clearness forces me to ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to
say that Jesus did not believe the stories in question, or that
he did? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter of fact, that "the
Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that the
Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the
narrative mentions Noah's wife, and his sons' wives, there is
good scriptural warranty for the statement that the
antediluvians married and were given in marriage; and I should
have thought that their eating and drinking might be assumed by
the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story.
Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an
illustration of God's methods of dealing with sin, has an
account of an event that never happened? If no Flood swept the
careless people away, how is the warning of more worth than the
cry of "Wolf" when there is no wolf? If Jonah's three days'
residence in the whale is not an "admitted reality," how could
it "warrant belief" in the "coming resurrection?" If Lot's wife
was not turned into a pillar of salt, the bidding those who turn
back from the narrow path to "remember" it is, morally, about on
a level with telling a naughty child that a bogy is coming to
fetch it away. Suppose that a Conservative orator warns his
hearers to beware of great political and social changes, lest
they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre;
what becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if
he, personally, does not believe that Robespierre existed and
did the deeds attributed to him?

Like all other attempts to reconcile the results of
scientifically-conducted investigation with the demands of the
outworn creeds of ecclesiasticism, the essay on Inspiration is