The story of the
sudden and finite creation of the world is completely gone. Nobody
holds that now who gives it any attention. They have stretched the six
days of the week, even those who hold the accuracy of the Genesis
account, into uncounted periods of time. So that is gone. The antiquity
of man is conceded by everybody who has a right to have and express an
opinion; that is, by everybody who has given it any study. Every
competent and free scholar knows to-day that the story of the fall of
man and the whole Eden story, is a Babylonian or a Persian legend that
came into the life of the Jews about the time of their captivity, and
was not known of till then among them, and did not take hold on the
leading and highest minds of their own people. And there are, as you
know, hundreds, if not thousands of clergymen in all the churches to-
day who are ready to concede that the story of Eden is poetry or legend
or tradition: they no longer treat it as serious history. And yet, as I
have said a good many times, they go on as though nothing had happened,
although the foundation of their house has been removed. Only theories
which stand in the air can thus defy the law of gravitation.
Nobody to-day who has a right to have an opinion believes that God ever
drowned the world. That is gone. As to the question as to whether we
have an infallible book to guide us in religious matters, there are
very few scholars in any church to-day, so far as my investigations
have led, who hold any such opinion.
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