He holds the writer responsible for scientific precision: I look
for nothing of the kind, but assign to him a statement general,
which admits exceptions; popular, which aims mainly at producing
moral impression; summary, which cannot but be open to more or
less of criticism of detail. He thinks it is a lecture. I think
it is a sermon" (p. 5).


I note, incidentally, that Mr. Gladstone appears to consider
that the differentia between a lecture and a sermon is,
that the former, so far as it deals with matters of fact, may be
taken seriously, as meaning exactly what it says, while a sermon
may not. I have quite enough on my hands without taking up the
cudgels for the clergy, who will probably find Mr. Gladstone's
definition unflattering.

But I am diverging from my proper business, which is to say that
I have given no ground for the ascription of these opinions; and
that, as a matter of fact, I do not hold them and never have
held them. It is Mr. Gladstone, and not I, who will have it that
the pentateuchal cosmogony is to be taken as science.

My belief, on the contrary, is, and long has been, that the
pentateuchal story of the creation is simply a myth. I suppose
it to be an hypothesis respecting the origin of the universe
which some ancient thinker found himself able to reconcile with
his knowledge, or what he thought was knowledge, of the nature
of things, and therefore assumed to be true. As such, I hold it
to be not merely an interesting, but a venerable, monument of a
stage in the mental progress of mankind; and I find it difficult