And who, or what was the serpent? A real snake, or the devil? I know the current belief is that the serpent is a mere figure for the devil, or that at least the spirit of the devil was incarnated in the serpent. But there is not a line of Scripture to support either assumption. In the story itself it is stated only that the serpent was "more subtle than all the beasts of the field." He is classed with them, not above them, except in subtlety. The whole fabric upon which this idea of the identity of the serpent of Eden and the devil is based seems to be a single verse in Revelation (xii, 9): "And the great dragon was cast down, the old serpent, he that is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world; he was cast down to the earth, and his angels were cast down with him." There are one or two other passages in the same book that speak of "that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan," but they have no more connection with or relation to the story of Eden, than Homer's "Iliad" has to the nebular hypothesis. And yet upon these few passages is built up the whole fabric of the identity of the serpent of Eden and the temptation, with the devil, Satan or Lucifer, that is so graphically portrayed in "Paradise Lost." This whole story of the serpent in Eden is very likely but an adaptation, in another form, of the old Babylonian myth of "Marduk and the Dragon." All this shifting of the penalty for Adam's sin from physical to spiritual death and identifying the serpent with Satan, was an after-invention, to try to make it harmonize with later developed doctrines of immortality. Any candid reader can see that no such interpretation can be placed upon the natural and simple language of the story itself. In fact immortality for man, according to the story, is forever inhibited, according to verses 22-24. After eating the forbidden fruit the only way to immortality was to "eat of the tree of life." And to keep Adam from the "tree of life," of which he might "eat and live forever," God drove him out of the garden and placed the cherubim over it with a "flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life." According to this story, man is not immortal at all, and the only way to attain it is to get by the cherubim, or scale the walls of the garden of Eden and get to that tree. I was now ready to determine for myself that this whole story of the Garden of Eden was a myth, legend, or some oriental allegory, the true purport and meaning of which is now wholly unknown; beyond the reasonable conjecture that it originated with some very ancient oriental philosopher, in the childhood of the human race, and is an allegorical portrayal of his attempt to solve the problem of the origin of evil, of suffering and death in the human race. THE FLOOD