This argument applies equally to another school of thinkers, who do not care to tell us what the narrative in itself means:  who believe that God did not do what He is said to have done in Genesis, and yet who hold that the narrative is in a sense inspired, and that we may learn from it the great facts that God (and none other) originated all things—­that man has a spiritual element in his nature, and that woman is equal in nature, but subordinate in position, to man, and so forth.  Not only is enlightened judgment, even, inadequate to pronounce with certainty on how much is true; but the strange feeling still remains, if God designed to teach us these truths only, why was it not possible to enable the writer[1] to state them without the (purely gratuitous) error?  The sufferance of such a strange and unnecessary mixture of error seems rather like that “putting to confusion” of the human mind, which we feel sure the Great Teacher would never willingly perpetrate.

[Footnote 1:  For on the supposition stated, there is a revelation in the text.  Nor could any class of believer deny this.  It is entirely unnecessary to define the kind and extent of insphation.  But “all Scripture is ‘theopneustos’”—­I leave the word purposely untranslated (2 Tim. iii. 16); that surely means that the Divine Spirit exercised some kind of continuous control over the writers.]

Nor, again, can the narrative be got over by saying it is a poetic side or aspect of the facts, and not to be taken literally.  If any one knows exactly what this means, and can tell us always how to translate the matter into plain language, it is to be wished that he would enlighten the world as to the process.  But even if such process exists infallibly and universally, still, one would suppose, the narrative must, to begin with, be unmistakable poetry.  And here, again, the narrative bears every mark of an intention to state facts, not poetic aspects of facts.  Nor can we take the narrative as belonging to a familiar class in Scripture where a dream is used as a vehicle of communication.  In those cases there is really no room for doubt; the visible facts themselves are obviously designed only to typify or represent some other facts.

The events stated in Genesis are not of this class.  Those, therefore, who would be content with getting over the narrative without caring for its details, can, I must suspect, have hardly given adequate attention to the form and to the contents of the narrative as it stands.  Not only are the statements positive, but, taking any interpretation whatever of them, they are not nearly imaginative enough to suit the purpose.

They have an obvious amount of relation to fact which has never been denied.[1]

If the narrative is purely human even (and that the school we are considering do not aver), how did the writer come to be accurate even to that extent?  Take only the order of events.  I admit it does not correspond with the geologic record in the way commonly asserted; yet it has a very remarkable relation to that sequence.