n many points that mere curiosity would like to see
explained, so also, the Divine Author may have allowed parts of the
original text of Revelation to be so far lost or obscured as to leave
further points that _might_ have been once recorded, now doubtful. All
that we may be quite sure of is that the text has been preserved for all
that is essential to "life and godliness."]

APPENDIX.

_PROFESSOR DELITZSCH ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN._

The information here put together is a compilation from papers in "The
Nineteenth Century," and other sources. It has no pretentions to
originality, but only to give a brief and connected account of the
subject, more condensed and freed from surrounding details than that
which the original sources afford.

Before entering on the subject, I would again call attention to the
surpassing importance of these early chapters of Genesis. And, I add,
that unbelievers are especially glad to be able to allege anything they
can against them, because they are aware that hardly any chapters in the
Bible are more constantly alluded to, and made the foundation of
practical arguments by our Lord and His Apostles, than these early
chapters in the Divine volume. If these chapters can be shown to be
mythical, then the divine knowledge of our Lord, as the Son of God, and
the inspiration of His Apostles, are put in question. All through the
Old Testament, allusions to Adam and to the early history in Genesis
occur; and among other passages, I will only here invite attention to
the 31st chapter of Ezekiel, where there is, in a most beautiful
description of the cedar-tree, an allusion to "Eden, the Garden of God"
(see also chapter xxviii. ver. 13), which some have thought to indicate
that the site was still known, and existing in the time of the prophet.
This at least may be remarked, that in verse 9, where the prophet speaks
of the "trees that _were_ in the Garden of God," the word _were_ is not
in the original, and the sense of the context would rather denote the
present tense--"the trees that _are_ in the Garden of God."

But it is in the New Testament that the most repeated and striking
allusions to Adam, the temptation of the woman by the Serpent, and the
entrance of sin and death into the life-history of mankind, occur.[1]

[Footnote 1: See on this subject page 137 _ante_.] [Transcriber's
note: Chapter X.]

As regards the narrative of Eden itself, there has been, from the very
earliest times,