an expert--are involved in the controversy; and I think it is
desirable that the public should know what it is that natural
science really has to say on these topics, to the best belief of
one who has been a diligent student of natural science for the
last forty years.

The original "Prolegomenes de l'Histoire des Religions" has not
come in my way; but I have read the translation of M. Reville's
work, published in England under the auspices of Professor Max
Muller, with very great interest. It puts more fairly and
clearly than any book previously known to me, the view which a
man of strong religious feelings, but at the same time
possessing the information and the reasoning power which enable
him to estimate the strength of scientific methods of inquiry
and the weight of scientific truth, may be expected to take of
the relation between science and religion.

In the chapter on "The Primitive Revelation" the scientific
worth of the account of the Creation given in the book of
Genesis is estimated in terms which are as unquestionably
respectful as, in my judgment, they are just; and, at the end of
the chapter on "Primitive Tradition," M. Reville appraises the
value of pentateuchal anthropology in a way which I should have
thought sure of enlisting the assent of all competent judges,
even if it were extended to the whole of the cosmogony and
biology of Genesis:--


As, however, the original traditions of nations sprang up in an
epoch less remote than our own from the primitive life, it is