ར་? Communion of Spirit. 405 deducible by logic; mysterious, effectual, mighty, as the hidden processes by which life is quickened. Words are but poor ghosts of the grand reality of the things that make themselves felt as if they were our flesh; they breathe upon us. with warm breath, they touch us with responsive hands, and look at us with sincere glad eyes. The presence of soul to soul is a power filling with emotion, attractive as flame to flame, and drawing us with gentle compulsion to the sweet conviction that there is also union with the Lord. WE PROPOSE to investigate certain statements made by a few scientific men concerning Scripture. If the inquiry should confirm that remarkable fact-"the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14)-it may lead them and us to a more reverent heed of that which God has spoken by the prophets, and by His Son Jesus; that the world may be full of a revealed Deity, yet the outside manifestation shall exercise little or no influence for good; unless, by winning the conviction and the assent of the will, it awakens the conscience and regenerates the affections. At the outset we encounter a puzzling truth: the Bible, neither teaching science, nor written scientifically, has well nigh for ever seemed against the secular science of the age, yet the Old Book and the Old Faith survive. Not only so, theologians have been among the first to point out astronomical and other difficulties in the Bible; while the greatest astronomers and most renowned physicists have alway asserted that Mind planned the world: its processes and laws having interpretation by intelligence, as they are the manifestation of Intelligence. To mention only two, who can doubt Newton's piety, or distrust the simple child-like faith of Copernicus, concerning their Home with the Everlasting? Moreover, the oppositions of Science in one age against Scripture have generally been removed in the next, and though the time for full mutual reconciliation and verifying has not arrived-the mechanism of the world not being wholly revealed, and the best of us "stretching but lame hands of faith "-the ablest men have a growing and abiding conviction that intelligence and piety unite in the perfect man. The objectors of old were acute as are objectors now. Ancient Heathens well handled, and then cast away as useless, the very weapons which men of our own day gather and refurbish. The Jews, long ago, by pseudo-criticism, did all well nigh that could be done against the Messianic Prophecies, but those Prophecies yet testify and truly. The complaint that science was not Divinely taught is evidently unreasonable" If the Jews had been told that water existed in the clouds in small drops, they would have marvelled that it did not constantly descend; and to have explained the wisdom of this would have been to teach Atmology in the Sacred Writings. If they had read in their Scripture that the earth was a sphere, when it appeared to be a plane, they would only have been disturbed in their thoughts, or driven to some wild and baseless imaginations, by a declaration to them so strange. If the Divine Speaker, instead of saying that He would set His bow in the clouds, had been made to declare that He gave to water the property of refracting different colours at different angles, how utterly unmeaning to the hearers would the words have been!" It is not for the sake of physical science; but for the eternal problems which lie behind all natural phenomena, and are unaffected and unchanged despite all other changes, that the world reverently holds in her hand the ancient Book, and makes an effort to understand her childhood. Some parts of the Bible have always seemed more adapted to particular periods; and, conversely, some more opposed 1 "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 686: Rev. W. Whewell, D.D. In the Crusaders' times such words as-"Take up the Cross," "Glory in the Cross," filled every mouth. During Puritan days, the New Testament being greatly neglected, the Old was all in all. Now the Old is neglected, and some parts are furiously assailed under the mask of science. We have no Ulphilas to take away the ozavôáhá, or stones of stumbling,' even if we needed one: but as Abbot Joachim's prophetic book of the Everlasting Gospel is forgotten,2 and the attacks of Voltaire and his literary progeny, wicked as witty, are disregarded; we, reviewing the past, are sure that speech of the following sort will soon be silenced—“ Revealed Religion is on its trial before the world. The question is not so much whether we shall recite the damnatory clauses in our Athanasian Creed, as whether any creed whatever is worth reciting. Christianity is on its trial before the world, not for some trifling blemishes which a little mild correction may mend, but for its very life; and if the clergy, its natural defenders, can show no intelligible reason why it should stand, common sense, in this country at least, will very speedily decide upon its merits in a somewhat rough and ready fashion." writer mistakes the errors of believers for faults in the grand old Faith Christianity is not on trial-men are on trial by Christianity, not Christianity by men. Our blessed Lord did not make everyone pleased with religion, or with Him; and as for those who expect Christianity to answer riddles before the riddles are made, they must themselves answer this riddle; that despite the opposition of secularists, "no amount of knowledge, of the kind which alone physical science can impart, can do more than widen the foundation of intelligent. spiritual belief.” 4 This We shall not take in hand those 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, 1 Dean Milman's "Gibbon," small edition, vol. iv. chap. xxxviii. p. 322. * Dean Milman's "Latin Christianity," 8vo, vol. viii., book xii., chap. vì. p. 347. 3 "Modern Christianity a Civilized Heathenism," Preface to second edition, 4.66 Reign of Law:" Duke of Argyle. Irreverent Opponents. 409 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 bone-finders 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, believe certainly that the mist they live in is a mountainheight, and will 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 glow-worm, 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?" "What," we add, "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 everyone, 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 conspicuous that they would destroy the authenticity of any modern historical work." 1 The writer taxes the pious and faithful, confessedly the most thoughtful men in the world, with grossest ignorance; 1 "Conflict between Religion and Science :" Prof. Draper. |