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CHAPTER XV.

THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE.

"I find more and more that people employ the Scriptures very little for those purposes for which they are designed, but instead of this, use them the more for ends never intended."

THE attitude of science towards religious truth, as shown by its representatives, varies somewhat with the age. Bacon was able to say in his day that sacred and inspired divinity was "the sabbath and port of all men's labours and peregrinations." A leading physicist of the present day, speaking of science says that "science and philosophy are neither Christian nor un-Christian, but extraChristian, and have a world of their own."* Both statements, if not

true to history and the facts of the present, ought to be. We know, however, that divinity has been anything but a halcyon quiet to those who have sailed its waters or to those who are now sailing them; nor can we say that science now or at any time has been careful not to give grounds for the charge of being either Christian or un-Christian, by maintaining a strict neutrality. This is not always, nor in most cases primarily, the blame of scientific men, but more frequently that of theologians, who have at the same time desecrated Bacon's "sabbath" through the unseemly brawls produced by such conflict, and by opening certain flood-gates have let a heavy sea into his "port."

There are men like Paracelsus who pretend to find in the Bible not only what is considered specially religious truth, but in addition to this, all or a considerable part of natural philosophy as well. Even if we limit the truth conveyed through the Bible to what is more strictly considered religious truth, we do not find the unanimity we might expect as to what is religious truth? An opinion is occasionally met with, and if we do not misunderstand him, Mr. Martineau lends it his support in objecting to Butler's argument from analogy, according to which the Bible is a kind of supplement to clear up the riddles of nature. It is not our concern to defend Butler in this place, but Mr. Martineau's strictures on

* Professor Huxley: " Lay Sermons and Lectures.”

the argument from analogy lose all their cogency on account of the theory of Scripture revelation on which they are based. He says, with an apparent show of plausibility, that there can be no proper analogy between Scripture and nature on the side of their inexplicability. This objection, however, rests on a confusion of two things. If Butler had said that the analogy between nature and revelation holds in the very same things, as for example, that nature is obscure in teaching who was her author, and that the Bible shows the same obscurity, there would be force in Mr. Martineau's objection that the Bible in this sense of it was no revelation, since it merely sets before us the same riddles that we find in nature. But Butler does not say this, nor would there, in such a case, be any room for the analogy he purposes to show. It is because there are difficulties in both, but difficulties of a separate class, that we can be entitled to draw any analogy between them. Butler neither held, as some do, that the Bible was a republication, on authority, of mere natural religion, nor what Mr. Martineau seems to hold, that it was an explanation of what was else inexplicable in nature; but, on the contrary, that it was a system of spiritual things co-ordinate with the natural system, having ostensibly the same source or author, and, as might be expected, having analogous difficulties. Its end being different, according to Butler it could not have the same difficulties that we find in nature, nor could it concern itself with solving these difficulties. Butler states at the very outset in the words of Origen the scope of his argument: "he who believes the Scripture to have proceeded from Him who is the author of nature may well expect to find the same sort of difficulties in it as are found in the constitution of nature." It is new relations that the Bible makes known to us, not the explanation of relations already known; and the analogy is, as stated in one place, that there is reason to think that neglect of behaving suitably to the former will be attended with the same kind of consequences as neglecting to behave suitably to the latter. The position is so variously illustrated, that examples crowd upon us, e.g., that there is an analogy between the Christian dispensation and the natural scheme of things in the employment of means to accomplish ends; that there is the credibility that the Christian dispensation may be carried on by general laws as has been noticed, as well as the course of nature, because even in the latter it is but in few respects and an exceeding little way that we can trace natural things to law; and on Mr. Martineau's own objection Butler re

marks, we "cannot read a passage relating to this great mystery of godliness but what immediately runs up into something which shows us our ignorance in it, as everything in nature shows our ignorance in the constitution of nature." The propriety of the analogy between Scripture and nature on the side of their inexplicability is in Butler's scheme quite indisputable, since, as he argues, our ignorance is as much an answer to our objections against the perfection of the one as against the perfection of the other."

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That there are difficulties in Scripture, and difficulties compatible with a revelation we need not go beyond itself to prove. We know in part, one of its latest writers says; that which has been revealed is not a full revelation in the sense of a full unfolding of what is otherwise mysterious, or we may say that Scripture, like nature, is not fully known, and that the difficulties which we meet with in both may not be in them but in ourselves. But even were the Scripture revelation to be acknowledged complete in its own sphere, that is no reason why it should complete other spheres of truth. If the Scripture purported to be a supplement to our natural knowledge, which Mr. Martineau seems to take it to be,—that is, explaining what in nature is dark and mysterious and problematical,—then it would belie the actual state of its contents, for on none of the many points of a pure kosmical origin does it throw such higher knowledge. But revelation pretends to no such place. It is evidently not intended as an appendix to knowledge naturally acquired, or an explanation of nature-problems, but an opening of a new world, a revelation of the spiritual and unseen. Nor need this revelation be necessarily so clear as seems to be imagined. It accords well enough with our notion of revelation that for the present one side of the exceeding glory may only be seen. We have not, it is quite true, explored all its depths and hidden recesses. Perhaps if we had, we should find it wealthier, than we can imagine, in spiritual truths-not in sensible knowledge, in which we shall certainly find it poorer; even as in nature time and experience unravel many supposed physical mysteries, while they appear to drive farther back all imagined spiritual truth.

There are some who hold that while the Bible gives us a correct view of religious truth both in theory and practice, it gives no theories on natural subjects to which we are bound to give any regard; that the Scriptures do not, as some have supposed, anticipate any natural science. But this class of thinkers also hold that although we cannot look for the same scientific exactness in physical

knowledge in the Bible as we have at present, there is perfect practical accuracy in describing these matters, and that the sacred penmen, as they are called, were kept from gross blunders; that in fact what is called inspiration applies to the details of ordinary knowledge in Scripture.

The first thing that strikes one when such theories are mentioned is the extreme improbability of them. It does not seem the likeliest thing that a revelation of spiritual truth should at the same time contain a revelation of general knowledge. On the common supposition of those who argue for it, the one is capable of being known by us, while the other is not. And even supposing that spiritual truth were a development of man's spiritual nature, it is a very possible thing that this development might not be accompanied by a corresponding development of the other side of his nature. The ground on which a supernatural revelation of spiritual facts is generally argued is that of man's incapacity of arriving independently at an adequate knowledge of such facts; but it would be no sufficient reason for such a revelation to those who argue in this way that it communicated knowledge which we were quite capable of acquiring ourselves.

Of the various opinions we have mentioned, most people will in mere logical consistency confess to a preference for that of Paracelsus. If the Bible does teach us science, there seems no middle ground between holding that it teaches all the sciences and maintaining that its teaching and foresight are lacking in scientific precision. It comes, therefore, to be a question between Paracelsus and the extreme view of a modern school, that the Bible reflects the natural imperfections in knowledge of the people and the times in which it was written. We must, accordingly, either accept its dicta on these matters, or criticise them with the freedom with which we would criticise the views of any other book or people. Not only so, but we must, if we hold the first alternative, begin scientific investigations, as we begin theological inquiry, with the data that the Bible furnishes, and rationalise these into physical dogma. On such a supposition it is simply waste of time for us laboriously to toil in the observation of nature and man, when the explanations lie embedded in an unerring book. Laboratories may be shut up, for the experiments have been already made, and the result tabulated; geologists may suspend their survey; governments may save money spent hitherto on deep sea dredgings; enthusiastic observers need run no further risk in watching volcanic action; travellers may stay

at home, for the earth's formation is authoritatively settled; physiologists, ethnologists, moralists, socialists, and speculators in general, are doing tentatively and imperfectly what has been done completely, since the problems of man and nations, the questions of ethics and politics, and the large themes of philosophy are subjects of divinity and contained in the Scripture. Either this, or we must desist looking to the Bible for any of these things. It is either the sum of the sciences, or it has no place in scientific inquiry. If it is only authoritative in some branches of science, where shall we draw the line? Shall it be at any of the physical sciences, and if so, at which of them, and why? These questions are of more importance than one would imagine. It is not now so usual to hear arguments drawn from Scripture in support of a system of tithes, e.g., as it was a few years ago. The authority of the sacred text for the Divine right of kings has waned in modern times; and it is not so generally thought to lend its countenance to slavery and prosecution for witchcraft. Good sense and general cultivation have come to the rescue of a bad theology, and exploded a great many of these social theories based on Scriptural authority. But there is a mode of thought in theology at present that proceeds on precisely the same view of the Bible. Its position is higher, however, inasmuch as it does not seek to buttress special opinions by Divine revelation, but places this revelation over against all scientific theories whatsoever. It is not now sought merely to quote a Biblical author as countenancing some current state of society, but it is proposed to bring the conclusions of science to the bar of the Bible. It is not thought sufficient that a well verified induction should commend itself to the reason of man, but it must also commend itself to the Hebrew intelligence. It is well that the question should have reached a position like this. It is only in keeping with the undeniable superiority of the Bible, that, if it possess the character of a standard in these matters, it must be the ultimate test. An intermediate test is worse than none at all. Finality is the one condition of any legitimate standard. Either, then, there is no appeal to the Bible in the investigations of natural phenomena, or it is the ultimate court of appeal. And it is this either in every science or in none. For if you exclude its authority in any, you impugn what is contended for by those who would extend its jurisdiction into the physical sphere, viz., its universal prevision; or you make this prevision merely arbitrary, with no guiding principle for those who would bow to it, unless the temperament of the individual.

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