inks it is a lecture. I think
it is a sermon. (p. 5).

I note, incidentally, that Mr. Gladstone appears to consider that the
_differentia_ between a lecture and a sermon is, that the former, so
far as it deals with matters of fact, may be taken seriously, as meaning
exactly what it says, while a sermon may not. I have quite enough on my
hands without taking up the cudgels for the clergy, who will probably
find Mr. Gladstone's definition unflattering.

But I am diverging from my proper business, which is to say that I have
given no ground for the ascription of these opinions; and that, as a
matter of fact, I do not hold them and never have held them. It is Mr.
Gladstone, and not I, who will have it that the pentateuchal cosmogony
is to be taken as science.

My belief, on the contrary, is, and long has been, that the pentateuchal
story of the creation is simply a myth. I suppose it to be an hypothesis
respecting the origin of the universe which some ancient thinker found
himself able to reconcile with his knowledge, or what he thought was
knowledge, of the nature of things, and therefore assumed to be true.
As such, I hold it to be not merely an interesting, but a venerable,
monument of a stage in the mental progress of mankind; and I find it
difficult to suppose that any one who is acquainted with the cosmogonies
of other nations--and especially with those of the Egyptians and the
Babylonians, with whom the Israelites were in such frequent and intimate
communication--should consider it to possess either more, or less,
scientific importance than may be allotted to these.

Mr. Gladstone's definition of a sermon permits me to suspect that he may
not see much difference between that form of discourse and what I call
a myth; and I hope it may be something more than the slowness of
apprehension, to which I have confessed, which leads me to imagine
that a statement which is "general" but "admits exceptions," which is
"popular" and "aims mainly at producing moral impression," "summary" and
therefore open to "criticism of detail," amounts to a myth, or perhaps
less than a myth. Put algebraically, it comes to this, _x=a+b+c_; always
remembering that there is nothing to show the exact value of either _a,_
or _b,_ or _c._ It is true that _a_ is commonly supposed to equal 10,
but there are exceptions, and these may reduce it to 8, or 3, or 0; _b_
also popularly means 10, but being chiefly used by the algebraist as a
"moral" va