by comparing the Chaldean cosmogonic and mythical legends with the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, those which relate to the beginnings not so much of the Hebrew people as of the human race and the world in general, that both must originally have flowed from one and the same spring of tradition and priestly lore. The resemblances are too staring, close, continuous, not to exclude all rational surmises as to casual coincidences. The differences are such as most strikingly illustrate the transformation which the same material can undergo when treated by two races of different moral standards and spiritual tendencies. Let us briefly examine both, side by side. 13. To begin with the Creation. The description of the primeval chaos--a waste of waters, from which "the darkness was not lifted," (see p. 261)--answers very well to that in Genesis, i. 2: "And the earth was without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The establishment of the heavenly bodies and the creation of the animals also correspond remarkably in both accounts, and even come in the same order (see p. 264, and Genesis, i. 14-22). The famous cylinder of the British Museum (see No. 62, p. 266) is strong presumption in favor of the identity of the Chaldean version of the first couple's disobedience with the Biblical one. We have seen the important position occupied in the Chaldean religion by the symbol of the Sacred Tree, which surely corresponds to the Tree of Life in Eden (see p. 268), and probably also to that of Knowledge, and the different passages and names ingeniously collected and confronted by scholars leave no doubt as to the Chaldeans having had the legend of an Eden, a garden of God (see p. 274). A better preserved copy of the Creation tablets with the now missing passages may be recovered any day, and there is no reason to doubt that they will be found as closely parallel to the Biblical narrative as those that have been recovered until now. But even as we have them at present it is very evident that the groundwork, the material, is the same in both. It is the manner, the spirit, which differs. In the Chaldean account, polytheism runs riot. Every element, every power of nature--Heaven, Earth, the Abyss, Atmosphere, etc.--has been personified into an individual divine being actively and severely engaged in the great work. The Hebrew narrative is severely monotheistic. In it GOD does all that "the gods" between them do in the other. Every poetical or allegorical turn of phrase is carefully avoided, lest it lead into the evil errors of the sister-nation. The symbolical myths--such as that of Bel's mixing his own blood with the clay out of which he fashions man,(see p. 266)--are sternly discarded, for the same reason. One only is retained: the temptation by the Serpent. But the Serpent being manifestly the personification of the Evil Principle which is forever busy in the soul of man, there was no danger of its being deified and worshipped; and as,