Chapter 2

NOT." Instead, then, of an error, we have an exact description of the earth's motion--a motion so steady and equable, that for thousands of years no single individual out of the myriads who were continually carried along by it had ever suspected its existence.

Well had it been for all if the lesson thus taught had been deeply laid to heart. But unhappily it was entirely unnoticed. Science pursued its way with increasing energy, and more facts were year by year brought to light which seemed entirely to contradict the teaching of the Bible, and again alarm and distrust sprung up in the minds of what, for want of a better name, we may perhaps be allowed to designate as the "Theological Party." The power of the Church of Rome was by this time so far curtailed that the old means of repression were no longer available; but the old spirit survived, and not in Rome only. There was the same blind distrust, the same mistaken zeal for supposed truth, the same indignation which naturally arises when things which we hold precious are attacked, and, as it seems to us, without any sufficient reason.

There was indeed much to account for and even to justify the feelings of anger and alarm which were excited, for the time when these discoveries began to be brought prominently forward was the latter half of the last century. At that time the famous French Academy was doing its deadly work, and the new discoveries were gladly hailed by the infidel philosophers of France, as weapons against the Bible. But the reception given to these discoveries by the theological party, though partially justified by the circumstances of the times, was nevertheless very mischievous in its results. For though the new discoveries were hailed enthusiastically by the infidel school, a very large portion of the men by whom they were made, and of those who were convinced of their truth, were men of a very different character. They were simple earnest seekers after truth as it is displayed in God's works. Their belief in the Bible rested in most cases on the authority of others. They had not investigated for themselves its external evidences; in many cases they had neither the ability nor the opportunity to do so; nor had many of them as yet become practically familiar with that internal evidence which the faithful Christian carries within him, though in time they might have become so, had they not been driven into infidelity by the reception which was given to their discoveries. When men of this character were informed by those to whom they were accustomed to look up as teachers in religious matters, that the discoveries, of the truth of which they were so firmly convinced, and in which they took such justifiable pride, were contradictory to the teaching of the Bible, they were placed in a position of extreme difficulty. For this statement was, in fact, a demand made upon them that they should give up these discoveries as erroneous, or else renounce their belief in the Bible. But their belief in the Bible rested in the main on the authority of others; they felt themselves incompetent judges of the evidence on which it rested, while they were fully acquainted with, and competent judges of, the grounds on which their own discoveries were based. The evidence on which they acted was, to their minds, quite as convincing as the Biblical evidence was to the minds of their antagonists. Two things, then, were pronounced incompatible by what seemed to be a competent authority; they could not adhere to both, and the natural consequence was that their assent was given to those statements which rested on evidence which they thoroughly understood, and the Bible was rejected. Thus it has come to pass that many of our scientific men, if not professed unbelievers, have yet learnt to look upon the Bible with suspicion and distrust. To some of them, as is evident from their writings, their position is a matter of profound sorrow.

There have, indeed, been many noble exceptions to this state of things. Many men whose pre-eminence in scientific knowledge and research is admitted by all, have yet clung in childlike trust to the Bible. They have recognized its authority, they have been satisfied that God's Word could not be in opposition to His Work, and they have been content to wait in unquestioning faith for the day when all that now seems dark and perplexing shall be made clear. But there have also been very many with whom this has not been the case, and their unbelief has not affected themselves alone. The knowledge of it has had a deadly effect upon thousands who were utterly incompetent to form any judgment on either theological or scientific subjects, but who gladly welcomed anything which would help to justify them to their own consciences in their refusal to submit themselves to a law which, in their ignorance, they deemed to be harsh and intolerable. There has also been another class of sufferers. Many persons who loved the Bible, but whose education, and, consequently, whose powers of judgment in the matter were very limited, have received very great injury from the doubt which has been thrown on its authority. Unable of themselves to form a judgment on the subject, they could not be unmoved by the opinion expressed by those whom they regarded as better informed than themselves. Hence their faith has received a shock always painful and dangerous, often perhaps fatal.

Many attempts have been made to overcome the difficulty which has thus arisen. When geologists first began to study the lessons which are to be learnt from fossils, a suggestion was made which, though it was soon shown to be untenable, has still perhaps a few supporters. It was said that these fossils were not what they seemed to be, the remains of creatures which once lived, but simple stones, fashioned from the first in their present form by the will of the Creator. But such an idea is at variance with all that either Nature or Revelation teaches us concerning God. All those who have any familiarity with the subject cannot but feel that the suggestion of such a solution of the difficulty is little short of a suggestion that the Almighty has stamped a lie upon the face of His own Work.

Another proposed solution, which for a time seemed satisfactory, assumed several successive creations and destructions of the world to have taken place in the interval between the first and second verses of Genesis. To these all the fossil remains were ascribed, while the present state of things was supposed to be the result of the operations recorded in the remainder of the chapter. But as geological knowledge advanced, it soon became clear that there were no breaks in the chain of life; no points at which one set of creatures had died out, while another had not yet arisen to fill up the void, but that all change had been gradual and progressive, and that species still living on the earth are identical with some which were in existence when the lowest tertiary strata were in process of formation--a time which must have been many thousand years prior to the appearance of man.

Other attempts have been made upon literary grounds. Hugh Miller [Footnote: Testimony of the Rocks.] carefully worked out a suggestion derived from a German source, that the history of Creation was presented to Moses in a series of six visions, which appeared to him as so many days with intervening nights. More recently Dr. Rorison [Footnote: In Answers to "Essays and Reviews."] has maintained that the first chapter of Genesis is not a history at all, but a poem--"the Hymn of Creation." There is, however, nothing in the chapter itself to confirm either of these views. When visions are recorded elsewhere we are told that they are visions, but no such hint is given us here. Nor do we find in the passage any of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry. It is inserted in an Historical document, and in the absence of any proof to the contrary, it is plainly itself also to be regarded as History.

But there remains yet one method to be attempted. If there is reason to believe that the Bible is the Word of God, just as the universe is His Work, then we may well expect that each of them will throw light upon and help us to a right understanding of the other. And if there be one part beyond all others in which this may be confidently looked for, it is that part in which the Divine Architect describes His own work. We know how difficult it is to understand a complicated process, or a complex piece of machinery, from a mere written description; and how our difficulty is lessened if we have the opportunity of inspecting the machinery or the process. Just in the same way we may expect to encounter difficulties, and to form erroneous conclusions when we study by itself such a document as the history of Creation, and we may well expect that those difficulties will be diminished, and those errors corrected by an examination of that material universe, the production of which it describes. And, on the other hand, if science--the study of the universe--is found to throw light upon and to receive light from the Bible, this is a fresh proof that the Bible and the universe are from the same source; the authority of the Bible is more firmly established, and the conclusions arrived at by men of science are confirmed.

But before this can be done to any good purpose, something is required from both the contending parties. The theological party must be prepared to sacrifice many an old opinion, many a cherished belief. Great care must be taken to discriminate between the genuine statements of the Mosaic Record, and the old interpretations which have been incorporated into and identified with those statements. Some, perhaps, may fear lest, in rejecting those interpretations, they may be setting at nought an authority to which they ought to submit, since these interpretations seem to have the sanction of the Church. But it can hardly be maintained that those promises of Divine guidance and protection from error which were given to the Church extended to such matters as this. No question of faith or duty is involved in the interpretation which we may give to the details of Creation. If there are some parts of the Bible in which the earliest interpretation is unquestionably the true one, there are also other parts, such as many of the prophecies, which became intelligible only when light was thrown upon them by subsequent events. And so it seems to be with the Record of Creation: it can only be rightly understood in proportion as we become acquainted with the details of the matters to which it refers. Any interpretation which was put upon it before those details were brought to light must of necessity be liable to error.

But something is also required of the opposite party. At the very threshold of the investigation they must be asked to lay aside, so far as is possible, those prejudices against the Bible which have naturally arisen in their minds from the obstinacy with which views, which they knew to be untenable, have been forced upon their acceptance as the undoubted teaching of God, so that they may enter upon the investigation with unbiassed minds. Then they must be careful to distinguish between established facts, and theories however probable. There is something very fascinating in a well constructed theory. Theories have again and again done such good service in opening the way, first, to the discovery, and then to the arrangement of facts, that we are very apt to assign to them an authority far beyond that to which they are really entitled. When, for instance, we have ascertained that a certain number of facts are explained by some particular theory, we are apt to assume prematurely, that the same theory must account for and be in harmony with all similar and related facts; or, if we have satisfied ourselves that certain results MAY have been produced in a particular way, we are in great danger of being led to conclude that they MUST have happened in that way. No mere theory can have any weight against a statement resting on solid evidence, but where the evidence is weak, or, what is practically the same thing, where the knowledge of that evidence is defective, a probable theory must carry great weight in influencing our judgment. Care must therefore be taken to keep theories in their proper place. Where we have to deal with well-established facts, any interpretations to which those facts may lead us may be taken as also established, but interpretations which are suggested by theories only must be regarded as provisional, and liable to future modification or rejection, as our knowledge increases.

The Mosaic Record itself, when carefully examined, seems to be peculiarly open to the process suggested. No doubt there is yet much work for Philology to do in its interpretation [Footnote: Such words, for instance, as [Hebrew script:],[Hebrew script:], [Hebrew script], used of different creative acts, may imply some difference of which we are ignorant. So again the uses of the words [Hebrew script], [Hebrew script:], and [Hebrew script:] for "man," may have a bearing on some of those questions which now seem most perplexing.], but one thing seems certain--there is in it an absence of all detail. The facts to which it has reference are stated in the briefest and most simple manner, without the slightest reference to the means by which they were effected, or, apart from the question of the days, the time which was occupied in their accomplishment. When stripped of all that is traditional, and examined strictly by itself, the narrative seems greatly to resemble one of those outline maps which are supplied to children who are learning geography, on which only a few prominent features of the country are laid down, and the learner is left to fill in the details as his knowledge advances. Only in this case the details have already been filled in by the light of very imperfect knowledge, aided by a fertile imagination. These we must obliterate if we would restore the possibility of a faithful delineation, and we must be careful, in future, to avoid a similar error. We must put down nothing as certain which has not been conclusively shown to be so.

This last caution is specially needed at the present time, for, proud as we are of our advance in science, the amount of what is certainly known is probably very much less than we imagine. A great deal that was received as certain a few years ago, is now considered to be doubtful, or even recognized as a mistake and abandoned. This is especially the case with Astronomy, which seems to be almost in a state of revolution. Dependent, as it is almost entirely, upon mechanical and optical aid, every improvement and discovery in these departments changes its position, bringing to light new facts, and modifying the aspect of those which were previously known. The very basis of all astronomical calculations, the standard of time, is now no longer relied upon as invariable. It is suspected of a change resulting from a gradual retardation in the rate of the earth's rotation on its axis, produced by tidal friction. When the binary stars were discovered, the discovery was hailed as a proof of the universal prevalence of the law of gravitation. Later observations have thrown doubt upon that conclusion, as many pairs are known to exist, which, though they have what is termed a "common proper motion," or are journeying through space together, have no relative motion, which they must show, if they were moving under the influence of their mutual attractions. The supposed simplicity of the solar system has given place to extreme complexity. A century ago, six planets, ten satellites, and a few comets, were supposed to constitute the whole retinue of the sun: now, instead of this, we have two groups of four planets each, the individual members of each group closely resembling each other in all points within our knowledge, while in all these points the groups differ greatly. Between these two groups lies a belt of very small planets, of which the 1st was discovered on the first day of the present century, and the 124th this year, and the number of known satellites has increased from 10 to 17. Add to this the meteoric groups, and their suspected connexion with certain comets, and the perplexing questions suggested by the Solar Corona and the Zodiacal light, and it will be seen that our knowledge is in a transitional state; that with so many problems unsolved, any apparent contradiction to the sacred record will require a careful scrutiny to ascertain that the grounds on which it is brought forward are well established.

Geology, so far as our present subject is concerned, stands upon a somewhat different footing. Though a much younger science than astronomy, it has one great advantage over it; the facts with which it has to do are for the most part discernible by the unaided senses, and it is therefore independent of instrumental help. Many changes have occurred in the views of Geologists, but in the main they have reference to processes [Footnote: Such, for instance, is the modification of the views of geologists as to the relative effects of "disruption" and "denudation" in determining the features of the earth's surface.] rather than to results, and it is the results with which we are chiefly concerned.

Physiologists have entered on the contest with the Bible on two different, and seemingly contradictory grounds. Some of them have maintained that the varieties of mankind are so distinct, that it is impossible they can all be descended from a single human pair, while others assert that not only all the varieties of mankind, but all the varieties of living beings are descended from a single progenitor. Between the advocates of these two systems there must be such an enormous difference as to the extent to which variation is possible, as to justify us in assuming that the fundamental principles of physiological science are not yet satisfactorily ascertained.

These are the three branches of science which come especially into collision with the Mosaic Record of the Creation. Of these Geology is the most important, because it is able to bring forward unquestionable facts which are in direct opposition to the traditionary interpretation Astronomy and physiology have little to object except theoretical views; the hypotheses of Laplace and Darwin. These, however, will have to be carefully considered. It will be necessary for us first to ascertain whether there really exists any such fundamental discrepancy between the record and ascertained facts, or theories so far as they are supported by facts, and stand on a probable footing, as should render all attempts at harmonizing them vain. If this is found not to be the case, we shall then be in a position to inquire whether modern discoveries afford us any really valuable light, and can assist us to form a somewhat more extended and accurate idea of the processes described by the sacred historian.