ly I analyzed it. Nevertheless, I
still held it fast, and resolved not to let it go until I was forced.

A fresh strain fell on the Scriptural infallibility, in contemplating
the origin of Death. Geologists assured us, that death went on in
the animal creation many ages before the existence of man. The rocks
formed of the shells of animals testify that death is a phenomenon
thousands of thousand years old: to refer the death of animals to
the sin of Adam and Eve is evidently impossible. Yet, if not, the
analogies of the human to the brute form make it scarcely credible
that man's body can ever have been intended for immortality. Nay, when
we consider the conditions of birth and growth to which it is subject,
the wear and tear essential to life, the new generations intended to
succeed and supplant the old,--so soon as the question is proposed as
one of physiology, the reply is inevitable that death is no accident
introduced by the perverse will of our first parents, nor any way
connected with man's sinfulness; but is purely a result of the
conditions of animal life. On the contrary, St. Paul rests most
important conclusions on the fact, that one man Adam by personal sin
brought death upon all his posterity. If this was a fundamental error,
religious doctrine also is shaken.

In various attempts at compromise,--such as conceding the Scriptural
fallibility in human science, but maintaining its spiritual
perfection,--I always found the division impracticable. At last it
pressed on me, that if I admitted morals to rest on an independent
basis, it was dishonest to shut my eyes to any apparent collisions of
morality with the Scriptures. A very notorious and decisive instance
is that of Jael.--Sisera, when beaten in battle, fled to the tent of
his friend Heber, and was there warmly welcomed by Jael, Heber's wife.
After she had refreshed him with food, and lulled him to sleep, she
killed him by driving a nail into his temples; and for this deed,
(which now-a-days would be called a perfidious murder,) the prophetess
Deborah, in an inspired psalm, pronounces Jael to be "blessed above
women," and glorifies her act by an elaborate description of its
atrocity. As soon as I felt that I was bound to pass a moral judgment
on this, I saw that as regards the Old Testament the battle was
already lost. Many other things, indeed, instantly rose in full power
upon me, especially the command to Abraham to slay his son. Paul and
James agree i