I have already called attention to two or three of the extracts from Professor Briggs' latest book, which were copied into the Louisville Daily Times of February 6. In another he denies the longevity ascribed to the antediluvians on the ground (1) that the genealogy in the fifth chapter of Genesis implies a "settled calendar and a regular registration of births and deaths; (2) that such a record could not have been preserved until the composition of Genesis; and (3) that science precludes the possibility of such figures being literally correct."

      Let us see what kind of reasoning this is. It is argued that the preservation in one family of the ages of sire and son for ten generations implies a "settled calendar and a regular registration of births and deaths." In the current sense of these terms it implies no such thing. It would be very easy for Adam and Eve to keep an account of the summers and winters as they passed, and when the number became large to cut a notch in a stick for every one, or to make marks of some other kind. I once saw a copy of a memorandum kept by an American Indian who could neither read nor write. He bought articles on credit from the sutler on the reservation, to be paid for when he received his pension from the Government. When he bought a pair of shoes, he made a rude picture of the shoes and marked under it a circle for every dollar he was to pay for them, a semi-circle for every half-dollar, and a quarter of a circle for every quarter of a dollar. So he did with every article which he bought; and it was said that when he came to settle his account at the end of every three months, he always had it correct. Was Adam too stupid to do what [315] an American savage could do? If he had just sprung from a baboon, he might have been; but if God created him in his own image and after his own likeness, I should think that he had some sense to start with. And if Adam and Eve started the custom of keeping an account of the ages of themselves and their children, it would be very easy for at least one line of his descendants to keep it up.

      As to the preservation of such a record till the composition of Genesis, there is no difficulty whatever. It is now a settled fact, made so by recent discoveries in archæology, that the art of writing reached back very close to the days of Noah; and as the fifth chapter of Genesis was the family tree of Noah, it is not in the slightest degree incredible that it should have been preserved in his family till was so embedded in literature that it could never be lost.

      The second argument of Professor Briggs is equally illogical with the first. That the traditions of other races assigned to men of early times great longevity, is evidence in favor of the Biblical tradition, instead of being against it. It is one of the canons of historical criticism that a tradition current in any race of people is rendered far more probable when it is found to exist among another race, and especially if the other is a distant and hostile race. This is because the existence of such a tradition can scarcely be accounted for unless it has a foundation in fact.

      But, finally, Professor Briggs says that "the study of science precludes the possibility of such figures being literally correct." In the absence of proof, it is sufficient to answer this assertion by a denial. If man came into existence by evolution from a lower animal, there would be plausibility in this assertion, though even on that [316] hypothesis it would not be necessarily true. And really the acceptance of this theory of the origin of the human race is the ground, after all, of this skepticism in reference to the early narratives of Genesis. It will be time enough to have some respect for the skepticism when the doctrine of the evolution of the human race is proved to be founded in fact. Till then men of ordinary prudence will still prefer to believe what God says in his Word.

[SEBC 315-317]