ience that the Bible is a book which grows with their growth; and, as knowledge of it increases, deeper depths of wisdom are revealed. St Paul utters their experience—“O the depths of the riches, both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God" (Rom. xi. 33). At present, none but religious men accept, as fact, the continual revelatory character of the Book; but every candid enquirer will ultimately acknowledge it. The language and unscientific form of the account are greatly found fault with; and thus spoken of by the undevout, "that superlative nonsense, known as the doctrine of special creation."1 Again, "Obviously a theory which was framed in a barbarous age, when men were alike unfamiliar with the conceptions of physical causation and uniformity of law, and ignorant of the requirements of a valid scientific hypothesis, and which has survived until the present day, not because it has been universally verified by observation or deduction, but because it has been artificially protected from critical scrutiny by incorporation with a system of theological dogmas assumed to be infallible; obviously such a theory is at the outset discredited by its pedigree." 2 The assertion, as to the account having been "protected from critical scrutiny," is not true; no other book or account has been assailed so ably, so critically, maliciously, constantly, as this; and it survives not because of protection, but because opponents have been beaten along the whole line of argument. The Book verily did arise amongst men "alike unfamiliar with the conceptions of physical causation and uniformity of law, and ignorant of the requirements of a valid scientific hypothesis," nevertheless though, as Sir Thomas Brown saith, "Time sadly overcometh all things," this Book has conquered time; and, despite the "superlative nonsense known as the doctrine of special creation," is received as the Book of God by all nations eminent in arts and arms, in wealth, civilisation, and refinement. Revilers of the Book insist that the figurative expressions are to be taken literally, there is no symbol, no figure, no allegory. They tell us the Bible asserts "untold 1 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii., p. 321 : John Fiske. Scientific Account of Creative Process. 41 millions of organic molecules, of which an adult mammal is composed, rushed together at some appointed instant from divers quarters of the compass, and spontaneously grouped themselves into vegetable, fish, bird, beast, man." These asserters are in such a stage of scientific culture, that they tell us" He who can believe that St Goar of Treves transformed a sunbeam into a hat-peg may believe such an account." We cannot help smiling to find that these clever men thrust a meaning into Scripture which only the simplest and most unscientific ages accredited, and throw in the face of a world of Christian thinkers, versed in every science, their dictum that this is the meaning, and that "the superlative nonsense" must be received as a true exposition of our faith. Of course they are not in the least conscious that thus to malign the most wonderful Book in the world, and to charge our greatest scholars in theology and science with gross stupidity and credulity, proves their own folly. The Book says that vegetable, fish, bird, beast, man, all came forth from the ground by a Divinely given power. Is it a fact or not? It is a fact; for modern science proves that the grass on which the sheep feeds, and the sheep itself; the fish in water, and bird in air; with man the king of all, are traced back to microscopic germ-cells of nitrogenous and hydro-carbon compounds pre-existing in the atmosphere and soil. Not only so, the Scripture account states that plants, fish, birds, animals, man, came in definable order; the lower forms preceding the higher, as in a series of God Almighty's days. Not the horse, nor ass, nor zebra, nor quagga, were created separately; the earth was their common father, by means of God-given power, and, doubtless, in strict adaptation to the conditions of life surrounding them. A modern scientific man might count it very much better thus to describe the creative process from a dynamical point of view. An organism became an organism by a complex aggregate of matter in which permanent, structural, and functional differentiations and integrations were rendered possible by the fact that it continually received about as much motion as it expended. The life of such an organism is a perpetual balancing of external forces by internal forces. The career or advance of an organism, or of a group of organisms, consists of two kinds of equilibration, which we designate as external and internal equilibration. The adjustment of organisms to changing external circumstances is partly by adaptation and by partial destruction; so that natural selection is indirect equilibration. The whole process, internal and external, may be thus summarised The above is not a jest, it is science, good science too; but who will prefer it to the first chapter of our Bible? and, after all, it is only the abstract statement of that which the Bible gives in concrete form. 2. The Scriptural account differs as widely from other cosmogonies as truth from fiction. Those trace the origin of life from some primeval matter, or look upon the world as pantheistical, or derive gods and men from a world-egg. The Bible reveals a Personal God who is near to every one of us; and creation as the act of that God, not of unwilled fortuitous processes of nature-not by unguided interaction of atoms and atomic energies, but by a process of production according to law-Law not originating itself, but the Divine rule of procedure, so that we may know what God has done-what God is doing-what God will do. Creation in this manner, or, as we now say," according to law," could not have been scientifically known by any man of the era in which the record was written; we may think, not even by the inspired writer. If this latter statement appear too bold, let it be remembered that the plan of Scripture is so vast and wonderful, that even angels do not fully understand, but delight to investigate; that the prophets, who prophesied, received not prophecy for themselves—but for us; and that inspired men saw not to the end of the things in which they ministered (1 Pet. i. 10-12). If the account, the 1 "Cosmic Philosophy," vol. ii., pp. 64, 65: John Fiske. Narrowness of Materialists. 43 facts, the order, are true, real, actual, such knowledge could come from God only. This conviction led that distinguished naturalist, Linnæus, to claim admission in natural science for the Mosaic account. Cuvier and Agassiz, the great majority of scientific men, and the most intelligent of the civilized world, have accepted it; and, if now the precision of latest investigation, as we shall endeavour to show, approves it; there will be presented exactly the evidence needed to convince accurate thinkers of our own time, that the narrative of creation is simple, comprehensive, wonderful! How could a Jew, whom some call "semi-barbarous," and his cosmogony, "an incubus;" a Jew, without a shred of modern science, (whatever shrewd guesses he may have acquired from "the wisdom of the Egyptians "), as to astronomy, or geometry, or geology, or physiology, or chemistry; a Jew, who, speaking out of his own thoughts, would probably say that the earth was flat, and centre of the system, sun and stars moving round; write a correct, or even an approximately correct, account of creation? How, indeed, unless God taught him! The advocates of materialism reject the Divinity, and dispute the accuracy of Scripture; but materialism investigates only a small portion of the world. Concerned only with matter, unbelieving as to spirit, they are modern Sadducees. Recognizing physics, not metaphysics; knowing but the natural, nothing of the supernatural, not even acknowledging it; materialists are like the Greek sculptor. Moved by the high aspirations of his nature and nation, in one of his best moods, he pictured to himself ideal strength, beauty, and grace. He embodied the thought in spotless marble, and gave the statue to his countrymen. Alas! he and they worshipped it as god. Do not materialists sculpture and arrange matter, find, that it is subject to certain laws and assumes beautiful forms; then fall down before this matter? Their minds subdue it, explain its operations and government, make a show of it in experiments, and metamorphose even its nature, yet they set it up, with Energy and Space, as god! as if it had the promise and potency of all life terrestrial and heavenly. Not the great minds, not the profound thinkers of our day, do this. Not those who are noblest in conception thus empty God of divinity, of emotion, of intellect, to put in place thereof physical properties; nor will we. No Fetish worshipper was ever brutish enough to imagine that a stone fell or a star shone, or fruit was sweet, because the god inside made it fall, shine, or be sweet; nor will we, at the bidding of materialists, worship the levers, the pulleys, the cranks, the cords of nature, and forget the Holy One. We cannot detach him from the world, no, not if we would; nor cut the wires of the great Operator, nor demagnetize His needle; matter may be as the iron, but mind is the magnetic energy coming into it; matter is set in motion, mind is the energy which sets it in motion-the mind of God. The more thoughtful a man is, the more firmly will he be established in the ancient faith-" he may even find in the evidence of the inti- ́ mate relation between mental activity and physical changes in the brain the most satisfactory grounds which science can afford, for the belief that the phenomena of the material universe are the expressions of an Infinite Mind and will, of which man's is the finite representative."1 There are two reasons, apart from a special creation, why materialists ought to accept the doctrine of a Personal God: -I. God, though essentially incomprehensible, can be, and is, known of; 2. We know of God, even as we know of mathematical truths. 1. In allowing that God, as to essence, is unsearchable; that we can only know the relative and finite, because the Infinite, the Eternal, the Almighty, can alone look into the Divine Nature, or understand how and why God is; yet we may know of God. The finite, indeed, has no proportion in comparison with the Infinite, nor the imperfect with the Perfect; but those who, on account of this ignorance, would deprive God of personality, and represent Him as Power, render the world as necessary to God as God is to the world; without God, no world, without world, no God; God partaking of the imperfections, changes, and infirmities of the world. This, so far from giving a juster and higher view of God, degrades Him, and defines Him to be Power without motive, 1 "Mental Physiology:" Dr W. B. Carpenter. |