Respecting the authorship of these fables, we are told that the book which contains them, as well as the other four books of the Pentateuch, were written by Moses, under the inspiration of what is called the holy ghost; but when we examine these books we find that this is without doubt false, for it is not possible for any man to record his own death and burial, and the lives of a succession of prophets who lived after him, as is done in the last chapter of Deuteronomy. Then, again, in the seventh chapter of Genesis clean and unclean beasts are mentioned in connexion with the ark fable, whereas, according to the Bible, clean and unclean beasts were not declared such until 600 years after Moses is said to have died; which proves that Genesis was not written before that late period. The town of Dan is also mentioned in the fourteenth chapter, which town had no existence until 331 years after the recorded death of Moses. In chap. XXXVI. a list is given of all the kings that reigned over Edom “before there reigned any king over the children of Israel,” proving once more that this book was not written until long after kings had reigned over Israel. Numerous other passages might be quoted to show that Moses could not have written the books that are ascribed to him. To cut the matter short, however, we are told in the 2nd apocryphal book of Ezra that he and his clerks wrote all the books of Moses; and in Chronicles and Kings that Shaphan discovered the writings in an old chest. We find, therefore, not only that these fables of the creation and fall are not true records, but that it is not known who wrote them, although suspicion attaches to one Ezra; and yet we are expected to hang our chances of salvation upon them. We are handed these books and told by a priest that they were originally derived from god. Now instead of believing the man, and taking no pains to find out what the volume really contains, as is unfortunately the habit of most people, our duty is clearly to investigate the matter, and try to find out whether that priest speaks the truth or not, whether he has any sort of interest in making us believe the volume to be the word of god, or, assuming that he himself honestly believes it to be so, whether he is a sufficient authority on the point. Let us, for instance, take the case of a stranger to the Christian faith, one who never heard of the Bible or its gods, and who meets a Christian priest in the backwoods of America. The holy one informs the stranger that he possesses a book which has been written by god, through the medium of the inspired minds of a number of holy men. Would you consider the stranger to be a man of sound mental faculties if he at once accepted the word of the parasite, and shaped his whole career according to the teaching of that book? Most assuredly not. The most natural thing for the stranger to do would be to stare in amazement at the saint, and wonder whether he was quite right in his mind.