In the genealogy of the family of Shem we have a list of names which are names, and nothing more to us. It is a genealogy which neither does, nor pretends to do, more than to trace the order of succession among a few families only, out of the millions then already existing in the world. Nothing but this order of succession is given, nor is it at all certain that this order is consecutive or complete. Nothing is told us of all that lay behind that curtain of thick darkness, in front of which these names are made to pass; and yet there are, as it were, momentary liftings, through which we have glimpses of great movements which were going on, and had been long going on beyond. No shapes are distinctly seen. Even the direction of those movements can only be guessed. But voices are heard which are "as the voices of many waters." I agree in the opinion of Hupfeld, that "the discovery that the Pentateuch is put together out of various sources, or original documents, is beyond all doubt not only one of the most important and most pregnant with consequences for the interpretation of the historical books of the Old Testament, or rather for the whole of theology and history, but it is also one of the most certain discoveries which have been made in the domain of criticism and the history of literature. Whatever the anticritical party may bring forward to the contrary, it will maintain itself, and not retrograde again through any thing, so long as there exists such a thing as criticism; and it will not be easy for a reader upon the stage of culture on which we stand in the present day, if he goes to the examination unprejudiced, and with an uncorrupted power of appreciating the truth, to be able to ward off its influence." What then? shall we give up these books? Does not the admission that the narrative of the fall in Eden is legendary carry with it the surrender of that most solemn and sacred of Christian doctrines, the atonement? Let us reflect on this! Christianity, in its earliest days, when it was converting and conquering the world, knew little or nothing about that doctrine. We have seen that, in his "Apology," Tertullian did not think it worth his while to mention it. It originated among the Gnostic heretics. It was not admitted by the Alexandrian theological school. It was never prominently advanced by the Fathers. It was not brought into its present commanding position until the time of Anselm Philo Judaeus speaks of the story of the fall as symbolical; Origen regarded it as an allegory. Perhaps some of the Protestant churches may, with reason, be accused of inconsistency, since in part they consider it as mythical, in part real. But, if, with them, we admit that the serpent is symbolical of Satan, does not that cast an air of allegory over the whole narrative?