Volume - The Clarence Darrow Collection

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FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.
legend, and parable seem, in obedience to a divine law, the
necessary setting for these truths, as they are successivelj
evolved, ever in higher and higher forms. What matters it
then, that we have come to know that the accounts of Cres
tion, the Fall, the Deluge, and much else in our sacred books
were remembrances of lore obtained from the Chaldeans]
What matters it that the beautiful story of Joseph is founc
to be in part derived from an Egyptian romance, of whiclT
the hieroglyphs may still be seen ? What matters it that the
story of David and Goliath is poetry ;
and that Samson, like
so many men of strength in other religions, is probably a
sun-myth? What matters it that the inculcation of high
duty in the childhood of the world is embodied in such
quaint stories as those of Jonah and Balaam ? The more we
realize these facts, the richer becomes that great body of lit.
erature brought together within the covers of the Bible.
What matters it that those who incorporated the Creation
lore of Babylonia and other Oriental nations into the sacred
books of the Hebrews, mixed it with their own i
conceptions
and deductions? What matters it that Darwin changed the
whole aspect of our Creation ; myths that Lyell and his com-
peers placed the Hebrew story of Creation and of the DeJ-j
uge of Noah among legends ;fthat Copernicus put an end toj
the standing still of the sun for JoshuaJ that Halley, in
pro-j
mulgating his law of comets, put an end to the doctrine oil
" signs and wonders " ; that Pinel, in showing that all insan-
ity is physical disease, relegated to the realm of mythologjj
the witch of Endor and all stories of demoniacal possession
that the Rev. Dr. Schaff, and a multitude of recent Christiaij
travellers in Palestine, have put into the realm of legend th(
story of Lot's wife transformed into a pillar of salt; that tin
anthropologists, by showing how man has risen every when I
from low and brutal beginnings, have destroyed the wholw
theological theory of " the fall of man " ? Our great body 0^4
sacred literature is thereby only made more and more valuj
able to us: more and more we see how long and patienti;-
the forces in the universe which make for righteousne?
have been acting in and upon mankind through the onl
agencies fitted for such work in the earliest ages of the worl
through myth, legend, parable, and poem.
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