We shall not take in hand sensual and irreverent ones, who glory to find fault with whatever is pure and sacred ; and would fain be witty by making a jest of those things which wiser men worship. They, gloating over a good man's error, and glad to find any nakedness of Scripture, imitate an ancient odious sin (Gen. ix. 22, 23). It would be equally unwise to notice men who if they chip a bit from a rock contemptuously fling it at the Sacred Shrine. Those bonefinders in caves who threaten to break down all the houses of God in our land must be left in their self-confident possession of Samson's weapon. Those, moreover, who count the result of galvanic experiments on a frog as proof that the phenomena of Nature are wholly apart from the Almighty, certainly believe that the mist they live in is a mountain-height, and affirm that "the whole complexion of religious and scientific thought must be changed." Such men recall to our memory the words of Thomas Fuller, whose humour was full of wisdom, and wisdom full of humour:-"To speak plainly, it is not the fierceness of the lion, nor the fraud of the fox, but the mimicalness of the ape, which in our age hath discredited the undoubted truth: but what if the apes in India, finding a glowworm, mistook it to be true fire, and heaping much combustible matter about it, hoped by their blowing of it thence to kindle a flame; I say, what if that laughter-causing animal, that mirth-making creature, deceived itself; doth it thence follow that there is no fire at all?"-" If some did not believe? Shall their unbelief make the truth of God without effect? God forbid,"

Our task is specially difficult and painful: for the follies of wise men are a personal disadvantage to every one, and a public loss. To belittle great men is to dwarf ourselves; and when their folly concerns the best hopes of our race every good man must weep rather than exult.

It is asserted-"Genesis is a narrative based upon legends; Exodus is not historically true; the whole Pentateuch is unhistorical and non-Mosaic; it contains the most extraordinary contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to involve the credibility of the whole-imperfections so many and so con

Charge against the Pentateuch.

435

spicuous that they would destroy the authenticity of any modern historical work."1

The writer thus taxes the pious and faithful, confessedly the most thoughtful men in the world, with grossest ignorance; capable of being deluded by the most extraordinary contradictory and impossible things. He cites from an apocryphal book, 2 Esdras xiv., as proof that Ezra, aided by five other persons, "wrote these books in the space of forty days." Against this, first, take the fact that Moses did write the Law, (Ex. xxiv. 4; Deut. xxxi. 9); and was so confident that he wrote by Divine Inspiration, that though stating-" He wrote upon the tables the words of the covenant, the ten commandments" (Ex. xxxiv. 28); he states afterwards that God wrote them (Deut. iv. 13, v. 22, x. 4). Secondly, notice that the author of the Books of Esdras lays no claim at all to authorship of the Pentateuch. He states that the Law was burnt —that is, the copy that had been kept in the Temple; and asks that he may write an account of God's works "done in the world since the beginning" (2 Esdras xiv. 21, 22). He did write, but not the Pentateuch. He and Sarea, Dabria, Selemia, Ecanus, Asiel, in forty days, wrote two hundred and four books (ver. 24)-seventy for the wise, one hundred and thirty-four for the unwise. Thirdly, we use the testimony most likely to avail with men who make and credit gross denials of Scripture verity, that taken from their own school of thought-" Tradition has (without any variation, as I believe) ascribed the history of these transactions to Moses. . . . The language and the degree of minuteness of the Israelitish history, from the first energetic expostulations with the Egyptian king, to the entrance into Canaan, are, to my mind, evidently those of a contemporaneous account. The details of interviews with the king, on the one hand, and of transactions with the enslaved people, on the other hand, can only have been known to the leader of the nation. The history of the occurrence at the burning bush (whatever difficulties may accompany it), and of other events nearly at the same time, can scarcely have been invented by another person. . . . The arguments, therefore, for the truth

1 "Conflict between Religion and Science :" Prof. Draper.

of the established tradition appear to me so strong, that nothing short of irrefragable reasoning seems sufficient to destroy it."1 "I do not allude at any length to the recension in the time of Ezra, because no critic, as I believe, has suggested that any addition to or modification of the Hebrew Books, as they then existed, was made at that time." 2

Another groundless charge: "Sacred cosmogony regards the formation and modelling of the earth as the direct act of God; it rejects the intervention of secondary causes in those events."

"8

The statement is wholly incorrect. With far more fairness and truth it might be said-Scripture gives the true theory and real facts of the scientific doctrine of Evolution; for water is said to produce the things of the deep; and from the earth, as mother, proceed every plant and living creature of the land. David, with true science and common sense, used these words as to God-"Who maketh His angels spirits; His ministers a flaming fire" (Ps. civ. 4). The LXX. translation, and the Epistle to the Hebrews i. 7, lead us to understand that God maketh His angels like winds (viz., incorporeal, swift, powerful), and His ministers (His heavenly servants) as a flame of fire. In Mendelssohn's "Beor" the verse is explained: "He maketh the winds His messengers, and lightnings His ministers." Kimchi, Yarchi, and others take it much in the same way. The best thinkers hold that the universe is not only the skilful work of a Creator, but of a Creator acting by means of those physical properties and chemical combinations of matter which He had Himself conferred.

The professor further states-"A Divine revelation of science admits of no improvement, no change, no advance. It discourages as needless, and indeed as presumptuous, all new discovery, considering it as an awful prying into things which it was the intention of God to conceal." 4

Scripture it seems we must state it again and again—is not a revelation of science, therefore the charge is groundless.

1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 23: Sir G. B. Airy, K.C.B. 2 Ibid. p. 7.

3 "Conflict between Religion and Science :" Prof. Draper.

4 Ibid.

Two Asserted Errors.

437

So-called scientific statements are, for the most part, popular illustrations for the use of unscientific people. David shall admonish the professor as to the studies of those who love Scripture "The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein" (Ps. cxi. 2). Solomon, no mean man, gives a rebuke, for he greatly studied those works (1 Kings iv. 30-33). The founders of universities, the ancient endowers of schools, rightly thought that our knowledge of God as Creator leads to a more reverential and better understanding both of Creation and Revelation. These devout men, far from thinking that Scripture allowed no improvement, no change, no advance, encouraged as useful, as reverential, all search after truth: pious men have ever been the great promoters of learning and of science.

An able man, in his own line of things, praises and dispraises at the same time :--" Two great and fundamental ideas, common also to the non-miraculous theory of development, meet us in this Mosaic hypothesis of Creation, with surprising clearness and simplicity-the idea of separation or differentiation, and the idea of progressive development or perfecting. Although Moses looks upon the result of the great laws of organic development (which we shall later point out as the necessary conclusions of the doctrine of Descent) as the direct actions of a constructing Creator, yet in his theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive development and a differentiation of the originally simple matter. We can therefore bestow our just and sincere admiration on the Jewish lawgiver's grand insight into Nature, and his discovering in it a so-called 'Divine revelation.' That it cannot be such is clear from the fact that two grand fundamental errors are asserted in it, namely, first, the geocentric error that the earth is the fixed central point of the whole universe, round which the sun, moon, and stars move; and secondly, the anthropocentric error, that man is the premeditated aim of the creation of the earth, for whose service alone all the rest of Nature is said to have been created." 1

The learned professor ought to know that Moses says nothing about man being "the premeditated aim of the

"The History of Creation:" Prof. Haeckel.

creation;" but that man, being the highest work of God, was made lord of earthly creatures. Further, it is somewhat inconsistent to credit Moses for far-reaching wisdom; and yet, to tax him with rudest ignorance in that very thing concerning which he was wise. The Geocentric Error is no error; the earth is popularly, figuratively, poetically, and as our own standpoint, the centre. The Anthropocentric Error is likewise to be explained as a popular mode of speech. In reality, all true spiritual presentation passes into the infinite-suggests rather than expresses. Scripture must be judged in accordance with all the facts: the earth is great, the sun is greater; as to far-off worlds, assertion becomes unscientific, yet to those worlds and beyond them travels the human spirit, as if exceeding all, seeking brighter light and higher life. It is the height of unreason, for materialistic and atheistic professorsblaming the statement of Scripture that man's true greatness is found in likeness to God-to tell us that we are merely clever beasts, and yet-the only god! With utter loathing we give the following reprehensible declaration :-"The dim and shadowy outlines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure, of Him who made all Gods, and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depth of every soul, the face of our father Man looks out upon us with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says 'Before Jehovah was, I am.'" It is contemptible folly for these men to talk thus of "our father Man." Why, they assure us that he was nothing better than -a monkey!

1

The expressions—rising, setting, travelling of the sun, the fixity and foundations of the earth-though the only intelligible language, have been found fault with. We are

told "Scripture speaks of a flat earth; and of the sky as a watery vault in which the sun, moon, and stars set; of the firmament as a solid arch, literally something beaten or hammered out; and of the Almighty as a gigantic man."

Really, such fault-making displays neither intelligence nor

1

"Lectures and Essays," W. K. Clifford, vol. ii. p. 243.