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be reserved unto judgment.' And again in Jude: 'And the angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting darkness unto the judgment of the great day.' Who can doubt that the authors of these epistles were familiar with, and accepted, the Book of Enoch as inspired Scripture, more especially as Jude forthwith names Enoch as a prophet?

The tragical episode of Cain and Abel is also from the pen of the Jehovist, who, by abruptly introducing the rite of sacrifice without one word of reference to its origin, unconsciously discloses an unrecorded past in man's career, remote from the fiction of recent creation.2

Malediction holds so important a place in religion that Anathema Maranatha is the appropriate motto of theology. This sacred institution, originating in Paradise and transmitted through Judaism to Christianity, still holds its ground in Athanasian curses and Papal imprecations. Sacerdotal denunciation of theological opponents may cause us no surprise, but we learn with amazement that the divinely ratified curse of Noah inflicted the appalling calamity of slavery on an important branch of the human family.3

The Elohist records the Deluge; and awakens hope, as Noah and his family go forth from the ark with the blessing of Elohim, that man may now be permitted to do his best on earth, in freedom from the depressing influence of malediction; but the Jehovist forthwith interferes with a legend which destroys this cheerful forecast of futurity. Noah drinks too freely of the

1 Jude 6.

2 Gen. iv.

3 Gen. ix. 20–27.

newly discovered luxury of wine. His youngest son Ham is less thoughtfully respectful than his brothers, Shem and Japhet, who cloak, with filial piety, their father's vinous indiscretion, and Noah wakes up to reward their considerate delicacy with an emphatic benediction, and curse the irreverent Ham through the predestined slavery of his doomed descendants.

Such are scriptural views of the origin of slavery: an alcoholised brain susceptible of rash conclusions, an angry man disposed to malediction, a capricious Deity annulling the divine blessing in response to a human curse-fatal causes of deplorable results, the degradation of Humanity in human bondage! Well may the traditional descendants of Ham interrupt the Word of God,' as it flows from the lips of some zealous missionary, with the startling question-'Is this the God of the Christians who condemned the negro race to bondage? Let us therefore rather rely on some friendly fetich than on this hostile God.'

The Jehovist, in negation of the ever-shifting forms of words, affirms that, nearly two thousand years from the creation, mankind spoke but one language, and were deprived of this great social boon by a miraculous confusion of tongues.1 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.' If this design, as popularly assumed, meant a daring attempt to scale the heavens, it might well have been dealt with by the natural law of gravitation; but the Jehovist depicts the Deity aroused to jealousy of man's ambition, and hastening to interfere, rather as some

1 Gen. xi.
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petty heathen god, than as the Supreme Ruler of the Universe.

'The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said behold the people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do. Go to, let us go down and there confound their language that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city.'

If the credulous Jehovist could have foreseen the scientific audacity of modern times, annihilating time and space through a control of Nature's forces outstripping the fabulous exploits of ancient gods-could he have forecast the future of comparative philology, tracing the evolution and divergence of language, as tribes became separated by forests, rivers, and mountains, how clearly he would have seen the folly of interpreting providential action through the unattested legends of traditional theosophy! And yet modern Piety still canonises this ancient myth, which, but for its accidental insertion in a book accepted as infallible, would have been, long since, classed among the fantastic creations of mythology.

The philologist may smile at the fiction of all mankind speaking but one language, so recently as four thousand years ago, but the zealous missionary, who spends a life in learning barbarous dialects, must sigh as he thinks of the priceless boon of a universal tongue, and marvel at the mysterious wisdom which multiplies the difficulties of apostolic labours through the miraculous confusion of tongues.

In a famous episode of patriarchal life, the Jehovist depicts the Deity tampering with the heathen abomination of human sacrifice to test the obedience of Abraham.1 When Jehovah pronounced the doom of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham protested against the possible punishment of the innocent, and even impressed on Jehovah the importance of consistency in the administration of divine justice; 2 and yet this man uttered no word of remonstrance when commanded to slay his only son, but hastened preparations for the hideous rites of human sacrifice. The anonymous author of the Epistle to the Hebrews commends the conduct of the patriarch as a noble instance of faith in God, but in this narrative we find a fatal precedent for the commission of crimes supposed to be divinely sanctioned. The lamentable results of this pernicious superstition might be averted among a people enjoying the privilege of personal intercourse with the Deity, but when the priests of heathen gods appealed to parents for the blood of their children, no voice from heaven arrested the sacrifice of their firstborn, surrendered to the gods with a piety which rivalled the faith of Abraham.

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We are told that in modern times the heavenly voices of antiquity have been replaced by the silent promptings of the Spirit; but those who hope for divine enlightenment also dread Satanic illusion; if it is therefore true that the Deity ever tampered with the human conscience by commanding the commission of crime, how shall we determine the source of our

1 Gen. xxii.

2 Gen. xviii. 23–33.

3 Heb. xi. 17.

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temptations but by assigning to Reason the absolute control of Faith?

Again, the Jehovist teaches us, through the story of Jacob's fraudulent personation of Esau, that successful treachery may win the blessing of God.1 St. Paul explains the difficulty through the mystery of election.2 Jehovah preferred Jacob to Esau, and revealed his choice to Rebecca. The mother and son were not, therefore, domestic traitors deceiving a husband and father, to rob a son and brother of the divine blessing, but pious conspirators co-operating with the Deity in the fulfilment of His providential designs. Abraham cheerfully obeyed the divine command to sacrifice his firstborn. Would not Isaac have proved equally compliant if instructed to disinherit Esau? Or could Jehovah devise no more suitable means for the accomplishment of this object than the sanction of human treachery? We answer that the compilers have deceived themselves and Paul by credulously accepting Semitic legends as divine revelation.

A candid and impartial consideration of these episodes in alleged revelation inevitably points to the conclusion that Genesis is not a divinely inspired work. The translators of our Authorised Version speak of the Deity in terms familiar to their contemporaries in association with Infinite Divinity, but if they had introduced the Creator as Elohim, and then abruptly debased Providential action in the name of Jehovah-Elohim, English students of Scripture would have long since detected the discrepancy, and sought some explanation of divergence in the name and policy of Divinity. But