The dean of the University of Chicago, who is a Baptist clergyman, recently said this in public print: "It is irreligious to teach that the world was made in six days, when we know that it was not." But the first chapter of the bible teaches that untruth, and for two thousand years the churches, according to this Christian professor, have taught what is not true. In the Ten Commandments, supposed to have been given by God himself, and which are still read in all the churches, we are ordered to keep the seventh day holy, "for in six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth, etc." Yet, this Christian professor says this is not true. What is still more puzzling is that this same professor who condemns the first chapter as erroneous, accepts the second, or the third, or the tenth, as the word of God! Even more astonishing than this is the conduct of the religious teachers who from Monday to Saturday believe in the scientific doctrine of evolution, but on Sunday repeat with the _Westminster Catechism_ that "In six days the Lord made the heaven and the earth." What shall we think of a religion that can make people so callous as that? Of course, a book or a man may make a number of statements of which some are true and some are not, but the man or the book that makes statements of which some are true and some false ceases to be different from any other book or man. The position of the orthodox preachers, that the bible is infallible from cover to cover, is very much more consistent than the position of the Christian professor we have quoted, who says that the first chapter of the bible is not the word of God, but the second or the fifth is. No. If the first chapter of your "holy" book is not divine, the whole book is human. But to state, as these Christian scholars do, that what the bible says in its first chapter is not true, is to make a very serious admission. If Genesis is a legend, Jesus might be a legend, too, for both Genesis and Jesus are in the same "holy" book. If the bible is unreliable when it says the world was created, it may be equally unreliable when it says Christ was incarnated. If it is not true that the universe was made in six days, it may not be true either that Christ rose from the grave. Our evidence for either statement is the bible. If the story of the fall of man is a myth, the story of the "Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world," may also be a myth. You can not part with Genesis and keep Jesus. The moment a single stone is removed from the structure of super-naturalism, the safety of the whole building is threatened. The tragedy of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is inseparably related to the tragedy of a dying god on Calvary. Christ is supposed to have shed his blood because Adam's sin had brought a curse upon the whole human race; and if Adam is a myth, what becomes of Christ? The First Verse of the Bible |BUT let us read the first verse of the first chapter: