ent applies equally to another school of thinkers, who do not
care to tell us what the narrative in itself means: who believe that God
did not do what He is said to have done in Genesis, and yet who hold
that the narrative is in a sense inspired, and that we may learn from it
the great facts that God (and none other) originated all things--that
man has a spiritual element in his nature, and that woman is equal in
nature, but subordinate in position, to man, and so forth. Not only is
enlightened judgment, even, inadequate to pronounce with certainty on
how much is true; but the strange feeling still remains, if God designed
to teach us these truths only, why was it not possible to enable the
writer[1] to state them without the (purely gratuitous) error? The
sufferance of such a strange and unnecessary mixture of error seems
rather like that "putting to confusion" of the human mind, which we feel
sure the Great Teacher would never willingly perpetrate.

[Footnote 1: For on the supposition stated, there _is_ a revelation in
the text. Nor could any class of believer deny this. It is entirely
unnecessary to define the kind and extent of insphation. But "all
Scripture is '_theopneustos_'"--I leave the word purposely untranslated
(2 Tim. iii. 16); that surely means that the Divine Spirit exercised
_some kind_ of continuous control over the writers.]

Nor, again, can the narrative be got over by saying it is a poetic side
or aspect of the facts, and not to be taken literally. If any one knows
exactly what this means, and can tell us always how to translate the
matter into plain language, it is to be wished that he would enlighten
the world as to the process. But even if such process exists infallibly
and universally, still, one would suppose, the narrative must, to begin
with, be unmistakable poetry. And here, again, the narrative bears every
mark of an intention to state facts, not poetic aspects of facts. Nor
can we take the narrative as belonging to a familiar class in Scripture
where a dream is used as a vehicle of communication. In those cases
there is really no room for doubt; the visible facts themselves are
obviously designed only to typify or represent some other facts.

The events stated in Genesis are not of this class. Those, therefore,
who would be content with getting over the narrative without caring for
its details, can, I must suspect, have hardly given adequate attention
to the form and to the contents of t