he attitude and temper of many of the eager defenders of inspiration towards the new science have been most unwise. By many, a jealousy and uneasiness have been displayed which were really derogatory to the dignity of our cause. The Bible is so firmly established upon its impregnable evidences, it has passed safely through so many assaults, has witnessed the saucy advance of so many pretended demonstrations of its errors, which were afterwards covered with ridicule by the learned, that its friends can well afford to be calm, patient, and dignified. They should be neither too eager to repel and denounce, nor too ready to recede from established expositions of the text at the supposed demand of scientific discoveries.
They should assume the calm assurance, which regards all true science, and every genuine discovery, as destined inevitably to become the handmaids, instead of the assailants of revelation. Especially to be deprecated is that shallow and fickle policy, which has been so often seen among the professed defenders of the Bible, in hastily adopting some newly-coined exposition of its word, made to suit some supposed exigency of a new scientific discovery, and as hastily abandoning it for some still new meaning.
They have not even waited to ascertain whether the supposed necessity for relinquishing the old exposition has been really created by a well-established discovery; but, as prurient and shallow in science as in theology, they have adopted on half-evidence some new fangled hypothesis of scientific facts, and then invented on grounds equally insecure, some new-fangled explanations to twist God's word into seeming agreement with the hypothesis.
It would be well for us to ascertain whether our position is really stormed before we retreat to search for another. But, several times within a generation, the world has seen a certain class of theologians saying that the old popular understanding of the Bible upon a given subject must be relinquished; that science had proved it untenable, but that they had at last found the true and undoubted one. And this they proceeded to sustain with marvelous ingenuity and zeal. But after a few years, the natural philosophers relinquish, of their own accord, the hypothesis which had put these expositors to so much trouble, and introduce with great confidence a different one. And now, the divines tell us, they were mistaken a second time as to what the Bible intended to teach about it; but they are certain they have it right at last. So a third exposition is advanced.
It has been this short sighted folly, more than any real collision between the Bible and science, which has caused thinking men to doubt the authority of inspiration, and to despise its professed expounders. If they are to be believed, then the word of God is but a sort of clay which may be molded into any shape required by the purposes of priestcraft. Clergymen ought to know enough of the history of human knowledge to be aware that true science advances slowly and cautiously; that great revolutionizing discoveries in physical laws are not discovered every day; that a multitude of hypotheses have been mistaken, before our times, for demonstrations, and afterwards relinquished; and that even true inductions are always, to a certain extent, tentative.
It will be time enough, therefore, for us, as professional expositors of the Mosaic history, to settle and proclaim a plan for expounding it in harmony with geology when geology has settled itself. Our wisdom would be to commit the credit and authority of God's Word to no theory except such as is absolutely established by the laws of sound exegesis; and when we have thus taken a well considered position, to maintain it firmly against all mere appearances.
It should, also, be clearly decided what is the degree of authority which we are to claim for the Bible upon those questions of physics which lie along the path of its topics. Many claim for geology a licence here, which comes very near to the deceitful distinctions of the schoolmen, between the philosophical and theological truth. When their daring speculations clearly contravened the teachings of Scripture, they said that these opinions were true in philosophy, though false in theology.
In a somewhat similar spirit it is now pleaded for geology, that it has domain in a different field of investigation and evidence from that of the Bible. Each kind of evidence is valid in its own sphere, it is said; and, therefore, the teachings of each science are to be held true, independently of each other. But all truths are harmonious inter se. If one proposition contradicts another, no matter from what field of human knowledge it may be brought, manifestly, both cannot be true. If then, the Bible, properly understood, affirms what geology denies, the difference is irreconcilable; it cannot be evaded by any easy expedience like that described above; it can only be composed by the overthrow of the authority of one or the other of the parties.
When the proper rights of revelation, as related to natural science, are defined, it is most important that we assert their independence of it. Most geologists speak as though, on any subject which the researches of human science may happen to touch, the Bible must say only what their deductions permit it to say. The position to which they consign God's word is that of a handmaid, dependent, for the validity of the construction to be put upon its words, upon their permission. Now this, we boldly assert, is intrinsic rationalism; it is the very same principle of baptized infidelity which reappears from so many different points of view, from Socinianism, Neologism, Abolitionism, exalting the conclusions of the human understanding over the sure word of prophecy.
