We say that Genesis was a poetic presentation of a fabulous story
pieced together from many traditions of many tribes, and recording
with great literary power the ideas of a people whose scientific
knowledge was very incomplete.

Now, I ask you which of these theories is the most reasonable; which
is the most scientific; which agrees most closely with the facts of
philology and history of which we are in possession?

Why twist the self-evident fact that the Bible story of creation was
the work of unscientific men of strong imagination into a far-fetched
and unsatisfactory puzzle of symbol and allegory? It would be just
as easy and just as reasonable to take the _Morte d'Arthur_ and try
to prove that it contained a veiled revelation of God's relations
to man.

And let me ask one or two questions as to this matter of the revelation
of the Holy Bible. Is God all-powerful or is he not? If he is
all-powerful, why did He make man so imperfect? Could He not have
created him at once a wise and good creature? Even when man was
ignorant and savage, could not an all-powerful God have devised some
means of revealing Himself so as to be understood? If God really
wished to reveal Himself to man, why did He reveal Himself only to
one or two obscure tribes, and leave the rest of mankind in darkness?

Those poor savages were full of credulity, full of terror, full of
wonder, full of the desire to worship. They worshipped the sun and
the moon; they worshipped ghosts and demons; they worshipped tyrants,
and pretenders, and heroes, dead and alive. Do you believe that if
God had come down on earth, with a cohort of shining angels, and had