by the same prophet who composed the former,—are conclusions of criticism which I venture to think may now be taken for granted and made the basis of further reasoning. At the same time I have taken for granted—not as certain, but as likely to be an approximation to the truth—the chronological arrangement of the prophets proposed by Ewald in his great work on that portion of Scripture. Further than this, I believe there are no assumptions of a critical character in the ensuing pages.
First, then, it is to be observed that the problems which occupied the writers of the Book of Genesis, and which in their own fashion they attempted to solve, were the same as those which in all ages have engaged the attention of thoughtful men, and which have been dealt with in many other theologies besides that of the Hebrews. The Hebrew solution may or may not be superior in simplicity or grandeur to the solutions of Parsees, Hindus, and others; but the attempt is the same in character, even if the execution be more successful. The authors of Genesis endeavor especially to account for:—
1. The Creation of the Universe.
2. The Origin of Man and Animals.
3. The Introduction of Evil.
4. The Diversity of Languages.
Although the fourth of these questions is, so far as I am aware, not a common subject of consideration in popular mythologies, the first three are the standard subjects of primitive theological speculation. Let us begin with the Creation.
One of the earliest inquiries that human beings address themselves to when they arrive at the stage of reflection is:—How did this world in which we find ourselves come into being? Out of what elements was it formed? Who made it, and in what way? A natural and obvious reply to such an inquiry is, that a Being of somewhat similar nature to their own, though larger and more powerful, took the materials of which the world is formed and moulded them, as a workman moulds the materials of his handicraft, into their present shape. The mental process gone through in reaching this conclusion is simply that of pursuing a familiar analogy in such a manner as to bring
