The compiler of Genesis, in its present form, evidently had a
definite plan in his mind. His countrymen, like all other men,
were doubtless curious to know how the world began; how men, and
especially wicked men, came into being, and how existing nations
and races arose among the descendants of one stock; and,
finally, what was the history of their own particular tribe.
They, like ourselves, desired to solve the four great problems
of cosmogeny, anthropogeny, ethnogeny, and geneogeny. The
Pentateuch furnishes the solutions which appeared satisfactory
to its author. One of these, as we have seen, was borrowed from
a Babylonian fable; and I know of no reason to suspect any
different origin for the rest. Now, I would ask, is the story of
the fabrication of Eve to be regarded as one of those pre-
Abrahamic narratives, the historical truth of which is an open
question, in face of the reference to it in a speech unhappily
famous for the legal oppression to which it has been wrongfully
forced to lend itself?


Have ye not read, that he which made them from the beginning
made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man
leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; and the
twain shall become one flesh?" (Matt. xix. 5.)


If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth
verse of the second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of
language? And again, I ask, if one may play fast and loose with
the story of the Fall as a "type" or "allegory," what becomes of