(A.) Of the difficulties connected with the first part of Genesis some are scientific.  Such is the narrative of the creation of the world in six days.  Respecting this it has already been remarked (Ch. 10, No. 3) that with all who believe in the reality of divine revelation the question is not respecting the truth of this narrative, but respecting the interpretation of it.  As long ago as the time of Augustine the question was raised whether these days are to be understood literally, or symbolically of long periods of time.  The latter was his view, and it is strengthened by the analogy of the prophetic days of prophecy.

Another difficulty relates to the age of the antediluvian patriarchs, which was about tenfold the present term of life for robust and healthful men.  According to the laws of physiology we must suppose that the period of childhood and youth was protracted in a corresponding manner; since in man, as in all the higher animals, the time of physical growth—­physical growth in the widest sense, the process of arriving at physical maturity—­has a fixed relation to the whole term of existence.  After the deluge, in some way not understood by us, the whole course of human life began to be gradually quickened—­to run its round in a shorter time—­till the age of man was at last reduced to its present measure.  All that we can say here is that we do not know how God accomplished this result.  He accomplished it in a secret and invisible way, as he does so many other of his operations in nature.  On the discrepancy between the Masoretic Hebrew text, the text of the Samaritan Pentateuch, and that of the Septuagint, in respect to the genealogical tables in Genesis, see below.

The unity of the human race is everywhere assumed in Scripture.  Some modern scientific men have denied this, but their arguments for a diversity of origin do not amount to positive proof.  They are theoretic rather than demonstrative, and the weight of evidence is against them.  We must remember, moreover, that man lives under a supernatural dispensation.  The narrative in the eleventh chapter of Genesis seems to imply that God interposed miraculously to confound human speech, in accordance with his plan to scatter men “abroad upon the face of all the earth.”  In like manner he may have interposed in a secret way to intensify the diversity in the different races of men.  It does not appear certain, however, on physiological grounds, that any miraculous interposition was needed; and we may leave the question of the manner in which the present diversity among the children of Adam was produced among the secret things of which it is not necessary that we should have an explanation.

The question of the universality of the deluge is with believers in revelation one of words only, on which it is hardly necessary to waste time.  The end of the deluge was the complete destruction of the human race, all