sts in
believing the whole human race to have proceeded in about 6000 years
from a single Adam and Eve; and that the longevity (not
miraculous, but ordinary) attributed to the patriarchs was another
stumbling-block. The geological difficulties of the Mosaic cosmogony
were also at that time exciting attention. It was a novelty to me,
that Arnold treated these questions as matters of indifference to
religion; and did not hesitate to say, that the account of Noah's
deluge was evidently mythical, and the history of Joseph "a beautiful
poem." I was staggered at this. If all were not descended from Adam,
what became of St. Paul's parallel between the first and second Adam,
and the doctrine of Headship and Atonement founded on it? If the world
was not made in six days, how could we defend the Fourth Commandment
as true, though said to have been written in stone by the very finger
of God? If Noah's deluge was a legend, we should at least have to
admit that Peter did not know this: what too would be said of Christ's
allusion to it? I was unable to admit Dr. Arnold's views; but to see a
vigorous mind, deeply imbued with Christian devoutness, so convinced,
both reassured me that I need not fear moral mischiefs from free
inquiry, and indeed laid that inquiry upon me as a duty.

Here, however, was a new point started. Does the question of the
derivation of the human race from two parents belong to things
cognizable by the human intellect, or to things about which we must
learn submissively? Plainly to the former. It would be monstrous to
deny that such inquiries legitimately belong to physiology, or to
proscribe a free study of this science. If so, there was an _a
priori_ possibility, that what is in the strictest sense called
"religious doctrine" might come into direct collision, not merely with
my ill-trained conscience, but with legitimate science; and that this
would call on me to ask: "Which of the two certainties is stronger?
that the religious parts of the Scripture are infallible, or that the
science is trustworthy?" and I then first saw, that while science had
(within however limited a range of thought) demonstration or severe
verifications, it was impossible to pretend to anything so cogent in
favour of the infallibility of any or some part of the Scriptures;
a doctrine which I was accustomed to believe, and felt to be a
legitimate presumption; yet one of which it grew harder and harder
to assign any proof, the more close