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14 nations of Canaan? Why should he miraculously give forth an account of creation which, from a scientific point of view, is in no wise equal to that which the rude rocks of earth have themselves revealed? Only because they have higher meanings than error has been in the habit of admitting; only because the parable is always God's chosen method of spiritual utterance; only because they were written neither as history nor as science; not to teach the one nor to enforce the other, but to use outward narrative forms for the expression of interior spiritual truth.

In this view we approach the Mosaic account of the creation. It was not divinely inspired as a scientific treatise but as a spiritual, allegory. It is not fitted together as a consistent geological formula of natural facts, but as a weaving of the order of earth's development into a spiritual parable. Its expressions are not worded in scientific form, and its statements are not rendered with scientific precision; but both are so arranged according to the divine law of correspondences, and after the method of sacred symbolism, as to effect the spiritual purpose designed.

So if it lacks philosophic precision, if it fails in scientific accuracy, if it is somewhat inconsistent with modern geology, it is because it has no relation