But now come the geologists, and tell us that they find evidence of three different races existing in Europe in three distinct periods of civilization, some of which probably preceded the immigration of these Indo-European races. These three belong to what they call the Stone, the Bronze, and the Iron Age. In the gravel and drift, from ten to twenty feet below the surface, along with the bones of the elephant and the rhinoceros, and other animals long since extinct, are found hundreds of flint instruments, axes, arrow-heads, and tools, indicating that men lived in Europe in great numbers, contemporaries with these extinct animals. If this should be proved, we should then be brought to admit, with respect to the antiquity of man, what we have already admitted with regard to the antiquity of the world, that the account in Genesis is not to be understood as theologians have hitherto taught; that is, that we must not go to Genesis, but to philology and geology, for our knowledge of the most ancient history. In this case, then, it will be evident that the old notion of a literal inspiration cannot be maintained. God certainly did not inspire men to teach anything about the creation which was adapted to mislead and deceive men for two thousand years. We shall be obliged to say, then, that Moses was not inspired to teach geology or history; that what he taught on these subjects he taught from such sources as were available to him, and that he was liable to error. The old Orthodox theory of plenary inspiration has received very damaging blows from such scientific researches as these which we have been describing. The letter of the Bible seems, in such cases, to be at war with the facts of nature. § 3. Basis of the Orthodox Theory of Inspiration. Why, then, should the Orthodox doctrine be so stoutly maintained? What are the reasons used in its defence? What its arguments? What is its basis? On what does it rest? Do the writers of the Bible say that they were inspired by God to write these books? Not at all. Do they claim infallibility? Nowhere. Do they lay down any doctrine of plenary, verbal, literal inspiration? No. We do not even know who wrote many of these books. We do not know who collected them, or why just these books were put into the collection, and no others. The Orthodox theory rests on few facts, but is mainly an assumption. It seemed necessary that there should be _authority_ somewhere; and when Protestants rejected the authority of the Church, they took the Bible in its place. The doctrine of inspiration, therefore, was adopted as a basis for the authority of the Bible.