"Conquer we shall, but we must first contend, ANON. WE propose to investigate certain statements made by unbelievers concerning Scripture. If the inquiry should prove 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 exercise little or no influence for good, unless it awakens the conscience, regenerates the affections, and corrects unreasoning adherence to the letter of Scripture, which departs from that letter through ignorance of the meaning. At the outset we encounter a puzzling truth: the Bible, neither teaching science, nor written scientifically, has wellnigh 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 always assert that Mind planned the world, its processes and laws having interpretation by intelligence as they are the manifestation. Intelligence and Piety make Perfect. 389 of Intelligence. Who can doubt Newton's piety, or the simple child-like faith of Copernicus? The oppositions of unbelief 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 conviction that intelligence and piety unite in the perfect man. Objectors of old were acute as are objectors now. 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 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 have been disturbed in their thoughts, or driven to wild and baseless imaginations, by a declaration 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 !"1 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 changes; that the world reverently holds in her hand the ancient Book, and makes an effort to understand her own childhood. Some parts of the Bible have always seemed more adapted to particular periods; and some, more opposed. 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 "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences," vol. i. p. 686: Rev. W. Whewell, D.D. some parts are furiously assailed under the mask of science. We have no Ulphilas to take away the σкavdáλâ, or stones of stumbling, even if we needed one: but as Abbot Joachim's prophetic book of the Everlasting Gospel is forgotten, 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.” This 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: except that men in all ages have ever been trying it and finding salvation. Our blessed Lord did not make every one pleased with religion, nor with Him; and those who expect Christianity to answer riddles before the riddles are made, must themselves answer this riddle-that despite the opposition of secularists, 66 no amount of knowledge, of the kind which alone physical science can impart, can do more than widen the foundation of intelligent spiritual belief;" belief that the Bible, though by many men, is one Book by one great Author, the first page linked with the last-not by likeness in opinion, but by one Authority. We shall not take in hand the sensual and irreverent, who glory to find fault with whatever is pure and sacred, and would fain be witty by making a jest of that which wiser men worship. They, gloating over a good man's error, and glad to find any nakedness of Scripture, imitate an ancient 1 Dean Milman's "Gibbon," small edition, vol. iv. chap. xxxviii. p. 322. 2 Dean Milman's "Latin Christianity," 8vo, vol. viii. book xii. chap. vi. p. 347. "Modern Christianity a Civilised Heathenism," Preface to second edition. Mimicalness of the Ape. 391 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 who count the result of galvanic experiments on a frog 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 laughtercausing 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 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 conspicuous 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 "Conflict between Religion and Science: " Prof. Draper. 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 (Exod. 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” (Exod. 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 of the established tradition appear to me so strong, that nothing short of irrefragable reasoning seems sufficient to destroy it." "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 1 Another groundless charge: "Sacred cosmogony regards 1 "Notes on the Earlier Hebrew Scriptures," p. 23: Sir G. B. Airy, K C.B. 2 Ibid. p. 7. |