Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1914 — HITS BIBLE STORIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

HITS BIBLE STORIES

Dr. Eliot Asserts Garden of Eden Is a,Myth. * President Emeritus of Harvard as Advocate of New Religion Declares Btory of Making Man of Duat Is False.

Boston.—Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard, whose previous articles and lectures on the future of religion caused world-wide discussion, reports now that the biblical story, of the Garden of Eden is a myth. In an article printed by the American Unitarian association of Boston he says: “God did man out of the dust of the ground. “God did not turn stonemason and give into the hands of Moses the ten commandments. , “Neither did the sun stand still for Joshua. . - “Neither did Jonah go through his thrilling experience in the close quarters of the whale.” These and other stories Doctor Eliot would designate pleasant reading, but not for belief. There will be nothing like dogmas or creeds in his twentieth century religion. No miracle will be found in it. “Men of science,” says Doctor Eliot, “have no faith in magic or miracle. “No thinking person now accepts as anything but primitive myth or fanciful poetry the story of the Garden of Eden or the portrait of God in the second chapter of Genesis as a being who formed man out of the dust of the ground as a child fashions an image out of snow or clay. “The Creator is for modern men a sleepless, active energy and wilfwhich

yesterday and forever actuates all things. The human spirit actuates its own body, so small and yet so Inconceivably complex. "By savage man the gods were recognized chiefly in the irresistible catastrophes of nature; in jhe lightning, the earthquake, the' flood, and the drought, the volcano and the mighty wind. “Twentieth century people recognize God chiefly in the wonderful energies of sound, light and electricity; in.the vital processes of plants and animals; in the human love and aspirations and in the evolution of human society.”

Dr. Charles W. Ellot.