And should the error have been
discovered, as it now is[2] (in the view of these I am contending
against), this discovery might have arrested the further development of
Divine truth altogether. If Moses, or whoever wrote the Book of
Genesis--we will not cavil at that--was allowed to compose his own
fancies or beliefs on the subject of Creation, _and to state them as
Divine fact_ (no matter that the reader at the time was not able to find
out the error), would not grave suspicion attach to whatever else he put
forward? Who could tell that, on any other subject, the plainest and
most direct statement of fact was not equally a fancy, only embodying or
enshrining (under the guise of its errors) some real Divine facts? If
Genesis i. is unreliable, we have a case of a writer going out of his
way to add to certain truths, which might easily have been stated by
themselves, a number of positive declarations, _as of Divine authority_,
regarding facts, which are not facts.
[Footnote 1: I am not aware of any authority, living or dead, who has
gone so far as to deny that God's revelation to the Jewish Church was in
any way connected with Christianity; that it was not even a stage of
progress, or preparatory step towards the kingdom of Christ.]
[Footnote 2: And was _sure to be_ sooner or later, when a science of
Biology and Palaeontology became possible.
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