leave to retire thither, not sorry for my experience of the
other region--no one should regret experience--but determined
not to repeat it, at any rate in reference to the "plea
for revelation."



NOTE ON THE PROPER SENSE OF THE "MOSAIC" NARRATIVE
OF THE CREATION.

It has been objected to my argument from Leviticus (suprà
p. 170) that the Hebrew words translated by "creeping things" in
Genesis i. 24 and Leviticus xi. 29, are different; namely,
"reh-mes" in the former, "sheh-retz" in the latter. The obvious
reply to this objection is that the question is not one of words
but of the meaning of words. To borrow an illustration from our
own language, if "crawling things" had been used by the
translators in Genesis and "creeping things" in Leviticus, it
would not have been necessarily implied that they intended to
denote different groups of animals. "Sheh-retz" is employed in a
wider sense than "reh-mes." There are "sheh-retz" of the waters
of the earth, of the air, and of the land. Leviticus speaks of
land reptiles, among other animals, as "sheh-retz";
Genesis speaks of all creeping land animals, among which land
reptiles are necessarily included, as "reh-mes."
Our translators, therefore, have given the true sense when they
render both "sheh-retz" and "reh-mes" by "creeping things."

Having taken a good deal of trouble to show what Genesis i.-ii.
4 does not mean, in the preceding pages, perhaps it may be well