the wise men of the village. The story of the Flood may have had its origin in a physical catastrophe which befel Mesopotamia under a conjunction of circumstances easily imagined, twelve or fifteen thousand years ago, at the very dawn of civilisation. In addition to that, considerable changes have taken place in the distribution of land and water on the globe since the appearance of man. To dismiss the account of the Creation in the Book of Genesis as a study of the beginnings of things suited to the childhood of the world may not be doing it full justice. Something has quickened the process of evolution since man broke away from his fellow mammals, developing the brain and enlarging the intelligence. Whether mankind has been evolved from one parent stem or from three is still matter for consideration. The white, yellow, and black races are sufficiently distinctive to suggest independent origins after the animal progenitor had become highly developed. Within the range of monumental record there is no sign of modification of race type, or approximation of the three races to one another. But with all three, the gulf between them and the animal is too broad to

Spiritual impulse

to Evolution.

in his spiritual

be covered by the slow processes of Evolution. The cousinship of man to his poor relations is painfully apparent save in the pre-eminence of thought and conception. What has caused this immense difference if there be no endowment from above at a stage in his development ? We may have the awakening of these new powers recorded in poetical form in the Garden story. It may be based upon facts faintly remembered from an almost immemorial past.

But if you once disturb a simple confidence in the Book, have you thereby destroyed its value? Did not those who took it on trust, accepting it verse by verse as the Word of God, secure a quiet mind and a happy guidance through life, which justified this method? Why should there be an interruption to so successful a theory? What is the practical value of the new interpretation which replaces the old certainties? Will it appear as unsound to a succeeding generation as the opinions which it proposes to supersede ? If so, we have been only travelling in a circle, returning to the point from which we set out. To this we must reply that the earlier condition of simple trust cannot be restored. It was only our conviction of its truth that made the old literalism valuable. Our eyes are now opened. We have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and cannot restore our former innocence. The lowlands through which we have been passing were pleasant and comfortable, but they constitute only a part of the journey. The highland pass is before us, rugged

indeed; but courage persuades us to address ourselves to it. Our duty is to dare the future, trusting to God. We find the old guide book of incalculable advantage, even though we have to correct some mistaken inferences of former travellers in the light of our current experience. We have boasted that with divine help we shall mount up with wings like eagles, and we must not surrender our attempts to navigate the air because our first essays at the aeroplane provide us with an uneasy and doubtful seat. If our forbears attained to such a spiritual apprehension of God as commands our admiration, though they were furnished with a limited intellectual experience, we ought to attain to something higher with a stronger theology, and a broader outlook. Having justified the ways of God, we shall trust Him for more, not for less. But mistakes may easily be made. Progressives as well as conservatives in religion are liable to error. A fresh idea is sometimes hailed as true only because it is new. For the sake of liberal thought it is better that a question should remain undetermined for a time rather than that it should be given too soon dogmatic form. We may look with well found suspicion upon that teaching which derives satisfaction from the demolition of the old but has no care for reconstruction. It is of no use to pull down whole areas of the ancient Jerusalem, permitting the grass to grow upon the deserted site, with a general invitation to tender for fresh theological building plots. Especially should the critic tread lightly when he approaches those elements of religion common to every great faith the

Its

consciousness of sin, the delight in a personal God, the dream of a perfect holiness. We must remember that it is possible to exaggerate the practical value of Biblical criticism. If the whole Hebrew and Christian revelation were evaporated in the process of analysis, our relations to God and to the Unseen would probably remain substantially unaltered. Christianity has taken such hold upon mankind, because it has responded to a universal need. traditions, its habits of thought, would persist even if its intellectual fabric were demolished. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." There is a fountain of living water springing up into everlasting life, whether it be set in a marble shrine, or be leaping free under the naked skies. If there are no attendants present with their vessels to serve it, no cups of fine workmanship from which man may drink, he will form a goblet with his own quivering hands in order to slake the thirst of his soul. Man will re-establish his worship, break out into prophecies, justify his fresh creeds with a new philosophy. However thick may be the trees of the garden, the human, lost in the maze, will hear the Creator crying after His creature, and sooner or later they must meet.