he narrative as it stands. Not only
are the statements positive, but, taking any interpretation whatever of
them, they are not nearly imaginative enough to suit the purpose.

They have an obvious amount of relation to fact which has never been
denied.[1]

If the narrative is purely human even (and that the school we are
considering do not aver), how did the writer come to be accurate even to
that extent? Take only the order of events. I admit it does not
correspond with the geologic record in the way commonly asserted; yet it
has a very remarkable relation to that sequence.

Now, in any case, the writer could have had no knowledge of any kind _of
his own_ on the subject: how did he hit on this particular
arrangement?[2] It is a mere matter of calculation on the well-known
rules of permutation and combination to realize in how many different
ways the same set of events could have been arranged; the number is very
considerable.

And he could derive no assistance from any similar existing narrative.
If we conclude from the Assyrian discoveries that a non-biblical but
similar narrative existed, still it is certain that the principal one we
as yet have is so late in date, that it is more likely to be derived
from the Bible than the Bible from it. And though, on referring to the
earlier tablets, we find traces of the same narrative, it is so obscured
by idolatrous and false details, that the Bible writer must have had to
make a virtually new departure to get his own simple narrative. A
re-revelation would be required. As to all other cosmogonies, Egyptian,
Indian, and Buddhistic, nothing can be more opposed in principle and in
detail than they are to the severe and stately simplicity and directness
of the Mosaic.

[Footnote 1: Not even, for example, by Professor Haeckel.]

[Footnote 2: How, for example, did the writer come to introduce the
adjustment of hours of daylight and seasons in the _middle_, after so
much work had been done? How did he come to place _birds_ along with
fish and water monsters, and not separately?]

We cannot, then, account for the narrative on human grounds; nor can we
suppose that any inspiring control would have given the author so much
truth, and yet allowed so much error.

All this points to only one of two possible conclusions: either the
narrative is not inspired at all, and is a mere misleading story, into
which the name of God is introduced by the author's piety--and so really
teach