Man must pass through infancy and childhood before he reaches manhood and maturity. Races and nations also had to pass the stages of infancy and childhood, with all their mistakes, fancy, and fable. In these stages any kind of information and interpretation is readily accepted, without inquiry and without investigation, for the reason that they are not capable of either. To inquire, is the awaking of knowledge; and to investigate, requires understanding. Whatever knowledge has been acquired, that knowledge can be imparted, but no more. If it be true, it cannot be denied or contradicted; if that knowledge be not true, it will be subject to denial, controversy, and dispute, when experience has ripened the understanding. Childhood will listen to anything without contradiction. It accepts the matter as told and believes it. As years pass on, the story that once seemed so impressive and pretty, that was listened to so eagerly, loses its charm, for lack of truth. Fairy tales of past ages were abundant. Every locality had them, and was by them adorned in mystery and wonder. They were ordinarily recited with startling impressiveness. With awe places were pointed out of perhaps some strange apparition, or prodigious occurrence. All of such accounts were either deliberate inventions, or concoctions of a prolific imagination. Early writings abound in them. The improbability of a story grows stronger the farther you go back in the history of humanity. Many of these stories were incorporated in poems, in heroic legends, in tales of the mysterious births of kings and queens, descendants of gods. And the vast majority of the writers of antiquity mix fiction and fact, the possible with the impossible. They treat on the conduct of men, their deeds and misdeeds, according to the extravagant customs of the time. The Book called scripture writings is composed of three elements--fiction, exaggeration, and fact. The fiction consists of all that portion of the writings that relates to God and his miraculous works. The exaggeration consists of impossible doings of men, such as accounts of miracle-healers, resurrectionists, flights to heaven, etc. The facts appertain to the Jewish race actually--that they did exist as a nation, and conducted their affairs in as barbarous a fashion as their neighbors.