the Demon kind opened up to us. Here is Tehom, the sulking dragon sung of in the Psalms, Isaiah, Job, and in Revelation, as fighting against the Elohim or Yohweh, though the fight was originally against Marduk of Babylon. Then comes Tohua Bohu, the raging deep, a subject mythologically treated by many old nations, and which is told so poetically as the churning of the ocean by the Hindus, but as I shall have to deal with all this when we come to the Psalms and Job it cannot be entered upon now. But I could not leave this seemingly obscure verse without touching on its teeming fertility in myth.

SECOND STORY.

CHAPTER II

CATALOGUE FORM OF CREATION

Our reading now brings us back from the sunny childhood of religious thought to the flat, stale, and unprofitable statements of priestcraft, a task which I would rather avoid, but with which, in giving an honest account of Bible creations, I must deal. It is also the official account of creation unfortunately adopted by the Churches of Christian countries, and so I must enter their dismal archives, but I would infinitely prefer to dwell longer with the beautiful Queen of Heaven, the dovelet, or Iole, or Columbine, who danced her way into my boyish heart, or even with the Dragons. This version, although showing utter ignorance of the mechanism and economy of the solar system, was probably chosen because it is a purely dogmatic statement, does not appeal to reason, and is not directly linked to other pagan myths. It contradicts, however,

the ban on the "eating of fruit" of any kind. But it has one requisite for a supernatural religion it is an entirely miraculous creation of the universe from nothing-void or vacuum -and hence is founded on mirophily that craving of mankind for pure myth without any basis of reason, which I have dealt with in my larger book, Christianity or Symbolism.

After cutting out the second verse, which is so rich in " things that interest," we find the statement:—“ In the beginning God "-really the gods, Elohim or Alé-im is plural— "created the heaven and the earth; and the gods said let there be light, and there was

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light; and the Aléim saw the light, and it was good, and the Aléim divided the light from the darkness." See how differently and pleasantly it reads when we get rid of the theologian. Now philosophers are just awakening to the fact that there never was an absolute beginning. It is unthinkable. What There may be a convenwas before that? tional bginning to some isolated fact, but any action, or fact, or state, is always the consequence of a former fact, state, or action. If we draw a line at a date and speak of the So-and-so Era, that line is entirely artificial, and if history is examined one will find that

Things were going on " all over the world just as usual at the moment of our artificial line. We only find a series of sequences. Every moment is a new creation in one sense, as that exact state of affairs is new, and will never be exactly repeated. The present state of affairs grew, it was not created; so did every other state of affairs. We cannot conceive the creation, or the destruction of matter, nor can we conceive the creation of motion or energy -only their transformation. We can place no boundary to time or space; they are admittedly infinite. All these are necessary to the conception of a moving universe, and we cannot conceive of as being derived from nothing, and neither did the ancients, despite their love of the miraculous. "Creation" of any state of affairs is therefore a perfectly natural series of changes, of which we see no beginning nor end, and has nothing supernatural about it. This world may grow colder or hotter till life is impossible on it. It may be broken up or melted by collision, but its energy and its matter will simply be re-arranged and a new state of affairs will follow. The priestly writer therefore makes the mistake of writing words which can convey no reasonable or intelligible idea to our minds.

Like many other fallacies, such as a perpetual motion machine, it is quite easy to state how it is done in words, but anyone who tries to materialise these words into something real at once sees their fallacy. It is extremely probable that this account of creation was written by Ezra (Ezdras) or some other Perso-Babylonian priest sent from the new capital Sushan to organise the Hebrew's Temple practices. and re-compose their scriptures, as was the case with both Ezra and Nehemiah. When Jahweh told Ezra "I will reveal again all that has "been lost, the secrets of the times and the "end," Ezra replies-" Thy law is burnt, "therefore none can know the past or future, send thy Holy Ghost unto me and I shall

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write what has been done since the beginning."

Here we have the same word the beginning containing the same fallacy. The priestly writer of Genesis having stated his "beginning," then seems to have commenced the world-wide tale of the Queen of Heaven or Ark, and then, remembering that the Hebrews detested the feminine in their mythological Hierarchy and knew of no great Waters or Ocean, began a plain tale of a literary man, a mere catalogue, stating that the gods made all