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 FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 
 REVEREND CHARLES ROSENBURY ERDMAN 
 D.D., LL.D. 
 
 BL 2775 .A549 1909 
 Anderson, Robert, 1841-1918 
 A doubter's doubts about 
 science and religion 
 

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Copyright, 1909, by 
 The Gospel Publishing House 
 
 Printing by 
 
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prpfarp 
 
 A DOUBTER'S Doubts about Science and Relig- 
 ^^ ion was first published anonymously, at a 
 time when the author was Assistant Commissioner 
 of Police and Head of the Criminal Investigation 
 Department, at Scotland Yard (London). In the 
 original edition a brief prefatory chapter explained 
 the plan and purpose of the book; and the follow- 
 ing extract from it may opportunely be quoted 
 here : 
 
 "We have all heard of 'the confidence trick.' 
 With unfailing certainty it comes up again and 
 again in our police reports, and we always read 
 the story with mingled feelings of wonder, amuse- 
 ment and pity. Nor is it merely the rustic and the 
 tourist in the streets of London who fall victims 
 to such frauds. By an artifice quite as silly and 
 transparent one of our greatest city houses was not 
 long ago defrauded of £20,000 in gold. The details 
 of the swindle would be delightful reading, but to 
 divulge them would be a breach of faith; for the 
 merchants preferred to bear their loss, rather than 
 incur the ridicule which publicity would have 
 brought on them. But there are developments of 
 
 5 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 the 'confidence trick' of which the police court takes 
 no cognizance, and where the victim's loss cannot 
 be estimated at a money value. Simple folk are 
 every day imposed upon by deceptions just as 
 shameless, palmed off upon them in the name of 
 religion. And not of religion only, but of science 
 also. And may not a sceptic do good service here? 
 Is not this work for a high-class detective? It 
 cannot be, surely, but that some at least will be 
 found to appreciate an honest effort to expose such 
 frauds." 
 
 Of the present volume the latter half is entirely 
 new. And some of the earlier chapters have been 
 revised ; but those which deal with the philosophical 
 systems of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer 
 remain unchanged. It may be thought, perhaps, 
 that the criticisms they contain are out of date, 
 now that Spencerism is dead, and Darwinism dis- 
 credited. But though biological theories which 
 reigned supreme a few years ago have been aban- 
 doned or modified by "men of light and leading," 
 their influence still prevails with the general 
 public and in response to appeals from several 
 quarters the chapters in question are here repro- 
 duced. 
 
 As the book is addressed to men of the world, 
 it speaks from the standpoint of scepticism — the 
 true scepticism which tests everything, not the 
 
 6 
 
Preface 
 
 sham sort which credulously accepts anything that 
 seems to discredit the Bible. If, for example, the 
 Bible taught evolution, it may be averred that 
 evolution would be scoffed by many who now cling 
 to it with a childlike faith worthy of the infant 
 class in the Sunday School. With the true sceptic 
 it is merely a philosophic theory. 
 
 The reader will thus be prepared to find that 
 destructive criticism is in the main the author's 
 method. To some the book will seem unsatis- 
 factory on this account, and yet they must 
 recognise the importance of thus refuting the 
 claims which infidelity makes to superior enlight- 
 enment. 
 
 Others may think that in these pages the diffi- 
 culties which perplex the Bible student are 
 dismissed too lightly. Here the author must either 
 accept the criticism, or risk a charge of egotism if 
 he appeals to his other books in proof that he 
 neither ignores difficulties nor attempts to mini- 
 mise them. 
 
 Were it not for encouragement received from 
 one of the author's most valued American friends, 
 this re-issue of A Doubter's Doubts might never 
 have appeared ; and at his request it is that this 
 American edition preserves the old title. 
 
 R. A. 
 
 * The corresponding English Edition (published by Hodder and 
 Stoughton, London) is entitled In Defence: A Plea for the Faith. 
 
 7 
 
CHontPttta 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 HOW DID LIFE BEGIN ?..... 13 
 
 Creation or evolution? Method of the inquiry. The 
 evidence for evolution. Abiogenesis. Huxley, Tyn- 
 dall and Lord Kelvin quoted. Herbert Spencer 
 cited in refutation of it. The original life-germ : 
 its infinite capacities. Science leads to the acknowl- 
 edgment of God. The alternative. 
 
 CHAPTER n 
 
 THE DARWINIAN THEORY . . ... 22 
 
 Mark Twain quoted. "Who made God?" Lord 
 Kelvin's dictum — "Science affirms creative power." 
 What kind of God then shall we own? Darwin's 
 hypothesis. His statement of it. Degeneration as 
 an alternative hypothesis. Evolution fails to account 
 for the moral and spiritual nature of man. Herbert 
 Spencer cited against it. A practical test. Karl von 
 Hartmann on Darwinism. 
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER's SCHEME . ... 34 
 
 Special creation versii'S evolution. Spencer quoted 
 and answered. His mistakes as to theological 
 difficulties. The biblical scheme for the restoration 
 of creation. "No one ever saw a special creation." 
 Spencer's theme atheistical. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HAVE WE A REVELATION? ..... 43 
 
 The function of true scepticism. The existence of 
 God creates a presumption in favour of a revela- 
 tion. But we must guard against fraud and super- 
 stition. Is Christianity a Divine revelation? The 
 question discussed. The claims of Rome and sacer- 
 dotalism. (Concluding note on Article XXVIII. 
 and the meaning of a "sacrament"), 
 9 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 IS CHRISTIANITY DIVINE, 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 PAGE 
 
 51 
 
 59 
 
 68 
 
 Goldwin Smith on the Reformation and the Bible. 
 Notice of the theological school which ignores the 
 connection between Christianity and Judaism. The 
 testimony of Christ to the Old Testament. The 
 Kenosis theology discussed. 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 MR. A. J. Balfour's scheme .... 
 The theses of A Defence of Philosophic Doubt. 
 Discussion of the scheme. Tyndall on "religious 
 feeling." The argument against miracles. The 
 question discussed. The testimony of Scripture. 
 Settling the issues. The conflict is between Scripture 
 and scientific theories, not facts. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE COSMOGONY OF GENESIS .... 
 
 The controversy on the subject. Mr, Gladstone's 
 Dawn of Creation and Worship. The failure of 
 Mr. Huxley's attack upon it. Their reference to 
 Prof. Dana, and his decision. The author's chal- 
 lenge to Mr. Huxley in The Times. Mr. Glad- 
 stone's thesis holds the field. The materialistic 
 scientists. Herbert Spencer's statement of evolu- 
 tion. The teaching of Genesis i. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "an agnostic's apology" .... 80 
 
 Sir Leslie Stephen's treatise. The fallacy of his 
 scheme exposed. His method of discussion. Refer- 
 ence to Newman. His position is infidel. His chal- 
 lenge stated and answered by the Resurrection. 
 The evidence for the Resurrection. Dr. Harnack's 
 view. The universality of superstition a proof of 
 the truth of Genesis. 
 
 10 
 
Contents 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PAGE 
 THE IRRATIONALISM OF INFIDELITY ... 91 
 
 Mill's testimony to Christ. The untenableness of 
 the infidel position. It is refuted by their own testi- 
 mony to the New Testament writers. The miracle 
 of feeding the 5,000. The evidence for such miracles 
 is complete. Voltaire's infidelity explained. The 
 honest sceptic entitled to respect, especially in view 
 of the religious apostasy of the day. Dean Alford 
 on the Christian Church. 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A sceptic's plea for faith .... 100 
 
 Lord Kelvin's testimony and advice. Chrysostom's 
 testimony to the Scriptures. The "Catholic Church" 
 and Pascal. What God demands of those who come 
 to Him. The question discussed. The facts of 
 Christianity attested by evidence. The crucifixion 
 a proof that Christ claimed to be Divine. And 
 this creates a presumption that we have authentic 
 records of His ministry. 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE ..... 109 
 
 Prof. Max Miiller's testimony to the New Testa- 
 ment. Dr. Harnack's testimony to its genuineness. 
 How to begin Bible study. Lord Cairn's words 
 spoken to working men. "What if/, it aoout?" 
 Prevailing errors about the Bible, "[.k'"^- '^ha^1cter 
 and purpose of the Jewish dispensatio',^ "^.^^^ Ser- 
 mon on the Mount. The Lord's testii. A ' o the 
 Hebrew Scriptures. Dean Alford quote '^ lack 
 to Christ." 
 
 11 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE "higher criticism" ..... 120 
 
 The false distinguished from the true. The false 
 a rationalistic crusade against the Bible. Eich- 
 horn's scheme. Astruc's discovery. The German 
 attack on the Pentateuch. The mistake made 
 by English critics. The art of writing in the 
 Mosaic Age. The Hammurabi code. Dr. Driver's 
 statement of the case against the Pentateuch. 
 Disproved by the Samaritan Bible. Robertson 
 Smith and Prof. Konig quoted. The problem 
 one of evidence. The ''two Isaiahs" hypothesis. 
 Jonah and the whale. The Kenosis figment ex- 
 plained and refuted. Dr. Driver's position. The 
 "New Theology." Bishop of Durham quoted. 
 
 APPENDIX 137 
 
 Note I. The Creation. 
 
 Note II. The Book of Daniel. 
 
 , Note III. The Old Testament and the Critics. 
 
 J2 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 HOW DID LIFE BEGIN f 
 
 THERE is one fact which not even the 
 dreamiest of egotists can doubt, and that is, 
 his own existence. Here at least knowledge is 
 absolute. That I exist is certain; but how did I 
 come to exist? I live; but how did life begin? 
 The question is one to which every man is bound 
 to find a reasonable answer. To say I am descended 
 through generations numbered or innumerable 
 from a first man, is merely to put the difficulty back. 
 Where did the first man come from? Religion 
 answers in one word — Creation. But this is to cut 
 the knot, as it were, without even an attempt to 
 untie it. It must not be taken for granted that 
 man is incapable of reasoning out the problem of 
 his own existence. 
 
 Between the higher organisms and the lowest 
 there is a gulf which might well be regarded as 
 impassable. But closer observation and fuller 
 knowledge will disclose the fact that between these 
 extremes there are unnumbered gradations of 
 development, and that the distance between the 
 several steps in the series is such as, in theory at 
 least, might be passed by the operation of known 
 laws. The problem, therefore, which religion 
 would solve by the one word " creation," science 
 answers by the one word ''evolution." And science 
 claims priority of audience. 
 
 13 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 But here let us take the place of sceptics. There 
 are no sceptics in the old scholastic sense. The 
 most ardent Pyrrhonist, if robbed of his purse, or 
 struck over the head by a burglar, promptly for- 
 gets his theories, and gives proof of his belief in 
 the certainty of objective knowledge. Philosophic 
 scepticism, so called, is merely a conceit of sham 
 philosophers; it never invades the sphere in which 
 a man's interests require that he should believe 
 and know. And, as Kant has aptly said, it is 
 " not a permanent resting-place for human reason." 
 But scepticism is not necessarily Pyrrhonism. 
 Pyrrho did not invent the word; he only perverted 
 and degraded it. The 6tiETcriitb<i considers, reflects, 
 hesitates, doubts. An admirable habit, surely, if 
 kept within due limits, but proof of moral deteri- 
 oration if abnormally developed. 
 
 Let us not forget then, as we proceed, to reflect, 
 hesitate, doubt; and, above all, let us cast away 
 prejudice. Let us take the place of free thinkers 
 and real sceptics, not shams. Many people reserve 
 their scepticism for the sphere in which religion 
 is the teacher, while in the presence of science they 
 are as innocent and simple in their receptivity as 
 the infant class in a Sunday-School. We shall only 
 deceive ourselves if we begin by over-stating the 
 evidence on which the doctrine of evolution rests. 
 It- must be conceded that its foundation largely 
 depends on the researches of the Paleontologist. 
 And here we demand some direct proof that the 
 fossil remains belong to the same economy or 
 system as the living organisms we compare them 
 
 14 
 
How Did Life Begin f 
 
 with. But there is no such proof, and it is a ques- 
 tion whether the presumption be not the other 
 way. 
 
 Let that pass, however, for a more serious ques- 
 tion claims attention. It may be admitted that the 
 development of plants and animals from their 
 simplest to their most complicated forms may be 
 explained by natural causes. But this is only 
 theory. What direct evidence is there that the 
 phenomena have, in fact, been thus produced? The 
 horse may have been developed from a pig-like 
 animal, and man may be "descended from a hairy 
 quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears." ^ 
 But what direct proof is there that either the horse 
 or the man was, in fact, developed or evolved in 
 this way? The answer must be, Absolutely none. 
 It is a matter of inference only.^ 
 
 The prisoner in the dock may have committed 
 the murder we are investigating. The theory of 
 his guilt will account for all the facts. Therefore 
 let him be convicted and hanged. This sort of 
 argument would not pass at the Old Bailey. Men 
 are sceptics there, and free thinkers. Proof that 
 the prisoner may have committed the crime is 
 worthless, unless we go on to prove that it could 
 not have been committed by any one else. But 
 with that further proof the case is clear, and the 
 accused goes to the gallows. And so here. If the 
 facts of biology can in no other way be accounted 
 for, evolution holds the field. 
 
 ^ Descent of Man, pt. ii. chap. xxi. 
 
 2 Marvellous results are produced by culture, but they are subject to 
 the seemingly inexorable laws of degeneracy and the sterility of hybrids. 
 
 15 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 But are we not forgetting the nature of the prob- 
 lem to be solved? The first and greatest question 
 relates, not to the phenomena of life, but to its 
 origin. How did life begin? That was the ques- 
 tion we set out with. And here evolution affords 
 no answer, and must stand aside. Let the existence 
 of life be taken for granted, and evolution may 
 explain the rest. But the sceptic takes nothing 
 for granted. How did life begin? Science ans- 
 wers ! In presence of a question which lies 
 
 across the threshold of knowledge, science, the 
 very personification of knowledge, turns agnostic 
 and is dumb. '' Creation " is the answer religion 
 gives. The rejoinder which science ought to make 
 is that life first sprang out of death, out of nothing; 
 in a word, abiogenesis. 
 
 And this is, in fact, the answer which science 
 would formerly have given. But the experiments 
 which at one time seemed to establish the principle 
 of spontaneous generation, have proved worthless 
 when subjected to severer tests. Huxley admits 
 that '' the present state of knowledge furnishes us 
 with no link between the living and the not living." 
 With still greater candour, Tyndall declares that 
 " every attempt made in our day to generate life 
 independently of antecedent life has utterly broken 
 down." Or, if we turn to a teacher, whose dictum will 
 carry still greater weight, Lord Kelvin will tell us 
 that "inanimate matter cannot become living except 
 under the influence of matter already living. This 
 is a fact in science which seems to me," he de- 
 clares, "as well ascertained as the law of gravitation." 
 
 16 
 
How Did Life Begin f 
 
 And he goes on to say, "I am ready to accept as an 
 article of faith in science, vaUd for all time and in all 
 space, that life is produced by life, and only by life."^ 
 
 Abiogenesis is merely a philosophic theory, 
 unsupported by even the faintest shadow of evi- 
 dence. But more than this, it is practically 
 incapable of proof, for the problem implies the 
 proof of a negative in circumstances which render 
 the difficulties of such proof overwhelming. To 
 establish the fact of spontaneous generation in a 
 world teeming with life, would be as hopeless as 
 the attempt to prove that the displacement of a 
 table in a dark room crowded with people was 
 caused without interference on their part.^ 
 
 But, we are told, the fact that we know absolutely 
 nothing of the origin of life, and that there is not 
 a shadow of direct evidence that abiogenesis has 
 ever taken place, does not interfere with the con- 
 clusion *' that at some time or other abiogenesis 
 must have taken place. If the hypothesis of 
 evolution be true, living matter must have arisen 
 from not-living matter."^ Therefore life did orig- 
 inate thus, and the truth of evolution is established. 
 Thus argue the professors and scientists. But the 
 man who considers, reflects, hesitates, doubts, will 
 call for the evidence ; and, finding there is none, 
 he will reject the conclusion, and also, if necessary, 
 the dependent hypothesis. 
 
 1 Brit. Assoc, Edinburgh, 1871. 
 
 2 And if the proof were given, it would be more reasonable, more 
 philosophical, to assume the presence of some unseen agency — i.e., to fall 
 back upon spiritualism — than to suppose the furniture capable of 
 spontaneous motion. 
 
 ' Professor Huxley, Encyc. Brit., "Biology. 
 
 17 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 We set out to solve the mystery of life. Science 
 claimed to possess the clew, and offered to be our 
 guide. And now, having been led back to the 
 identical point from which we started, we are told 
 we must shut our eyes and take a leap in the dark. 
 It is a bad case of the '' confidence trick." 
 
 '' Besides being absolutely without evidence to 
 give it external support, this hypothesis cannot 
 support itself internally — cannot be framed into a 
 coherent thought. It is one of those illegitimate 
 symbolic conceptions so continually mistaken for 
 legitimate symbolic conceptions, because they 
 remain untested. Immediately an attempt is made 
 to elaborate the idea into anything like a definite 
 shape, it proves to be a pseud-idea, admitting of 
 no definite shape." It " implies the establishment 
 of a relation in thought between nothing and some- 
 thing — a relation of which one term is absent — 
 an impossible relation." '' The case is one of those 
 where men do not really believe, but rather believe 
 they believe. For belief, properly so called, implies 
 a mental representation of the thing believed ; and 
 no such mental representation Is here possible." ^ 
 
 Evolution assumes the existence of life; postu- 
 lates it, as the scientists would say. No more is 
 needed than one solitary germ of living matter. 
 Indeed, to seek for more would be unphilosophical.^ 
 But this primeval germ must be taken for granted. 
 
 1 The words are Herbert Spencer's (Principles of Biology, § 112); 
 tne application of them is entirely my own. 
 
 2 "1 
 
 .r .-^^. ^" living beings have been evolved from pre-existing forms of 
 life, it is enough that a single particle of living protoplasm should have 
 once appeared on the globe, as the result of no matter what agency. In 
 the eyes of a consistent evolutionist anv further independent formation 
 2LP''°*"r'^^-'^"^ would be sheer waste." — Professor Huxley, Encxc. Brit. 
 
 Biology." 
 
 18 
 
How Did Life Begin f 
 
 The sceptic will refuse to assign to it an origin 
 which contradicts all our experience and surpasses 
 our knowledge. The only hypothesis he can accept 
 is that life has existed without any limitation of 
 time ; that the original life-germ was eternal and 
 practically self-existent. 
 
 And of course nothing could be evolved from it 
 which was not inherent. It must have been preg- 
 nant with all the forms and developments of life 
 with which the world is full. Moreover it is only 
 ignorant conceit to maintain that evolution has 
 reached its limits. If man has sprung from such 
 an origin, we must suppose that, in the far-distant 
 future, beings will be developed as superior to 
 mankind as we ourselves are superior to the insects 
 crawling on the earth. According to the hypothesis 
 the latent capacities of the first life-germ were 
 infinite. " Capabilities," remember, not tendencies. 
 Unknowable force may account for tendencies, but 
 it cannot create capacities. 
 
 Not that this distinction will save us from the 
 pillory. The philosopher will condepm the statement 
 as unphilosophical — "a shaping of ignorance into 
 the semblance of knowledge" and I know not what 
 besides.^ But these brave words can be tested at 
 once by assuming the contrary to what is here 
 
 "^Principles of Biology, § 144. I have no wish to shelter myself be- 
 hind Professor Huxley, hnt I c'aim his companionship and sympathy in 
 the pijlory. He says, "Of the causes which have led to the origination 
 of living matter, then, it may be said that we know absolutely nothing. 
 But postulating the existence of living matter endowed with that 
 power of hereditary transmission and with that tendency to vary which 
 is found in all such matter. Mr. Darwin has shown good reasons for 
 believing," etc. (Encyc. Brit.. "Biology"). The primordial germ, 
 mark, is "endowed" with a "power" and a "tendency." What had Mr. 
 Spencer to say to this? All that I assert here is the "power"; to predi- 
 cate the "tendency" is unnecessary and therefore unphilosophical. 
 
 19 
 
A Doubter' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 asserted. Let us take it, then, that the primordial 
 germ had no latent capacities whatever. And yet 
 we are to accept it as the origin of all the amazing 
 forms and phenomena of life in the world. If we 
 may not suppose such an aptitude naturally pos- 
 sessed by organisms, we must assume an f/iaptitude ; 
 and the question is no longer whether the cause 
 be adequate to the effects, but whether effects are 
 to be ascribed to what is no cause at all. May we 
 not retort that this is indeed ''a cause unpre- 
 sentable in thought " — one of those illegitimate 
 symbolic conceptions which cannot by any mental 
 process be elaborated into a real conception?^ In 
 the spirit of a true philosopher, Charles Darwin 
 declared that " the birth both of the species and of 
 the individual are equally parts of that grand 
 sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept 
 as the result of blind chance." - 
 
 By what word, then, shall this " particle of 
 living protoplasm " be called ; this great First 
 Cause ; this Life-germ, eternal, self-existent, infinite 
 in essential capacities? There is but one word 
 known to human language adequate to designate 
 it, and that word is GOD. 
 
 Evolution — that is, Science — thus leads us to a 
 point at which either we must blindly and with 
 boundless credulity accept as fact something which 
 is not only destitute of proof, but which is positively 
 disproved by every test we are at present able to 
 apply to it ; or else we must recognise an existence 
 
 ^Descent of Man. pt. ii. chap. xxi. 
 "^Principles of Biology, § 144. 
 
 20 
 
How Did Life Begin .^ 
 
 which, disguise it as we may, means nothing less 
 than God. 
 
 There is no escape from this dilemma. Our 
 choice lies between these alternatives. The sceptic 
 will at once reject the first; his acceptance of the 
 second is, therefore, a necessity. Men whose minds 
 are enslaved by a preconceived determination to 
 refuse belief in God must be content here to stand 
 like fools, owning their impotency to solve the 
 elementary problem of existence, and, as humble 
 disciples in the school of one Topsy, a negro slave- 
 girl, dismissing the matter by the profound and 
 sapient formula, *' I 'spect I grow'd " ! But tlie free 
 thinker, unblinded by prejudice, will reject an 
 alternative belief which is sheer credulity, and, 
 unmoved by the sneers of pseudo-scientists and 
 sham-philosophers, will honestly and fearlessly 
 accept the goal to which his reason points, and 
 there set up an altar to an unknown God. 
 
 21 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Sciejice and Religion 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE DARWINIAN THEORY 
 
 4;^ T T'S lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky 
 
 * up there all speckled with stars, and v^e 
 used to lay on our backs and look up at them and 
 discuss about whether they were made, or only 
 just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but 
 I allowed they happened; I judged it would have 
 took too long to make so many. Jim said the 
 moon could 'a laid them ; well, that looked kind 
 of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, 
 because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of 
 course it could be done. We used to watch the 
 stars that fell, too, and see them struck down. Jim 
 allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of 
 the nest." 
 
 In this charming piece of fooling, Mark Twain 
 states the problem admirably. The question is 
 whether things were made, or ''only just happened." 
 But Jim, being a philosopher, suggested evolution 
 as a compromise, and Huck Finn's deism was not 
 intelligent enough or vigorous enough to resist it. 
 
 '' Only just happened " — that supreme folly of 
 nineteenth-century philosophy, is as really a posi- 
 tive creed as the Mosaic cosmogony. And surely 
 a venerable faith of any sort is preferable to a 
 new-fangled superstition which has no rational 
 
 22 
 
The Darwinian Theory 
 
 sanction and is devoid even of that kind of respect- 
 ability which antiquity can sometimes impart. 
 
 In our search after the origin of life reason guides 
 us in a path which leads direct to God. Nor let 
 any one here object that this is but a veiled appeal 
 to revelation. Unless reason points to the existence 
 of a God, the question of a revelation cannot even 
 arise. And if any one should raise the difficulty 
 which robbed Professor Tyndall of his sleep in 
 childhood, ''Who made. God ?"^ the solution is to 
 be found, not in attempting to answer the question, 
 but in exposing its absurdity. " Science," Lord 
 Kelvin declares, '' positively affirms creative 
 power. "2 And it is because science leads us back 
 to an existence which never had a beginning that, 
 for want of any other term by which to designate 
 it, we call it God. 
 
 But here we must turn back upon the ground 
 already traversed. We have been dealing hitherto 
 with evolution, not as an hypothesis to account for 
 the origin of species, but merely as a pretended 
 explanation of the origin of life ; and we have 
 found that, thus regarded, it is but a blind lane 
 which leads nowhere. The inquiry suggests itself, 
 therefore, whether the conception of God be a true 
 one which we have thus reached by escape from a 
 wrong path. The question whether there be a God 
 
 ^ "Athwart all play and amusement a thread of seriousness ran 
 through my character; and many a sleepless night of my childhood has 
 been passed fretted by the question, 'Who made God?'" — Professor FiV- 
 chow and Evolution. Was the elder Mill the author of this absurd 
 problem? See J. S. Mill's Autobiography, p. 43. 
 
 ^Christian Apologetics (Murray), p. 25. The book is a republica- 
 tion of lectures delivered in University College in 1903, at one of which 
 Lord Kelvin was present and spoke. 
 
 23 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 is no longer open. \Miat concerns us now is merely 
 to decide what kind of God we shall acknowledge. 
 Shall we be content with the mystic Pantheism 
 which a false system of biology would offer us, or 
 shall we adore an intelligent ruler of the universe? 
 
 The man who can give no account of his own 
 existence is a fool ; and he who denies a God can 
 give no account of his existence. In the old time 
 men whispered their folly within their own hearts ; 
 nowadays they proclaim it on the housetops, or, 
 to translate the Oriental figure into its Western 
 correlative, they publish it in printed books. But 
 philosophy is not folly, and folly has no right to 
 call itself wisdom. There is a God — that is certain ; 
 what then can reason tell us of Ilim? 
 
 As heathen poets wrote two thousand years ago, 
 "We are also His offspring."^ It behooves us, 
 therefore, to ascribe to Him the highest qualities 
 which His creatures are endowed with. To admit, 
 under pressure of facts which we can neither deny 
 nor ignore, the conception of a God, and then to 
 minimise that conception so that it becomes inade- 
 quate to account for the facts — this is neither 
 reason nor philosophy, but crass folly. Since reason 
 shuts us up to belief in God, let us have the courage 
 of free thought, and instead of taking refuge in 
 a vague theism, let us acknowledge a real God — 
 not the great "primordial germ," but the Creator 
 of the heavens and the earth. 
 
 Regarded as a theory to account for life, evolution 
 
 ^ rov yap nal ytvo^ IdMer (Aratus, Phoen.); and Kleanthes 
 writes, ^fi dov ydip yevo^ idjuav. 
 
 24 
 
The Darwinian Theory 
 
 is the wildest folly ; but as an hypothesis to account 
 for the varied forms of life, it claims a hearing on 
 its merits. And viewed in this light, no one need 
 denounce it as necessarily irreligious. As the 
 apostle of evolution with fairness urges, he Avho 
 thus denounces it " is bound to show why it is 
 more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a 
 distinct species by descent from some lower form, 
 through the laws of variation and natural selection, 
 than to explain the birth of the individual through 
 laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of 
 the species and of the individual are equally parts 
 of that grand sequence of events which our minds 
 refuse to accept as the result of blind chance. The 
 understanding revolts at such a conclusion." ^ 
 
 Darwan might, indeed, have stated the matter 
 much more strongly. To call into existence a lowly 
 organised form of life, endowed with latent capaci- 
 ties so wonderful, and so exquisitely adjusted that 
 only when a certain stage of development is reached, 
 the moral qualities spring into exercise, immortality 
 is attained, and there arises in the mind *' the idea 
 of a universal and beneficent Creator of the uni- 
 verse"- — this is a far more amazing act of creative 
 power than the Mosaic account of the genesis of 
 man supposes. But, on the other hand, this very 
 admission suggests a question the importance of 
 which none but the superficial and the ignorant 
 will doubt, Is not the Mosaic account, for that 
 very reason, the more philosophical hypothesis? 
 
 ^ The Descent of Man, pt. ii. chap. xxi. 
 2 The Descent of Man, pt. ii, chap, xxi, 
 
 25 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 It is obvious that if we acknowledge *' a benefi- 
 cent Creator of the universe," the existence of man 
 is explained by the necessary admission that he is 
 a creature; and no theory of development from a 
 lower form of life would be tenable for a moment, 
 were it not for reasons which lie hidden, and do not 
 appear upon the surface. Of that very character, 
 however, are the grounds upon which the hypoth- 
 esis of evolution rests. These may be summarised 
 in a single sentence, as '' the close similarity 
 between man and the lower animals in embryonic 
 development, as well as in innumerable points of 
 structure and constitution, both of high and of the 
 most trifling importance — the rudiments which he 
 retains, and the abnormal reversions to which he 
 is occasionally liable." ^ 
 
 But these facts, indisputable and striking though 
 they be, may one and all be accounted for by an 
 hypothesis of an exactly opposite character. Instead 
 of assuming that the protoplastic organism was of 
 the humblest form, but endowed with capacities of 
 development, why should we not suppose that man 
 himself was the primordial creature, and that he 
 came from the Creator's hand stamped with char- 
 acteristics '' in innumerable points of structure and 
 constitution," to warn him that he was made liable 
 to a law of degeneration and decay, and that the 
 neglect or perversion of his noble powers would 
 degrade him indefinitely in the scale of life? It is 
 certain that this hypothesis is more in accordance 
 with the traditional beliefs of the heathen world 
 
 ^ The Descent of Man. 
 
 26 
 
The Darwinian Theory 
 
 than that of evolution, and it would be easy to 
 maintain that it is more philosophical/ 
 
 We shall gain nothing by misrepresenting facts, 
 and no fair person will pretend that experience 
 warrants the hypothesis that any race of men, that 
 any individual even, ever advanced in the scale 
 of life save under the constant pressure of favouring 
 circumstances. But while culture alone will, so 
 far as our experience teaches us, account for an 
 advance, the tendency to degenerate seems univer- 
 sal. "In . the Australian bush," for example, "and 
 in the backwoods of America, the Anglo-Saxon 
 race, in which civilisation has developed to a con- 
 siderable degree, rapidly lapses into comparative 
 barbarism, adopting the moral code, and sometimes 
 the habits, of savages. "- 
 
 And evolution, while, in theory at least, account- 
 ing for the physical fact it appeals to, makes no 
 reasonable attempt to explain the moral phenomena 
 which claim our attention, though these are far 
 more significant and important. We know what it 
 is to meet with people over whose origin or career 
 some mystery evidently hangs. A bar sinister has 
 crossed their pedigree, or their life is darkened by 
 some strange secret. And is there not something 
 akin to this in the history of our race? Can any 
 intelligent observer look back upon the history of 
 
 ^ Paleontology will here be appealed to in opposition to my sugp-'^?- 
 tion, but the answer is obvious. From an age when the earth was 
 thinly populated, and extreme respect was shown to the dead, we could 
 not expect to find fossil human remains unless we suppose that the 
 geological strata in which the fossils are found were form.ed in sudden 
 convulsions of nature, and this supposition would put Paleontology out 
 of court altogether. 
 
 2 Principles of Biology, § 67. 
 
 27 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 the world, or honestly face the dismal facts of life 
 around us — " the turbid ebb and flow of human 
 misery " — and fail to find traces of some mysterious 
 disaster in primeval times, which still disturbs the 
 moral sphere? 
 
 According: to the evolutionist, man is but an 
 upstart, a biological parvenu, ever in danger of 
 betraying his humble origin, and occasionally show- 
 ing a tendency to revert to his former state. But 
 surely it is only a base materialism which would 
 assign to the phenomena on which this theory rests 
 the same importance as that which we ascribe to 
 the mysteries of man's inner being. The presence 
 in embryo of organs properly belonging to the 
 brute, or such "reversions" as *'the occasional 
 appearance of canine teeth " — what are these in 
 comparison with the fact that life from the cradle 
 to the grave is marked by baffled aspirations after 
 an unattainable ideal, and unsatisfied cravings for 
 the infinite? Are we to believe that these cravings 
 and aspirations are derived from the " hairy quad- 
 ruped with a tail and pointed ears " ? 
 
 " As soon as man grew distinct from the animal 
 he became religious." A sense of humour would 
 have saved Renan from offering a suggestion so 
 grotesque as this. We might admit for the sake of 
 argument that the descendant of an ape might be- 
 come philosophical and mathematical and musical ; 
 but how and why should he become religious? "To 
 call the spiritual nature of man a ' by-product ' is 
 a jest too big for this little world." ^ " Man," the 
 
 1 These words are attributed to Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace. 
 
 28 
 
The Darzuinian Theory 
 
 evolutionist declares, '' still bears in his bodily 
 frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin."^ 
 His inner being, we may with greater truth reply, 
 gives unmistakable proof that his origin was a high 
 and noble one. Evolution, remember, is not fact, 
 but only theory. The facts are the pearls ; evolution 
 is but the string on which we are asked to hang 
 them. And we shall seek in vain for a single shred 
 of direct evidence in support of it.- 
 
 It is significant that naturalists who suppose new 
 species to be originated by evolution " habitually 
 suppose the origination to occur in some region 
 remote from human observation."^ These results 
 are supposed to have been produced during " those 
 immeasurable epochs," " untold millions of years " 
 before " beings endowed with capacity for wide 
 thought" existed on the earth."* To which the 
 sceptic will make answer : First, that there is no 
 proof that this earth has so long existed in a 
 habitable state ; it is a mere inference based upon 
 a certain geological theory which is wholly 
 unproved and by no means universally accepted. 
 And, secondly, that as neither the course of nature 
 Vv'ithin known periods, nor the skill of man, has ever 
 produced a species, we may be merely stultifying 
 our minds b}^ dismissing the difficulty to a m3^thical 
 
 ^ These are the closing words of The Descent of Man. 
 
 2 I am aware that Herbert Spencer asserts that the hypothesis "has 
 the support of direct evidence" {Principles of Biology. % 121). But 
 this extraordinary statement can be accounted for only by supposing that 
 he uses words in a loose and popular way which cannot be permitted 
 here. 
 
 * The lanpuaec, but not the application of it, is Herbert Spencer's 
 {Principles of Biology. § 112). 
 
 * Principles of Biology, §§ 114, 120. 
 
 29 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religioyi 
 
 past about which we may conjecture and romance, 
 but concerning which we know absolutely nothing. 
 
 But let us for the moment assume these '' untold 
 millions of years," these " immeasurable epochs " of 
 an "abysmal past," during which the evolutionary 
 process has been developing. Further, let us con- 
 cede that the supposed process is so slow that no 
 appreciable change may be looked for within the 
 period of historic time. In fact, let us, for the sake 
 of argument, admit everything assumed by the 
 evolutionist, excepting only the hypothesis of evolu- 
 tion itself, and we can at once subject that 
 hypothesis to a practical test of the simplest kind, 
 which will either establish its truth or demonstrate 
 its falseness. 
 
 Suppose our world were visited by a being of 
 intelligence, able to converse with men, but wholly 
 ignorant of an existence like ours, marked by devel- 
 opment and decay. Brought face to face with 
 puling infancy, vigorous manhood, and the senile 
 decrepitude of extreme old age, such a being might 
 express incredulous wonder on hearing that these 
 were but successive stages in human life. And he 
 might answer fairly and with shrewdness, " If such 
 a statement be true, then there must l)e individuals 
 in the world of every possible age, from a minute to 
 a hundred years, and manifesting every imaginnble 
 degree of growth and decline." To which the 
 unequivocal reply we should of course be able to 
 offer would put an end to his scepticism. 
 
 But suppose we were to make some such answer 
 as this : " True it is that never a moment passes 
 
 30 
 
The Darwinian Theory 
 
 but that some new life enters the world, and some 
 blighted or withered life disappears from it ; the 
 processes of generation and growth and decay are 
 all unceasing and constant; but yet we cannot sat- 
 isfy the test you put to us. We can show you large 
 children and small adults, smooth-faced boys and 
 full-bearded men, types of failing manhood and of 
 hale old age, but there are ' missing links ' which 
 we cannot supply. Of some of these we have 
 ' archeological evidence,' there are fossil specimens 
 in our museums ; and the learned tell us that others 
 no doubt exist and will yet be found ; but of living 
 specimens there are none, though all the resources 
 of nature and of science have been appealed to in 
 the effort to produce them." With such an answer 
 our ephemeral visitor might well return to his 
 celestial home perplexed with grave misgivings 
 respecting our honesty or our intelligence. 
 
 And so here. The cases are entirely parallel. If 
 the processes of evolution have been in operation 
 during infinite aeons of time, and be still at work, 
 " missing links " are out of the question. The nat- 
 uralist will, of course, be able to point to types of 
 every imaginable stage of development, from the 
 simplest and humblest to the most exquisitely 
 complex and perfect. But the naturalist can do 
 no such thing. There are almost innumerable gaps 
 in the chain, which could only be accounted for by 
 the supposition that evolution has again and again 
 been interrupted during intervals so prolonged, 
 that in comparison with them the entire period of 
 historic time is but as a tick of the clock. There- 
 
 •31 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about S device and Religion 
 
 fore it is that at every step the naturalist has to 
 appeal to the Paleontologist. As Huxley will tell 
 us, '' The only perfectly safe foundation for the 
 doctrine of evolution lies in the historical, or rather 
 archeological evidence, that particular organisms 
 have arisen by the gradual modification of their 
 predecessors, which is furnished by fossil remains." 
 
 The evolutionist professes to account for the 
 oiigin of species, but, finding as he proceeds that, 
 under his hypothesis, the problem remains inexpli- 
 cable, he strives to conceal its real character. 
 Whence the distinctions which he thus classifies? 
 How can he account for species itself? He strug- 
 gles to escape from the difficulty by representing 
 all such distinctions as being purely arbitrary. But 
 such a piece of " special pleading " only betrays the 
 weakness of his position. The lines which separate 
 one species from another are clearly marked, as is 
 evidenced by the undoubted fact that the effects 
 of both culture and neglect are strictly limited by 
 them. The reality of the difficulty, moreover, the 
 evolutionist himself acknowledges by the recog- 
 nition of missing links, and by his appeal to the 
 fossils to supply them. The necessity for the 
 admission and the appeal are a conclusive proof 
 that his hypotliiesis is untenable. 
 
 Let us then keep clearly in view, first, that 
 evolution is merely a philosophic theory; second, 
 that it is unproA^ed ; third, that it is inadequate ; 
 and fourth, that (as will appear more plainly in 
 the sequel) it is unnecessary, except of course with 
 those scientists who cling to any plank that will 
 
 32 
 
The Darwinian Theory 
 
 save them from having to acknowledge God. And, 
 it may be added, there is a fashion in science as 
 well as in dress, and the fashion changes almost 
 as rapidly in the one sphere as in the other. And 
 so, as Karl von Hartmann wrote : 
 
 '' In the sixties of the past century the opposition 
 of the older group of savants to the Darwinian 
 hypothesis was still supreme. In the seventies the 
 new idea began to gain ground rapidly in all cul- 
 tured countries. In the eighties Darwin's influence 
 was at its height, and exercised an almost absolute 
 control over technical research. In the nineties, for 
 the first time, a few timid expressions of doubt and 
 opposition were heard ; and these gradually swelled 
 into a great chorus of voices, aiming at the over- 
 throw of the Darwinian theory. In the first decade 
 of the twentieth century it has become apparent 
 that the days of Darwinism are numbered." ^ 
 
 ^ Taken from a translation given in The Pall Mall Magazine for 
 September, 1904. As a commentary upon it I may add the following 
 extract from an article entitled "The Riddle of Evolution," which ap- 
 peared in The Times Literary Supplement of June 9, 1905: 
 
 "No one possessed of a sense of humour can contemplate without 
 amusement the battle of evolution, encrimsoned (dialecticaliy speaking) 
 with the gore of innumerable combatants, encumbered with the corpses 
 of the (dialecticaliy) slain, and resounding with the cries of the living, 
 as they hustle together in the fray. [Here follows a lengthy list of the 
 various schools and sects of Evolutionists.] Never was seen such a 
 melee. The humour of it is that they all claim to represent 'Science,' 
 the serene, the majestic, the absolutely sure, the undivided and im- 
 mutable, the one and only vicegerent of Truth, her other self. Not 
 theirs the weakness of the theologians or the metaphysicians, who stum- 
 ble about in uncertainty, obscurity, and ignorance with their baseless 
 assumptions, flimsy hypotheses, logical fallacies, interminable dissen- 
 sions, and all the other marks of inferiority on which the votaries of 
 Science pour ceaseless scorn. Yet it would puzzle them to point to a 
 theological battlefield exhibiting more uncertainty, obscurity, dissension, 
 assumption, and fallacy than their own. _ For the plain truth is that, 
 though some agree in 'this or that, there is not a single point in which 
 all agree; battling for evolution they have torn it to pieces; nothing is 
 left, nothing at all on their own showing, save a few fragments strewn 
 about the arena. ..." 
 
 33 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER's SCHEME 
 
 THE hypothesis of degeneration has been here 
 suggested as a rival to that of evolution. It 
 equally accounts for the facts, and is less beset 
 with difficulties. Are we then to accept it? By 
 no means. Both alike are mere theories, wholly 
 unsupported by direct evidence; and therefore the 
 sceptic will reject both, unless they be alternatives, 
 and he is thus compelled to make choice between 
 them. But they are not alternatives. The facts 
 submitted to our notice by the naturalist would 
 be still more fully accounted for by the assumption 
 that every kind of creature sprang from the same 
 Creator's hand. 
 
 And this is, in fact, the only alternative which 
 the evolutionist admits. " We have to choose 
 between two hypotheses," he tells us — "the hypoth- 
 esis of special creations, and the hypothesis of 
 evolution." The necessity for this admission, be 
 it observed, is by implication a conclusive proof 
 that evolution is unproved.^ 
 
 Let us, then, consider the suggested alternative. 
 Herbert Spencer will tell us that, '' however 
 regarded, the hypothesis of special creations turns 
 out to be worthless — worthless by its derivation ; 
 worthless in its intrinsic incoherence ; worthless as 
 
 * It is only where there is no direct proof that a result has been 
 caused in one way that we need to show it could not have occurred in 
 any other way (see p. 15 ante). 
 
 34 
 
Herbert Spencer'' s Scheme 
 
 absolutely without evidence ; worthless as not sup- 
 plying an intellectual need; worthless as not satis- 
 fying a moral want. We must, therefore,' he con- 
 cludes, ''consider it as counting for nothing in 
 opposition to any other hypothesis respecting the 
 origin of organic being."^ 
 
 Upon the legal mind the efifect of this sort of 
 onslaught is merely to excite suspicion that some 
 weak point in the case requires to be concealed. 
 Such dogmatism of assertion must only serve to 
 encourage us in our investigation of the argument. 
 
 First, then, we are told that the notion of a 
 creation is a primitive one, and "early ideas are 
 not usually true ideas." ^ But this is a very trans- 
 parent petitio principii; for unless we assume that 
 evolution is true, which is precisely what has to 
 be proved, the statement is of no force whatever. 
 
 Herbert Spencer proceeds to urge that a belief 
 in creation is discredited by ''association with a 
 special class of mistaken beliefs." ^ Now this, of 
 course, is a reference to the Mosaic account of the 
 creation,^ and it is sufficiently answered by the fact 
 that that account is accepted by many men of com- 
 petent attainments and of the highest intellectual 
 capacity.* 
 
 Again, we are told that not only is this hypo- 
 
 * Principles of Biology, % 115. 
 
 ^Principles of Biology, § 110. 2 Ibid.. § 111. 
 
 ' For there is no other record of primitive beliefs in question here. 
 Spencer, it is true, seeks to create a prejudice by bracketing it with 
 "the cosmogony of the Indians or the Greeks." At the Bar this would 
 be characterized as a nisi prius trick. 
 
 * They are careful, no doubt, to distinguish between what the Patri- 
 arch actually taught, and what, as they maintain, a crude misapprehen- 
 sion of his teaching attributes to him. But this does not affect my 
 argument. 
 
 35 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 thesis " not countenanced by a single fact," but 
 further, that it " cannot be framed into a coherent 
 thought," ^ and is merely a formula for our igno- 
 rance." ^ " No one ever saw a special creation." ^ 
 True: but a similar objection may be made to the 
 hypothesis of evolution; and it has, in fact, been 
 urged in these pages in the very words here used 
 by Herbert Spencer. ^ It is admitted that no new 
 species has ever been evolved within human 
 experience, and the supposed origination is referred 
 to " an abysmal past," which may, for aught we 
 know, be purely fabulous. The objection, if of 
 force at all, is equally valid against both hypotheses. 
 
 For let us keep clearly in view what our author 
 studiously conceals, that at this point the real 
 question is not the origin of species, but the origin 
 of life. Until he can give us some reasonable 
 account of the existence of life, we shall continue to 
 believe in ''a beneficent Creator of the universe" ; 
 and though Herbert Spencer will deplore our 
 " ignorance " and despise our '' pseud-ideas," we 
 shall console ourselves by the companionship of a 
 long line of illustrious men, whose names per- 
 chance will be increasingly venerated in the world 
 of philosophy and letters when some new generation 
 of scientists shall have arisen to regard with patron- 
 ising pity the popular theories of to-day. 
 
 *'No one ever saw a special creation," and the 
 hypothesis " cannot be framed into a coherent 
 thought." This implies, first, an admission that if 
 
 ^Principles of Biology, § 112. 
 
 "Thid., § 113. ' Ibid., § 112. 
 
 ^ See p. 29 ante. 
 
 36 
 
Herbert Spencerh Scheme 
 
 we were permitted to see a special creation we 
 could frame the coherent thought; and, secondly, 
 an assertion that our ability to frame ideas is limited 
 by our experience. The admission is fatal, and the 
 assertion is obviously false. 
 
 Herbert Spencer's remaining objections to special 
 creations are an enumeration of certain theological 
 difficulties, in which those who espouse the hypo- 
 thesis are supposed to entangle themselves. ^ These 
 might be dismissed with the remark that a mere 
 ad homhiem argument is of no importance here. 
 If valid, it could only serve to discredit theology, 
 without strengthening the author's position. But 
 let us examine it. 
 
 The objections are briefly these. Theology is 
 supposed to teach that special creations were 
 designed to demonstrate to mankind the power of 
 the Creator : " would it not have been still better 
 demonstrated by the separate creation of each indi- 
 vidual?" It is quite unnecessary to discuss this, 
 for there is not a suggestion in the Bible from 
 cover to cover that creation had any such purpose.^ 
 AVhat evolution assumes,^ the Bible asserts, namely, 
 that man did not appear in the world until after 
 every other organised form was already in 
 existence. 
 
 But the next and final difficulty appears at first 
 
 "^Principles of Biology, § 114. 
 
 * When a writer speaks of tiieology in general terms, without indi- 
 cating any particular author or school, it must be assumed that he refers 
 to the Bible, which is, of course, the only religious book that all edu- 
 cated readers are supposed to be familiar with. 
 
 « I do not assert that all evolutionists admit this, but I maintain that 
 it is implied in the hypothesis of evolution. 
 
 37 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 sight to be more serious. " Omitting the human 
 race, for whose defects and miseries the current 
 theology professes to account, and limiting our- 
 selves to the lower creation, what must we think of 
 the countless different pain-inflicting appliances and 
 instincts with which animals are endowed, " ^ 
 " Whoever contends that each kind of animal was 
 specially designed, must assert either that there 
 was a deliberate intention on the part of the Crea- 
 tor to produce these results, or that there was an 
 inability to prevent them." This difficulty, more- 
 over, is greatly intensified by the fact that " of the 
 animal kingdom as a whole, more than half the 
 species are parasites, and thus we are brought to 
 the contemplation of innumerable cases in which 
 the suffering inflicted brings no compensating 
 benefit." 
 
 Now, in the first place, these objections are 
 applicable as really, though, possibly, not to the 
 same extent, to the hypothesis of creation in gen- 
 eral. And that hypothesis is no longer in question ; 
 for, as we have seen, " scientific thought is com- 
 pelled to accept the idea of creative power."^ And, 
 in the second place, we must remember that these 
 difficulties are purely theological. They have no 
 force save against those of us who believe the 
 Bible. Such people, according to the argument, 
 must abandon either the Biblical account of crea- 
 tion or the Biblical representation of God. They 
 must assert either that the Creator intended to 
 
 ^ Principles of Biology, § 1 14. 
 
 2 See p. 23 ante. 
 
 38 
 
Herbert Spencer'' s Scheme 
 
 produce the results here under observation, or that 
 there was an inability to prevent them. In other 
 words, God is deficient either in goodness or in 
 power. 
 
 This introduces a question which hitherto has 
 been avoided in these pages. Nor shall it here 
 receive more than the briefest notice ; for even a 
 conventional acquaintance with the Biblical scheme 
 will enable us to find the solution of Herbert Spen- 
 cer's difficulties. The validity of his dilemma 
 depends upon ignoring one of the fundamental 
 dogmas of theology. The teaching of the Bible is 
 unmistakable, that Adam in his fall dragged down 
 with him the entire creation of which he was the 
 federal head; that the suffering under which the 
 creature groans is not the result of design, but of a 
 tremendous catastrophe which has brought ruin and 
 misery in its train ; that not only is the Creator not 
 wanting in power to restore creation to its pristine 
 perfectness, but that He has pledged Himself to 
 accomplish this very result, and that the restora- 
 tion will be so complete that even the destructive 
 propensities of the brute will cease. 
 
 Such is the teaching of the Bible, unfolded not 
 merely in the poetry of the Hebrew prophets, but 
 in the dogmatic prose of the Apostle of the Gen- 
 tiles. The question here is not whether it be 
 reasonable, whether it be true. All that concerns 
 us is the fact that it forms an essential part of the 
 Biblical scheme, and thus affords a complete refu- 
 tation of an ad hominem argument which depends 
 for its validity upon misrepresenting or ignoring it. 
 
 39 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 Herbert Spencer's indictment against belief in 
 special creations thus begins and ends by disin- 
 genuous attempts to prejudice the issue. And in 
 asserting that the hypothesis is incapable of being 
 " framed into a coherent thought," he urges an 
 objection which from its very nature admits of 
 no other answer than that which has been already 
 given to it. If we call for a poll upon the question, 
 we shall find on one side a crowd of illustrious men 
 of unquestionable fame, and of the very highest 
 rank as philosophers and thinkers ; and on the other, 
 Herbert Spencer and a few more besides, all of whom 
 must await the verdict of posterity before they can 
 be permanently assigned the place which some of 
 their contemporaries claim for them. An assertion 
 which thus brands the entire bead-roll of philoso- 
 phers, from Bacon to Charles Darwin, as the dupes 
 of a " pseud-idea," a *' formula for ignorance," is 
 worthless save as affording matter for a psycho- 
 logical study of a most interesting kind. 
 
 The alleged absence of evidence of a special crea- 
 tion has been already met by pointing out that the 
 objection equally applies to the hypothesis of 
 evolution. But perhaps it deserves a fuller notice. 
 '' No one ever saw a special creation," we are told. 
 The author might have added that if the entire 
 Royal Society in council were permitted to '' see a 
 special creation," the sceptic would reject their 
 testimony unless there were indirect evidence to 
 confirm it. He would maintain that in the sphere 
 of the miraculous, direct evidence, unless thus 
 confirmed, is of no value at second hand. His 
 
 40 
 
Herbert Spencer'' s Scheme 
 
 language would be, " Produce for our inspection 
 the organism alleged to have been created, and 
 satisfy us, first, that it had no existence prior to 
 the moment assigned for its creation, and, secondly, 
 that it could not have originated in some way 
 known to our experience, and then, indeed, we 
 shall give up our scepticism and accept the testi- 
 mony offered us." 
 
 But Herbert Spencer goes on to aver that " no 
 one ever found proof of an indirect kind that a 
 special creation had taken place." This is a choice 
 example of the nisi priiis artifice at which our 
 author is such an adept. The existence of a world 
 teeming with life has been accepted by the greatest 
 and wisest men of every age as a conclusive proof 
 that a special creation has taken place. But this is 
 boldly met by sheer weight of unsupported denial. 
 
 If we approach the subject, not as special pleaders 
 or partisans, but in a philosophic spirit, we shall 
 state the argument thus: — The admitted facts give 
 proof that species originated either by special crea- 
 tions or by evolution. If either hypothesis can be 
 established by independent evidence, the other is 
 thereby discredited. But, in the one case as in the 
 other, positive proof is wholly wanting. We must, 
 therefore, rely upon general considerations. On 
 the evolution theory, proof is confessedly wanting 
 that the alleged cause is adequate to account for 
 the admitted facts. ^ Not so on the creation hypoth- 
 
 ^ I do not say there is no ei'idence. But all admit that that evidence 
 does not amount to proof, unless, indeed, the alternative hypothesis 
 can be disproved; and to disprove it is the whole point and purpose of 
 Herbert Spencer's chapter on the subject. 
 
 41 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 esis, for as we admit that life originated by 
 creation/ there can be no difficulty in assigning a 
 similar origin to species. In a word, as we side 
 with Darwin in believing in ''a beneficent Creator 
 of the universe,"- the evolution hypothesis is 
 unnecessary and therefore unphilosophical. 
 
 But, further, the concealed consequences of the 
 argument under review must not be overlooked. 
 If it be valid for any purpose at all, it disproves not 
 only the fact of a creation, but the existence of a 
 Creator. *' No one ever saw a special creation " ; 
 neither did any one ever see the Deity. If, as 
 alleged, we have no evidence of His handiwork, 
 neither have w^e proof of His existence. At a single 
 plunge we have thus reached the level of blank 
 atheism, which is the extreme depth of moral and 
 intellectual degradation. " The birth both of the 
 species and the individual " must equally be 
 ascribed to '' blind chance," '' coercion " being 
 appealed to, I suppose, to quell the inevitable 
 " revolt of the understanding."^ And the strange 
 religious propensities common to the race, whether 
 civilised or savage, must also be suppressed; or at 
 all events, our Penates must be strictly limited to 
 an effigy of our hairy quadrumanous ancestor with 
 pointed ears, supplemented possibly by some *' sym- 
 bolic conception " of the primordial life-germ 
 wrapped in a cloud, and a copy of Herbert Spencer's 
 System of Philosophy to guide and regulate the cult. 
 
 1 See pp. 23, 24 ante. 
 
 2 But see p. 73 post (footnote). 
 
 3 See p. 25 ante. 
 
 42 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HAVE WE A REVELATION 
 
 SCEPTICISM is ''not a permanent resting-place 
 for human reason." The knowledge that 
 there is bad money in circulation does not make 
 us fling our purse into the gutter, or refuse to 
 replenish it when empty. The sceptic tries a coin 
 before accepting it, but when once he puts it in his 
 pocket, his appreciation of it is, for that very rea- 
 son, all the more intelligent and full. A convinced 
 doubter makes the best believer. 
 
 As Lord Kelvin declares, '' Scientific thought is 
 compelled to accept the idea of creative power." 
 With an open mind, therefore, and unwavering con- 
 fidence the true sceptic acknowledges '' the 
 beneficent Creator of the universe." And in no 
 grudging spirit, but honestly and fully, he will own 
 the obligations and relationships which this 
 involves. Religion is implied in the acknowledg- 
 ment of God. And further, this acknowledgment 
 removes every a priori objection to the idea of a 
 revelation. It creates indeed a positive presumption 
 in its favour. For if we are the offspring of a 
 "beneficent Creator," it is improbable that, in a 
 world so darkened by sorrow and doubt, He would 
 leave us without guidance, and without light as to 
 our destiny. 
 
 43 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 At all events, our belief in God makes it incum- 
 bent on us to examine any alleged revelation which 
 is presented to us with reasonable credentials. If 
 some one brings me what purports to be a message 
 or letter from my brother, I may dispose of the 
 matter by answering, '' I have no brother " ; but if 
 I possess an unknown lost brother, I cannot refuse 
 to receive the communication and to test its claims 
 on my attention. 
 
 But here we must keep our heads. There is no 
 sphere in which the functions of the constable are 
 more needed. The existence of a lost brother is no 
 reason for sheltering impostors. Our belief in God 
 is no reason for abandoning ourselves to supersti- 
 tion, or submitting to be duped by foolish or 
 designing men. 
 
 Yet another caution is needed here. We have 
 now reached ground where the judgment of men 
 of science is of no special value whatever. So long 
 as it is a question of investigating and describing 
 the facts and phenomena of nature, we sit at their 
 feet with unfeigned admiration of their genius and 
 industry; but when it becomes a question of 
 adjudicating upon the evidence with which they 
 furnish us, they must give way to those whose 
 training and habits of mind make them better fitted 
 for the task. We place the very highest value upon 
 their testimony as experts in all matters within 
 their own province, but Ave cannot consent to their 
 passing from the witness-box to the judicial bench ; 
 least of all can we consent to their occupying such 
 a position where the subject-matter is one of which 
 
 44 
 
Have We a Revelation ? 
 
 they have no special cognisance.^ In such a case 
 a dozen city merchants, with a trained lawyer to 
 guide their deliberations, would make a better trib- 
 unal than the Royal Society could supply. 
 
 The extreme point to which reason leads us is 
 the recognition of an unknown God. What now 
 concerns us is the inquiry whether He has revealed 
 Himself to men. Have we a revelation? A dis- 
 cussion of this question on a priori lines would 
 have many advantages. But, on the whole, the 
 practical view of it is the best. And it would be 
 mere pedantry to ignore the peculiar claims which 
 Christianity has upon our notice. In fact, the 
 question narrows itself at once to this plain issue, 
 Is Christianity a Divine revelation? If this ques- 
 tion be answered in the negative, it is really useless 
 to discuss the merits of Islam ; and as for Buddha, 
 his popularity in certain quarters in England as a 
 rival to Christ is proof only of the depth of Saxon 
 silliness. There is a sense, of course, in which all 
 enthusiasm is inspiration, but for our present pur- 
 pose this is a mere fencing with words. The 
 question is perfectly definite and clear to every one 
 who wishes to understand it. Is Christianity a reve- 
 lation from God? Let us examine the witnesses. 
 
 If we ask in what form this alleged revelation 
 comes to us, all Christians are agreed in placing in 
 our hands a Book ; in a word, they point us to the 
 Bible. But here, at the very threshold, their unanim- 
 
 1 The childlike faith of those who so recently bowed before that 
 false god Bathybius Haeckeli, puts to blush the sweet simplicity of the 
 Sundav-school. It may seem ungenerous to remind "philosophers of 
 their folly, but we cannot ignore it when considering their claims to 
 guide our judgment. 
 
 45 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science a7id Religwft 
 
 ity ceases. While some would insist that this is 
 the only revelation, the majority of Christendom 
 would point us also to a certain class of men so 
 supernaturally gifted and accredited that they are 
 themselves a revelation. This system, which is 
 popularly associated with Rome, deserves priority 
 of consideration because of the prestige it enjoys 
 by reason of the antiquity of its origin, and the 
 influence and number of its disciples. Moreover, 
 if its claims be accepted, the truth of Christianity 
 is established ; and if on examination they be re- 
 jected, the ground is cleared for the consideration 
 of the main question on its merits. 
 
 The founders of Christianity, we are told, in ad- 
 dition to their ability to work miracles such as the 
 senses could take notice of, possessed also super- 
 natural powers of a mystic kind. By certain mystic 
 rites, for instance, they were able to work such a 
 transformation in common bread and ordinary wine, 
 that, although no available test could detect the 
 change, the bread really became flesh, and the wine 
 blood. Further still, we are assured that these 
 powers have been transmitted from generation to 
 generation, and are now possessed by the succes- 
 sors .of the men who first received them direct from 
 Heaven. And more than this, we are asked to be- 
 lieve that these miracles are actually performed in 
 our own day, not in isolated and remote places far 
 removed from observation, but in our midst and 
 everywhere; and that, too, in the most public and 
 open manner. 
 
 If this be true, it is obvious that not only the 
 46 
 
Have We a Revelation f 
 
 miracles which are thus wrought in our presence, 
 but the very men themselves who cause them, are 
 a Divine revelation. We are no longer left to 
 reach out toward the Supreme Being by the light 
 of reason; we are thus brought face to face with 
 God. 
 
 Indifiference is impossible in the presence of 
 such demands on our faith. If these men in fact 
 possess such powers, it is difficult to set a limit 
 to the respect and veneration due to them. But 
 if their pretensions be false, it is monstrous that 
 they should be permitted to trade upon the credul- 
 ity of mankind. Suppose we admit for the sake of 
 argument that the apostles possessed these powers, 
 the question remains, Are these same powers in 
 fact possessed by the men who now claim to exer- 
 cise them? 
 
 It is not easy to decide what amount of evidence 
 ought to be deemed sufficient in such a case. But 
 is there any evidence at all? These powers are not 
 supposed to be conferred immediately from Heaven, 
 but immediately through other men, who in turn 
 had received them from their predecessors, and so on 
 in an unbroken line extending back to the days of 
 the Apostles. No man who is satisfied with the evi- 
 dence upon which evolution rests can fairly dispute 
 the proofs of an apostolic succession. Let us, 
 therefore, go so far in our admissions as even to 
 accept this also; and that, too, without stopping 
 to investigate the lives of those through whom the 
 ''succession" flowed. Some of them were famous 
 for their piety, others were infamous for their 
 
 47 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religio7t 
 
 crimes. But passing all this by, let us get face to 
 face with the living men who make these amazing 
 demands upon our faith. 
 
 Some of these men were our playmates in child- 
 hood, and our class-fellows and companions in 
 school and college days. We recall their friendly 
 rivalry in our studies and our sports, and their 
 share in many a debauch that now we no longer 
 speak of when we meet. Some of them are the 
 firm and valued friends of our manhood. We re- 
 spect them for their learning, and still more for 
 their piet}^ and their self-denying efforts for the 
 good of their fellow-men. Others, again, have fallen 
 from our acquaintance. Although, ex hypothesi, 
 equally endowed with supernatural gifts which 
 should make us value their presence at our death- 
 bed, they are exceptionally addicted to natural vices 
 which lead us to shun them in our lifetime. 
 
 And this disposes of one ground on which pos- 
 sibly a prima facie case might be set up. If all 
 those who are supposed to possess these extraordi- 
 nary powers were distinguished from their fellow- 
 men by high and noble qualities, their pretensions 
 would at least deserve our respect. But we fail to 
 find any special marks of character or conduct, 
 which even the most partial judge could point to for 
 such a purpose. 
 
 On what other ground then can these claims be 
 maintained? It is idle to beat about the bush. 
 The fact is clear as light that there is not a shadow 
 of evidence of any description whatsoever to sup- 
 port them. This being so, we must at once recall 
 
 48 
 
Have We a Revelation ? 
 
 one of the admissions already made, lest these men 
 should take refuge in an appeal to the New Testa- 
 ment as establishing their position. The enlight- 
 ened Christianity of the Reformation emphatically 
 denies that even the Apostles themselves possessed 
 such powers, or that the Bible gives any counten- 
 ance wdiatever to the assumption of them. In a 
 word, Christians who are the very elite of Christen- 
 dom maintain that such pretensions have no Scrip- 
 tural foundation Avhatever, 
 
 If Christianity be true, we need not hesitate to 
 believe that certain men are divinely called and 
 qualified as religious teachers. But this position is 
 separated by an impassable gulf from the mystic 
 pretensions of priestcraft. In truth, sacerdotalism 
 presents extraordinary problems for the considera- 
 tion of the thoughtful. If it prevailed only among 
 the ignorant and degraded, it would deserve no at- 
 tention. But the fact is beyond question that its 
 champions and votaries include men of the highest 
 intellectual eminence and moral worth. The integ- 
 rity of such men is irreproachable. They are not 
 accomplices in a wilful fraud upon their fellows; 
 they are true and honest in their convictions. How, 
 then, are we to account for the fact that many who 
 hold such high rank as scholars and thinkers are thus 
 the dupes of such a delusion? How is it to be 
 explained that here in England, while w^e boast of 
 increasing enlightenment, this delusion is regaining 
 its hold upon the religious life of the nation? The 
 national Church, Avhich half a century ago was com- 
 paratively free from the evil, is now hopelessly 
 
 49 
 
A Doubter'^s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 leavened with it. The more this matter is studied 
 the more inexplicable it seems, unless we are pre- 
 pared to believe in the existence of spiritual influ- 
 ences of a sinister kind, by which in the religious 
 sphere the minds even of men of intellect and cul- 
 ture are liable to be warped and blinded/ 
 
 1 To discuss the legality of such views and practices in the Church 
 of England would be foreign to my argument, and outside the scope of 
 my book; and moreover, having regard to Articles XXVIII. and XXXI., 
 I cannot see that the question is open. Here is one clause of Article 
 XXVIII.:— 
 
 "Transsubstantiation (or the change of the substance of Bread and 
 Wine) in the Supper of the Lord, cannot be proved by holy Writ; but 
 is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature 
 of a Sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions." 
 
 It niay be interesting to notice here that this vetoes the superstitious 
 meaning which almost universally attaches to the word "sacrament." 
 It is the equivalent of the Greek fivovrf piOV, which is used by the 
 LXX in Daniel ii. 18, 19, 27, 28, 29, 30, 47, and iv. 9, and is always 
 rendered secret in our English version. This moreover is its ordinary 
 meaning in the New Testament. But the word was even then acquir- 
 ing the meaning usually given to it in the Greek Fathers, viz., a sym- 
 bol or secret sign. See, e.g.. Rev. i. 20, and xvii. 5, 7. And this is 
 the significance of the English word "sacrament." It connotes some- 
 thing which represents something else; and so we find that in old 
 writers X^oah's rainbow, the brazen serpent, etc., are called "sacra- 
 ments." _ And in this sense it is that the bread and wine in the 
 "Eucharist" are a "sacrament"; they represent the body and blood of 
 Christ. Therefore to hold that they are in fact His body and blood is 
 to "overthrow the nature of a sacrament." 
 
 Our practice of kissing the book in taking a judicial oath is in 
 this sense a "sacrament." And there can be no doubt that it was 
 owing to some symbolic act of this kind that the Latin word sacrameru- 
 turn came to mean a soldier's oath. 
 
 50 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 IS CHRISTIANITY DIVINE.^ 
 
 IS Christianity a Divine revelation ? This ques- 
 tion must not be settled by the result of the 
 preliminary inquiry here proposed. In rejecting 
 sacredotalism, we merely clear the ground for a dis- 
 cussion of the main question upon its merits. "The 
 Reformation," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "was a 
 tremendous earthquake" which "shook down the 
 fabric of medieval religion." "But," he goes on to 
 say, "it left the authority of the Bible unshaken, 
 and men might feel that the destructive process had 
 its limit, and that adamant was still beneath their 
 feet." 
 
 To the Bible, then, we turn. But how is such an 
 inquiry to be conducted? The unfairness of en- 
 trusting the defence of Christianity to any who are 
 themselves the rejecters of Christianity will be pal- 
 pable to every one. Here the right of audience is 
 only to the Christian. But, in making this conces- 
 sion, the sceptic may fairly insist on maintaining 
 the place of critic, if not of censor. Until convinced, 
 he will continue to consider, reflect, hesitate, doubt. 
 
 And it is a suspicious circumstance that so many 
 who claim to be leaders of religious thought, and 
 who are profesional exponents of the Christian faith, 
 seem eager not only to eliminate from Christianity 
 everything that is distinctive, but also to divorce it 
 
 SI 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 from much with which, in its origin, it was insep- 
 arably associated. They are strangely anxious to 
 separate it from the Judaism which it succeeded, 
 and upon which it is so indisputably founded. As 
 a corollary upon this, they struggle to separate the 
 New Testament from the Old, treating the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, and especially the Pentateuch, as per- 
 sons who have risen in the world are prone to treat 
 the quondam acquaintances of humbler days. As a 
 further step, they betray unmistakable uneasiness, 
 when confronted with the miraculous in the Bible ; 
 and "the old evangelical doctrine" of inspiration 
 they regard with undisguised dislike, if not con- 
 tempt. 
 
 No well-informed person will dispute that this is 
 a fair statement of the position assumed by a school 
 of religious thought which is in its own sphere both 
 influential and popular. But it needs no more than 
 a conventional knowledge of the New Testament to 
 enable us to assert that the Christianity of Christ 
 and His apostles was not a new religion, but rather 
 an unfolding and fulfilment of the Judaism which 
 preceded it. The Christ of Christendom was a 
 crucified Jew — crucified because He declared Him- 
 self to l:)e the Jews' Messiah ; and His claims upon 
 our homage and our faith are inseparably connected 
 with that Messiahship. 
 
 And what were the credentials of His Messiah- 
 ship? To some extent the miracles which He 
 wrought, but mainJy the Hebrew Scriptures. And 
 in His appeal to those Scriptures He implicitly as- 
 serted that they were in the strictest sense inspired. 
 
 52 
 
Is Christianity Divine f 
 
 Ten times are those Scriptures quoted in the first 
 four chapters of the new Testament as being the 
 ipsissima verba of the Deity/ and three of these 
 quotations are from the Book of Deuteronomy, the 
 very book which these theologians are most decided 
 in rejecting. 
 
 The language of the "Sermon on the Mount" is, if 
 possible, more emphatic still. To understand its 
 full significance we must bear in mind what Jose- 
 phus asserts, that by all Jews the Scriptures "were 
 justly believed to be Divine, so that, rather than 
 speak against them, they were ready to suffer tor- 
 ture or even death. "^ It was to a people saturated 
 with this belief that such words as the following 
 were spoken : "Think not that I am come to destroy 
 the law, or the prophets : I am not come to destroy, 
 but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you. Till heaven 
 and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no 
 wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." "The 
 *jot' (we are told) is the Greek iota, the Hebrew yod, 
 the smallest of all the letters of the alphabet. The 
 'tittle' was one of the smallest strokes or twists of 
 other letters." What language, then, could possi- 
 bly assert more plainly that, so far from coming to 
 set up a new religion, as these Christian teachers 
 would tell us, the Nazarene declared His mission to 
 be the recognition and fulfilment of the old Hebrew 
 Scriptures in every part, even to the minutest detail? 
 
 And much that is distinctly miraculous in those 
 
 ■* The Revised Version emphasises the force of Sia in such passages 
 as Matt. i. 22: "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the 
 Lord through the prophet." 
 
 2 Josephus, Contra Apion, i. 8. 
 
 53 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religioit 
 
 Scriptures was specially adopted in His teaching; 
 as, for example, Noah's deluge; the destruction of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah ; Jonah and the fish ; Aloses 
 and the burning bush ; the heaven-sent manna in 
 the wilderness; Elijah and his mission to the widow 
 of Sarepta; Elisha and the cure of Naaman's lep- 
 rosy by bathing in the Jordan. 
 
 But, we are told, though Christ was essentially 
 Divine, he laid aside His Divinity with a view to 
 His mediatorial work. And His ministry was 
 marked by the imperfections of human knowledge. 
 In proof of this, appeal is made to the Apostolic 
 statement that He "emptied Himself." Strange it 
 is that men who hold "verbal inspiration" in such 
 contempt should lay such stress upon the words of 
 Scripture! But let that pass. The subject will come 
 up again : suffice it here to say that the Apostle's 
 language will not support the heresy that is based 
 upon it. True it is that no stronger term could be 
 found to describe the great Renunciation by which 
 the Son of God stripped Himself of all the insignia 
 of Deity. But this involved no change of personal- 
 ity. When King Alfred became a drudge in the 
 swineherd's cottasfe, he divested himself of all the 
 externals of royalty, but he did not cease to be 
 King Alfred. And the story of the burnt cakes loses 
 its significance and charm if we forget that it was 
 with full consciousness of who and what he v/as 
 that he bore the peasant's reprimands. And the 
 words of Christ give overwhelming proof that 
 throughout His earthly ministry He bore His suf- 
 ferings with full knowledge of His origin and glory, 
 
 54 
 
is Christiaiiiiy Divine ? 
 
 and that His teaching was not characterised by 
 human ignorance, but by Divine authority. 
 
 If this be forgotten, moreover, the Apostolic ex- 
 hortation loses all its meaning. For it is based on 
 this, that with full knowledge of His riches the Son 
 of God came down to poverty ; that with the fullest 
 consciousness of His Deity ''He emptied Himself 
 and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was 
 made in the likeness of men."^ 
 
 The dilemma in which this places the Christian 
 is inexorable. If Christ was Divine, the truth of 
 everything adopted and accredited by His teaching 
 is placed beyond question. To plead that, with a 
 view to advance His Messianic claims, He pandered 
 to Jewish ignorance and prejudice, is not only to 
 admit that He was merely human, but to endanger 
 our respect for Him even as a Rabbi. And yet 
 Christian teachers have the temerity to suggest 
 such an explanation of His words. Such a position 
 is utterly untenable. The Christian is, to borrow 
 a legal term, estopped from questioning the inspira- 
 tion of the Old Testament, or the reality of the 
 miracles recorded in it ; and when teachers who pro- 
 fess to be Christians question both, they cannot be 
 surprised if they are charged with being either dis- 
 honest or credulous. 
 
 "But," it may be urged, ''It is not the teaching of 
 Christ which is disparaged, but only the record of 
 
 1 Phil. n. 5-8; cf. 2 Cor. viii. 9. T cannot turn aside here to discuss 
 further the Kenosis theory of the Critics (see Chap. XII. post). Every 
 free and fearless thinker will recognize that if it be valid, it destroys 
 the Christian revelation. I have dealt with the subject in other books — 
 Pseudo-criticism, or the Higher Criticism and its Counterfeit; The 
 Bible and Modern Criticism, etc. 
 
 55 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science mid Religion 
 
 that teaching. It Is here that allowance must be 
 made for Jewish ignorance and prejudice. That 
 the Jews believed their Scriptures to be inspired is 
 admitted, and therefore it was that those who chron- 
 icled the words, of Christ gave that colour to His 
 doctrine. The New Testament is marked by the 
 same imperfections as the Old. It is of priceless 
 value as the record of Divine facts, but it is upon 
 those facts themselves, and not upon the record of 
 them, that Christianity is founded." 
 
 This answer is plausible, but upon examination it 
 will prove to be absolutely fatal. When we turn to 
 the Gospels, we find that of necessity the whole 
 fabric of Christianity stands or falls with our accept- 
 ance or rejection of their claims to be, in the strict- 
 est and fullest sense, authentic. Most true it is 
 that the system rests on facts, and not on writings 
 merely; and this it is, indeed, which distinguishes 
 it from all other religions. But such is the character 
 of the facts on which it is based, that if the record 
 of them be disparaged, belief in these facts is sheer 
 credulity. The public facts of the ministry and 
 death of Christ are as well authenticated as any 
 other events of ancient history. No one questions 
 them. But the entire significance of those facts 
 depends upon their relation to other facts behind 
 them — facts of a transcendental character, and such 
 as no amount of discredited or doubtful testimony 
 would warrant our accepting. 
 
 "But," It may perhaps be answered, ''though the 
 record was human, the Person of whom it speaks 
 was more than human ; the whole argument de- 
 
 56 
 
Is Christianity Divine ? 
 
 pends upon ignoring the great fundamental fact of 
 Christianity, that Christ was Himself Divine." But 
 what is the basis of our belief in the Deity of Christ? 
 The founder of Rome was said to be the divinely 
 begotten child of a vestal virgin. -And in the old 
 Babylonian mysteries a similar parentage was as- 
 cribed to the martyred son of Semiramis, gazetted 
 Queen of Heaven. What grounds have we then for 
 distinguishing the miraculous birth at Bethlehem 
 from these and other kindred legends of the ancient 
 world? 
 
 At this point we are face to face with that to 
 which, I repeat, no consensus of untrustworthy 
 testimony could lend even an a priori probability. If, 
 therefore, the Gospels be not authentic and authorita- 
 tive records of the mission and teaching of Christ, we 
 must admit that Christianity is founded on a Gali- 
 Isean legend. And if we accept the New Testament 
 we are excluded from rejecting the earlier Scrip- 
 tures which were so unequivocally accredited by 
 Christ Himself. If His authority as a teacher be 
 rejected, or the authenticity of the records of His 
 ministry be denied, there is no longer any foothold 
 for faith, for the foundations of Christianity are 
 thus destroyed. And while the superstitious may 
 cling to an edifice built upon the sand, clear-headed 
 and thoughtful men will take refuge in natural re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Whatever may be said, therefore, of the theo- 
 logical school here under review, their religion is 
 not Christianity, and their testimony must be re- 
 jected as of less value even than that of the sacredo- 
 
 57 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 talists. Nor can any one justly take exception to 
 the fairness of this argument. If we be urged to 
 embark in a gold-mine, we naturally ask whether 
 those who commend it to our confidence have them- 
 selves put their money in it. Nor will this avail 
 to satisfy us if we find that they have also invested 
 in other undertakings which we know to be worth- 
 less. And so here : we are entitled to put men upon 
 proof, not only of the sincerity and consistency of 
 their faith, but also of its reasonableness. And we 
 find that the faith of Christians of the one school 
 includes tenets the belief in which implies the degra- 
 dation of reason, and that the unfaith of Christians 
 of the other school undermines Christianity alto- 
 gether. The one school believes too much, the 
 other believes too little. With the one, faith degen- 
 erates into superstititon ; with the other, it merges 
 in a scepticism which is as real, though not as ra- 
 tional or consistent, as is that of many who are com- 
 monly branded as infidels. 
 
 58 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 MR. A. J. Balfour's scheme 
 
 i^TyTE are without any rational ground for be- 
 " lieving in science" ; "We are without any 
 rational ground for determining the logical rela- 
 tion which ought to subsist between science and 
 religion." Such are among the startling theses 
 maintained by the author of A Defence of Philosophic 
 Doubt. And one of the main results of his argu- 
 ment is stated thus: ''In the absence, then, of rea- 
 son, to the contrary, I am content to regard the two 
 great creeds by which we attempt to regulate our 
 lives as resting in the main upon separate bases." 
 A protest this against ''the existence of a whole 
 class of 'apologists' the end of whose labours ap- 
 pears to be to explain, or to explain away, every 
 appearance of contradiction between the two." 
 
 But here Mr. Balfour fails of his usual precision. 
 A definition of religion is wanting. He seems some- 
 times to use the word in its first and widest sense, 
 and at other times as equivalent to a particular sys- 
 tem of belief, and, by implication, to Christianity. 
 A consciousness of our own existence is the founda- 
 tion of all knowledge. And that elementary fact is 
 the first stepping-stone toward an apprehension of 
 the existence of God. It might be fairly argued 
 that our knowledge of the existence of God rests 
 upon a surer basis than our knowledge of the ex- 
 
 59 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 ternal world, and therefore that religion in that 
 sense takes precedence of science. But such a plea 
 is unnecessary, because our knowledge of the exter- 
 nal world is, for the practical purposes of life, abso- 
 lute and unquestioned. We may be content, there- 
 fore, to assert that the two creeds stand upon a per- 
 fect equality.^ 
 
 And, speaking generally, belief in both is univer- 
 sal. There are exceptions, doubtless — as, for ex- 
 ample, "street arabs and advanced thinkers" f but 
 this does not af¥ect the argument. Science depends 
 on our belief in the external world ; religion on our 
 belief in God. Religious feeling springs from the 
 felt relation in which we stand to a supreme Power ; 
 and, as Tyndall justly says, "religious feeling is as 
 much a verity as any other part of human con- 
 sciousness, and against it, on its subjective side, the 
 waves of science beat in vain."^ 
 
 But this relates to what is called natural religion, 
 and it is not until we pass into the sphere of re- 
 vealed religion that the seeming conflict with science 
 arises. The difficulties of practical men, rhoreover, 
 are of a wholly different order from those which 
 perplex the philosophers. Take, for example, the 
 argument against miracles. An intelligent school- 
 boy can see that the solution of the problem de- 
 pends on the answer we make to the question 
 whether there be a God. Even John Stuart Mill 
 admits this. To acknowledge the existence of a 
 
 ^ "My complaint rather is that of the two creeds which, from a philo- 
 sophical point of view, stand, so far as I can judge, upon a perfect 
 equality, one should be set up as a standard to which the other must 
 necessarily conform."—^ Defense of Philosophic Doubt, p. 303. 
 
 2^ Defense of Philosophic Doubt, p. 319. 
 
 3 Virchow and Evolution. 
 
 60 
 
Mr, A, J. Balfour^ s Sclieme 
 
 God possessed of power infinitely greater than that 
 of man, and yet to insist that He must necessarily 
 be a cipher in the world — this may pass for philoso- 
 phy, but a different sort of word would describe it 
 better. 
 
 And as with the so-called ''laws" of science, so 
 also is it with its theories. Excepting only the evo- 
 lution hypothesis, which enjoys a certain amount 
 of popularity, common men care nothing- for them. 
 What weighs with earnest thinkers who are real 
 truth-lovers is that ascertained facts appear to dis- 
 prove the truth of what has been received as a Di- 
 vine revelation. 
 
 But treatises such as those of which A Defence of 
 Philosophic Doubt is a most striking example, are 
 further defective in that they defend religion upon 
 a ground which leaves the apologist equally free to 
 fall back upon superstition, as to vindicate the 
 claims of the Bible to be a revelation. And as a 
 result of this, in discussing the foundations of be- 
 lief they ignore the doctrine of transcendental faith, 
 which is characteristic of Christianity. 
 
 The theological argument from miracles has, at 
 least in its common form, no scientific or Biblical 
 sanction. The fact of a miracle is a proof merely 
 of the presence of some power greater than man's. 
 That such a power is necessarily Divine is an in- 
 ference which reason refuses to accept, and Chris- 
 tianity very emphatically denies.^ 
 
 ^ I have dealt with this subject in discussing Paley's are:ument, in 
 The Silence of God. Scripture is explicit that miracles have been, 
 and may be, the result of demoniacal or Satanic agency. The Jews ac- 
 counted thus for the miracles of Christ, and His answer was an appeal 
 to the moral character of His works. 
 
 01 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 Every one who believes in a God must be pre- 
 pared to admit that there may be creatures in the 
 universe far superior to a man in intelligence and 
 power; and even an atheistic evolutionist would as 
 freely admit this, if he were honest and fearless in 
 his philosophy.^ It is entirely a question of evi- 
 dence. 
 
 But this we need not discuss. As regards the 
 theologian the matter stands thus. He tells us that 
 evil beings exist, endowed with powers adequate to 
 the accomplishment of miracles on earth, and at the 
 same time he maintains that the fact of a miracle is 
 a proof of Divine intervention. But in the New 
 Testament the miracles are never appealed to as an 
 ''evidence," save in connection with the preceding 
 revelation to which they are referred. They accred- 
 ited the Nazarene as being the promised Messiah. 
 And "the fact is allowed," not, as Bishop Butler 
 avers, "that Christianity was professed to be re- 
 ceived into the world upon the belief of miracles," 
 but that the claimant to Messiahship was rejected 
 as a profane deceiver by the very people in whose 
 midst the miracles were wrousfht. 
 
 And it is a further fact that no one of the writers 
 of the New Testament accounts thus for his own 
 faith, or for the faith of his converts. That their 
 faith was an inference from their observation of 
 miracles — that it was due to natural causes at all — 
 is negatived in the plainest terms, and its super- 
 natural origin and character are explicitly asserted. 
 
 1 The atheist, of course, would substitute "'organism" or some kindred 
 word for "creature," 
 
 62 
 
Mr. A. J. Balfour^ s Scheme 
 
 So long as the testimony was to the Jew, miracles 
 abounded; but if the Apostle Paul's ministry at 
 Corinth and Thessalonica may be accepted as typi- 
 cal of his work among Gentiles, his Epistles to the 
 Corinthians and Thessalonians emphatically dis- 
 prove the idea that miracles were made the basis 
 of his preaching. 
 
 A single quotation from each will suffice. "The 
 Jews require a sign" (he says ; that is, they claimed 
 that the preaching should be accredited by miracles), 
 ''and the Greeks seek after wisdom" (that is, they 
 posed as rationalists and philosophers) : "but" (he 
 declares, in contrast with both) "we preach Christ 
 crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto 
 the Greeks foolishness ; but unto them which are 
 called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the Power of 
 God, and the Wisdom of God." And to the Thes- 
 salonians he writes, "When ye received the Word of 
 God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the 
 word of men, but as it is in truth the Word of God." 
 
 Now, no one who will examine these statements 
 fairly can fail to recognise their force and meaning. 
 They do not indicate a belief resulting from the 
 examination of miracles performed by the Apostles, 
 but a faith of an altogether different character. We 
 need to protest against the folly and dishonesty of 
 adapting the teaching of Christ and His apostles to 
 modern views, and calling the name of Christian 
 over the hybrid system thus formed. Such a sys- 
 tem may be admirable, but it is not Christianity. 
 For the Christian is supposed to have a faith which 
 is produced and sustained by his being brought 
 
 63 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 into immediate relations with God. No one, of 
 course, will deny that the God whose creatures we 
 are can so speak to us that His Word shall carry 
 with it the conviction that it is Divine. And if it be 
 demanded why it is that all do not accept it, the 
 Christian will answer that man's spiritual depravity 
 renders a special intervention of the Divine Spirit 
 necessary. 
 
 No one, again, will deny that formerly this part 
 of the Christian system was generally accepted by 
 professed Christians. But it has been given up, 
 of course, by all who have ceased to regard the Bible 
 as a Divine revelation. Naturally so, for the one 
 part of the system depends on the other. None but 
 the superstitious suppose that God speaks to us 
 save through the Scriptures, and once we give up 
 the old belief of Christendom, that the Scriptures 
 are what they claim to be, the Christian theory of 
 faith becomes untenable. 
 
 Christianity stands or falls according to the con- 
 clusion we arrive at here.^ Hence the special diffi- 
 culty which embarrasses the consideration of the 
 question. In litigation, a case can never come be- 
 fore a jury until some definite propositions are 
 ascertained, which the one side maintains and the 
 
 1 It will not avail to urge the undoubted fact that some of the strong- 
 est and most cultured and most subtle intellects of our own age and of 
 preceding ages have accepted the Bible as beine; strictly and altogether 
 God-breathed. The fact is a sufficient proof that there is nothing 
 intrinsically absurd in such a belief, or in the Christian system which 
 depends upon it. Rut if its truth could be tlius established, we must 
 be prepared to accept also whatever is believed by men of equal calibre 
 and fame. But some such believe in transubstantiation, some in evolu- 
 tion, some even in atheism — for atheism is as much a positive faith as 
 theism. 
 
 64 
 
Mr, A. J. Balfour^ s Scheme 
 
 other side denies. But in this controversy "the 
 issues" are never settled. The Hues of attack and 
 defence never meet. The assailant ignores the 
 strength of the Christian position ; and the Chris- 
 tian, entrenched in that position, is wholly un- 
 reached by the objections and difficulties of the 
 assailant. 
 
 A Defence of Philosophic Doubt — to revert to 
 that treatise again for a moment — is an attempt to 
 arbitrate between the two without joining hands 
 Avith either. Its author is liable to be challenged 
 thus : 'Tf your treatise be intended as a defence of 
 natural religion, it is unnecessary ; for there is clear- 
 ly no conflict between science and natural religion. 
 But if it be a defence of revealed religion, that is, of 
 Christianity, it is inadequate; for you must fall back 
 upon the Bible, and if you do so we will undermine 
 your whole position by proving that essential parts 
 of it are inconsistent with" — ''the doctrines of 
 science," the scientist is sure to say, thus destroy- 
 ing his entire argument, and leaving himself help- 
 lessly at the mercy of INIr. Balfour's pitiless logic. 
 But if he were not misled through mistaking his 
 hobby for a real horse, he would say, ''inconsistent 
 with ascertained facts"; and this position, if proved, 
 would refute Christianity. 
 
 For example : the miraculous destruction of the 
 cities of the plain is one of the seemingly incredi- 
 ble things in Scripture. The scientist rejects the 
 narrative as being opposed to science, just as, on 
 the same ground, the African rejected the statement 
 that water became so solid that men could walk 
 
 65 
 
A Doubter* s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 upon it. But if the scientist could fix the site of 
 Sodom and Gomorrah, and point to the condition of 
 the soil as proof that no such phenomenon as is de- 
 tailed in Genesis could have occurred there, the fact 
 would be fatal not only to the authority of the Pen- 
 tateuch, but to the Messianic claims of the Nazar- 
 ene, who identified himself with it. But the scientist 
 can do nothing of the kind. On the contrary, the 
 admitted facts confirm the truth of the Mosaic nar- 
 rative, and those who regard that narrative as a 
 legend would urge that an ignorant and supersti- 
 tious age sought thus to account for the extraordi- 
 nary phenomena of the Dead Sea and the district 
 surrounding it. 
 
 The narrative of the Jewish captivity in Babylon, 
 again, was formerly a favourite battle-ground in this 
 way; and in view of the deciphered cuneiform in- 
 scriptions, and other discoveries of recent years, it 
 is an interesting question whether the Christians or 
 the sceptics displayed the greatest unwisdom in the 
 controversy. 
 
 The fight at this moment wages chiefly round the 
 Mosaic account of the creation. And here it must 
 be admitted that while in theolof^^ical circles no 
 one need hesitate to declare his doubts upon this 
 subject, a man must indeed have the courage of his 
 opinions to own himself a believer in Moses when 
 among the Professors. Intolerance of this kind 
 savours of persecution, and persecution generally 
 secures a temporary success. It Is only the few 
 who ever set themselves to make headway against 
 the prevailing current. If the shout, "Great is 
 
 66 
 
Mr. A. J. Balfaur^s Scheme 
 
 Diana of the Epheslans!" be kept up "by the space 
 of two hours," even staid municipal officials will 
 yield to it; and a two hours' seance of the Profes- 
 sors will silence the doubts of ordinary folk as to 
 the infallible wisdom of science. 
 
 Upon any one in whom polemical instincts are 
 strong, the effect is wholly different, and in all 
 seriousness it may be averred that if Moses had 
 written as a heathen philosopher, his cosmogony 
 would now be held up to the admiration of mankind, 
 and his name would be venerated in all the learned 
 societies of the world. But his writings claim to be 
 a Divine revelation : hence the contempt which they 
 excite in the minds of the baser sort of men, who 
 regard everything which savours of religion as a 
 fraud, and the impatience shown, even by "men of 
 light and leading," toward any one who wishes to 
 keep an open mind upon the subject. 
 
 The Mosaic cosmogony has been called "the 
 proem to Genesis." But more than this, it is an 
 integral part of the proem to the Bible as a whole. 
 And having regard to the importance of the subject, 
 and to the interest which- it excites, a chapter shall 
 be devoted to the consideration of it. 
 
 67 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE COSMOGONY OF GENESIS 
 
 1AVOW myself a believer in the Scriptures, 
 and if a personal reference may be pardoned, 
 I would say that my faith is not to be accounted 
 for either by want of thought, or by ignorance of 
 the objections and difficulties which have been 
 urged by scientists and sceptics. But just as the 
 studies which charm the naturalist are an unknown 
 world to those who are ignorant of the book of 
 nature, so also the elements which make the Bible 
 a fascinating volume to the believer do not exist 
 for those who fail to possess the clew to its mys- 
 teries. "Truth brings out the hidden harmony, 
 where unbelief can only with a dull dogmatism 
 deny.'' 
 
 These words are Pusey's. And in the same 
 connection he says in effect that the Bible is its 
 own defence, the part of the apologist being merely 
 to beat oft* attacks. 
 
 And it is in the spirit of these words that I 
 would deal with the present question. Nor will it 
 be difficult to show that wdiile among scientists 
 generally the cosmogony of Genesis is ''a principal 
 subject of ridicule," their laughter may not, after 
 all, be the outcome of superior wisdom. 
 
 It would be interesting and instructive to recapit- 
 ulate the controvers}' on this subject, and to mark 
 
 68 
 
The Cosmogony of Genesis 
 
 the various positions which have been successively 
 occupied or abandoned by the disputants, as one 
 or another of the fluctuating theories of science has 
 gained prominence, or newly found fossils have 
 added to "the testimony of the rocks." But I will 
 content myself with recalling the main incidents 
 of the last great tournament upon "the proem to 
 Genesis." I allude to the discussion between Mr. 
 Gladstone and Professor Huxley in the pages of 
 the Xineteenth Century some twenty years ago. 
 
 In The Dazvn of Creation and Worship Mr. Glad- 
 stone sought to establish the claims of the Book 
 of Genesis to be a Divine revelation, by showing 
 that the order- of creation as there recorded has 
 been "so afifirmed in our time by natural science 
 that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion 
 and established fact." Mr. Huxley's main assault 
 upon this position was apparently successful. His 
 main assault, I say, because his collateral argu- 
 ments were not always worthy of him. His 
 contention, for example, that the creation of the 
 ''air population" was contemporaneous with that 
 of the "water population" depends upon the quibble 
 that both took place within four and twenty hours. 
 i\Ir. Gladstone proclaimed that science and Gene- 
 sis w^ere perfectly in accord as regards the order 
 of life which appeared upon our globe. To which 
 Mr. Huxley replied as follows : — 
 
 "It is agreed on all hands that terrestrial lizards 
 and other reptiles allied to lizards occur in the Per- 
 mian strata. It is further agreed that the Triassic 
 strata were deposited after these. ^loreover, it is 
 well known that, even if certain footprints are to be 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 taken as unquestionable evidence of the existence of 
 birds, they are not known to occur in rocks earHer 
 than the Trias, while indubitable remains of birds 
 are to be met with only much later. Hence it fol- 
 lows that natural science does not 'affirm' the state- 
 ment that birds were made on the fifth day, and 
 'everything that creepeth on the ground' on the 
 sixth, on which Mr. Gladstone rests his order; for, 
 as is shown by Leviticus, the 'Mosaic writer' in- 
 cludes lizards among his 'creeping things.' " 
 
 The following is the quotation from. Leviticus 
 above referred to : — 
 
 ''And these are they which are unclean unto you 
 among the creeping things that creep upon the 
 earth; the weasel, and the mouse, and the great 
 lizard after its kind, and the gecko, and the land- 
 crocodile, and the lizard, and the sand-lizard, and 
 the chamelon. These are they wdiich are unclean 
 unto 3-0U among all that creep." ^ 
 
 "The merest Sunday-school exegesis, therefore" 
 (Mr. Huxley urged) "suffices to prove that when 
 the Mosaic writer in Gen. i. 24 speaks of creeping 
 things he means to Include lizards among them." 
 
 A charming specimen this certainly Is of "the 
 merest Sunday-school exegesis." The argument 
 which so completely satisfied its author and 
 embarrassed his opponent is nothing but an 
 ad captandum appeal to the chance rendering of our 
 English Bible. If the disputants had referred the 
 question to some more erudite authority than the 
 Sunday-school, they would have discovered that 
 the word translated "creeping thing" in the eleventh 
 chapter of Leviticus has no affinity whatever with 
 
 1 Lev. xi. 29-31, R.V. 
 
 70 
 
The Cosmogony of Genesis 
 
 the word so rendered in the twenty-fourth verse 
 of the first chapter of Genesis, whereas it is the 
 identical word which our translators have rendered 
 "moving creature" in the twentieth verse which 
 records the first appearance of animal life.^ 
 
 Science proclaims the seniority of land reptiles 
 in the genesis of life on earth, and the despised 
 Book of Genesis records that ''creeping things," 
 which, as Huxley insisted, must include land rep- 
 tiles, were the. first "moving creatures" which the 
 Creator's Hat called into existence. 
 
 "Hoist with his own petard" may therefore 
 tersely describe the result of Huxley's attack. 
 
 With his old-world courtesy Mr. Gladstone pro- 
 posed a reference to a distinguished American 
 scientist. "There is no one," Mr. Huxley replied, 
 "to whose authority I am more readily disposed 
 to bow than that of my eminent friend Professor 
 Dana's decision, in the following words, was 
 published in the Nineteenth Century for August, 
 1886. "I agree in all essential points with Mr. Glad- 
 stone, and I believe that the first chapter of Genesis 
 and science are in accord."^ 
 
 But this is not all. Six years later I challenged 
 Mr. Huxley on this subject in the columns of the 
 Times newspaper. He sought to evade the issue 
 by pleading that the real question involved was that 
 
 ^ The word in ver. 24 is reJimes; but in ver. 20 it is shehretz, which 
 occurs ten times in Lev. xi. 
 
 It was left to me to bring this to light, and I received Mr. Glad- 
 stone's cordial acknowledgments for calling his attention to it. 
 
 ^ The Gladstone and Huxley articles appeared in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury in the later months of 1885 and in January and February, 1886. 
 And Mr. Gladstone's articles were in part reproduced in his Impreg- 
 nable Rock of Holy Scripture. 
 
 71 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 of the supernatural versus evolution. This evoked 
 a powerful letter from the late Duke of Argyll, 
 denouncing the reference to the supernatural as 
 savouring of ''bad science and worse philosophy," 
 and warning Mr. Huxley that in the new position 
 in w^iich he sought to take refuge "he would not 
 have the support of the most eminent men of 
 science of the United Kingdom." In a final letter 
 I restated the question, and again challenged Mr. 
 Huxley either to establish or to abandon his 
 contention that Genesis and science were in antag- 
 onism. His only reply was a letter suggesting, in 
 his grandest style, that the public w^ere tired of 
 the controversy. But it was not the public that 
 were tired of it.^ 
 
 The fact remains that Mr. Gladstone's position 
 stands unshaken. The fact remains that one Avho 
 has had no equal in this age as a scientific contro- 
 versialist entered the lists to attack it, and retired 
 discomfited and discredited. Mr. Gladstone's thesis, 
 therefore holds the field. "The order of creation 
 as recorded in Genesis has been so affirmed in our 
 time by natural science that it may be taken as a 
 demonstrated conclusion and established fact." 
 Are we then to conclude that when Genesis was 
 written biological science was as enlightened and 
 as far advanced as it is to-day? Or shall we adopt 
 the more reasonable alternative, that "the Mosaic 
 narrative" is a Divine revelation P^ 
 
 Ji The correspondence above referred to will be found in the Times 
 of January 23 and 26 and February 1, 3, 4, 8, and 11 (1892). 
 
 2 The "mere coincidence" theory is unworthy of notice, for the 
 matheniatician will tell us that the order of any seven events may be 
 <jiven in more than five thousand ways. 
 
 I cannot refrain from adding the following extract from a letter 
 
 72 
 
The Cosmogony of Genesis 
 
 All this of course will weigh nothing with men 
 who have prejudged the question. First, there are 
 the religious teachers of that school whose role it 
 appears to be to import the raw material of German 
 rationalism and to retail it with a veneer of British 
 piety to suit the British market. And, secondly, 
 there are the scientists of the materialistic school, 
 to whom the very name of God is intolerable. 
 
 A few years since, Lord Kelvin's dictum, already 
 quoted,^ gave these men an opportunity of "glory- 
 ing in their shame"; and they eagerly availed 
 themselves of it. His assertion that "scientific 
 thought" compelled belief in God set the whole 
 pack in full cry. The acknowledgment even of "a 
 directive force," they declared, "in efifect wipes 
 out the whole position won for us by Darwin." 
 
 This clearly indicates that the only value they 
 put upon their hypothesis is that it enables them to 
 get rid of God; and if it fails of this it is, in their 
 estimation, worthless. What must be the moral, or 
 indeed the intellectual condition of men who regard 
 the negation of God as "a position won for them" !^ 
 
 I received from Mr. Gladstone after the Times correspondence closed: — 
 
 "As to the chapter itself" (Gen. i.), "I do not regard it merely as 
 a defensible point in a circle of fortifications, but as a grand founda- 
 tion of the entire fabric of the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 1 See p. 23, anie. The Times report of Lord Kelvin's words led to 
 his repeating them in a letter to that journal (May 4, 1903), and this 
 gave rise to the correspondence above referred to. There was a "lead- 
 ing article" upon it on May 13th. 
 
 ~ This is a libel upon Darwin. And in saying this I do not forget 
 his letter of March 29, 1863. to Sir Joseph Hooker. But if that let- 
 ter bears the meaning these men put upon it his words quoted on 
 pe. 25, ante, prove that he is wholly unworthy of respect. My 
 lingering belief in human nature leads me to account for that letter as 
 I would wish to account for Lord Tennyson's avowal of infidelity 
 (^NineteentJi Century, June, 1903, p. 1070). Great men are very human, 
 and when in bad company they sometimes behave like schoolboys and 
 are tempted to say things which in their better moments they would 
 deplore. 
 
 1 may add that a friend of mine who was much with Darwin during 
 
 73 
 
A Doubter s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 But, it may be asked, whar about evolution ? The 
 materialistic evolution of Herbert Spencer is as 
 dead as its author. And even Darwin's more en- 
 lightened biological scheme is now discredited. For 
 it is recognised that something more than Darwin- 
 ism offers is needed to account for the phenomena 
 of life. The evolution h%*pothesis is thoroughly 
 philosophical : and that is all that can be said for it. 
 for it is unproved and seemingly incapable of proof. 
 That "creative power" may have worked in this 
 way may be conceded. But if so, the process must 
 have been divinely controlled and strictly limited. 
 This much is made clear both by the facts of Na- 
 ture and the statements of Scripture; but beyond 
 this we cannot go. 
 
 ''Evolution is an integration of matter and con- 
 comitant dissipation of motion, during which the 
 matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homo- 
 geneity* tc ; ^::ite coherent heterogeneity', and 
 during whicl: :lic retained motion undergoes a paral- 
 lel transformation/' If this cacophonous sentence 
 be translated into English, it will be found to con- 
 tain some element of truth. Herbert Spencer does 
 not here pretend, as the careless reader of his phil- 
 osophy might suppose, that matter itself is capable 
 of producing any such results. Every change is 
 due to motion, and behind motion is the power 
 which causes it. What and where that power 15. 
 Herbert Spencer cannot tell. He calls it Force, but 
 he might just as well term it Jupiter or Baal. Were 
 he to assert that it is unknown, no one could object, 
 
 bis bst ilhiess asares me that be expressed the greatest reverence for 
 res and boce tcsdmooj to their Talnc 
 
 74 
 
The Cosmogony of Genesis 
 
 however much he differed from him. But with the 
 aggressive insolence of unbelief he declares it to be 
 "unknowable," thus shutting the door f:r ever 
 against all religion. 
 
 The Christian reccrrizts the force, and the effects 
 it has produced. '_r I - reftrs all to God. He al- 
 lows a pristine c: :' r '-::er described by the 
 philosopher as ' ar. :. .r.:.::- incoherent homogen- 
 eity''; but as an aiterr.ative formula for expressing 
 this he confidently offers both to the simple and the 
 learned the well-known words. "The earth was 
 waste and void." As he goes en to consider the 
 ^'integration of matter and concomitant dissipation 
 of motion." 'And God said" is his method of ac- 
 counting for the phenomena. The philosopher ad- 
 mits that not even the slightest change can have 
 taken place save as a result of some new impulse 
 imparted by Inscrutable Force. The Christian, in a 
 spirit of still higher philosophy, accounts for every 
 change by Divine inter\-ention. It is thus that he 
 explains the "coherent heterogeneity-" — or, to trans- 
 late these words into the vernacular, the exquisite 
 order and variety of nature. 
 
 Here I turn to the narrative. The earth existed. 
 but it was "desolate and empty." a mere waste of 
 waters, wrapped in impenetrable darkness. The 
 
 changes recorded are, first, the dawn of light, and 
 then the formation of an atmosphere, followed by 
 the retreat of the waters to their ocean bed: then 
 the dry land" became clothed with verdure, and 
 sun and moon and stars appeared. The lausrhter 
 formerly excited by the idea of light apart from 
 
 "5 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 the sun has died away with increasing knowledge ; 
 and, in our ignorance of the characteristics of that 
 primeval light, it is idle to discuss the third-day 
 vegetation. It may possibly have been the "rank 
 and luxuriant herbage" of which our coal-beds have 
 been formed; for one statement in the narrative 
 seems strongly to favour the suggestion that our 
 present vegetation dates only from the fifth or 
 sixth day.^ 
 
 But this brings up the question. What was the 
 creation da^^? No problem connected with the 
 cosmogony has greater interest and importance; 
 none is beset with greater difficulties. The passage 
 itself seems clearly to indicate that the word is 
 used in a symbolic sense. When dealing with a 
 period before man existed to mark the shadow on 
 the dial, and before the sun could have cast that 
 shadow, it is not easy to appreciate the reason, or 
 indeed the meaning, of such a division of time as 
 our natural day. ''Days and years and seasons" 
 seem plainly to belong to our present solar sys- 
 tem, and this is the express teaching of the four- 
 teenth verse. - 
 
 The problem may be stated thus: As man is to 
 God, so his day of four and twenty hours is to the 
 Divine day of creation. Possibly indeed the ''eve- 
 ning and morning" represent the interval of cessa- 
 tion from work, which succeeds and completes the 
 day. The words are, "And there was evening, and 
 there was morning, one day." 
 
 1 Gen. ii. 5, R.V. 
 
 2 That the earth is older than the sun may at one time have ap- 
 peared impossihle, if not ridiculous. I'-ut it seems to be involved in 
 the meteoric hypothesis. 
 
 1^ 
 
The Cos7nogony of Genesis 
 
 The symbolism is maintained throughout. As 
 man's working day is brought to a close by eve- 
 ning, which ushers in a period of repose, lasting till 
 morning calls him back to his daily toil, so the 
 great Artificer is represented as turning aside from 
 His work at the end of each *'day" of creation, and 
 again resuming it when another morning dawned. 
 
 Is not this entirely in keeping with the mode in 
 which Scripture speaks of God? It tells us of His 
 mouth and eyes and nostrils. His hand and arm. 
 It speaks of His sitting in the heavens, and bowing 
 Himself to hear the prayer ascending from the 
 earth. It talks of His repenting and being angry. 
 And if any one cavils at this he may fairly be asked, 
 In what other language could God speak to men? 
 
 Nor let any one fall back on the figment that 
 a Divine day is a period of a thousand years. With 
 God, we are told, a day is as a thousand years, and 
 a thousand years as one day. In a word, the seem- 
 ing paradox of the transcendental philosophy is en- 
 dorsed by the express teaching of Scripture that 
 time is a law of human thought. When, therefore, 
 God speaks of working for six days and resting on 
 the seventh, we must understand the words in the 
 same symbolic sense as when He declares that His 
 hand has made all these things.^ 
 
 But the mention of the creation sabbath is the 
 crowning proof of the symbolic character of the 
 creation "day." God "rested on the seventh day 
 from all His work which He had made." Are we, 
 then, to suppose that He resumed the work when four 
 
 1 Isa. Ixvi. 2. 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 and twenty hours had passed? Here, at least, reve- 
 lation and science are at one : the creation sabbath 
 has continued during all the ages of historic time. 
 God is active in His universe, pace the atheist and 
 the infidel, but the Creator rests. Having regard 
 then to the admitted fact that the creation sabbath 
 is a vast period of time, surely the working days of 
 creation must be estimated on the same system. 
 
 My object here, however, is not to frame a sys- 
 tem of interpretation, but rather to enter a protest 
 against confounding the express teaching of Scrip- 
 ture with any system of interpretation whatever. 
 Nor am I attempting to prove the inspiration, or 
 even the truth of Scripture. My aim is merely to 
 *'beat off attacks." I hold myself clear of the sin 
 of Uzzah. I am not putting my hand upon the ark : 
 as Dante pleaded, I am dealing with the oxen that 
 are shaking the ark — unintelligent creatures who 
 have no sense of its sanctity, or even of its worth. 
 
 And here I am reminded of Huxley's words, "that 
 it is vain to discuss a supposed coincidence be- 
 tween Genesis and science unless we have first 
 settled, on the one hand, what Genesis says and, 
 on the other, what science says." This is admirable. 
 Let us distinguish, therefore, between ''what Gene- 
 sis says" and what men say about Genesis. And 
 let us not be either misled or alarmed by attacks 
 upon the Mosaic cosmogony, based on *'the merest 
 Sunday-school exegesis" on the one hand, or on the 
 theories of science on the other. The facts of 
 science in no way clash Avith Scripture. And as the 
 prince of living scientists declares — I quote Lord 
 
 78 
 
The Cosmogony of Genesis 
 
 Kelvin's words again — "scientific thought is com- 
 pelled to accept the idea of creative power." 
 
 Of the origin of our world the first chapter of 
 Genesis tells us nothing save that *'in the begin- 
 ning," whenever that was, God "created" it. It 
 may be, as Tyndall said in his Belfast address, that 
 "for aeons embracing untold millions of years, this 
 earth has been the theatre of life and death." But 
 as to this the "Mosaic narrative" is silent. It deals 
 merely with the renewing and refurnishing of our 
 planet as a home for man. And this, moreover, to 
 prepare the foundation for the supreme revelation 
 of redemption. Let the authority of Scripture be 
 undermined, and the whole fabric of the Christian 
 system is destroyed. But in these easy-going days 
 the majority of "those who profess and call them- 
 selves Christians," being wholly destitute of the en- 
 thusiasm of faith, are helpless when confronted by 
 the dogmatism of unbelief. It is a day of opinions, 
 not of faith, and widespread apostasy is the natural 
 result.^ 
 
 ■^ While correcting the proofs of these pages I have received a news- 
 paper report of a sermon preached by the Bishop of Manchester in his 
 Cathedral, in which he justifies the rejection of Gen. i., because "it 
 seems to be an intellectual impossibility that God should reveal to man 
 an exact account of the creation of the universe." _ But there is not a 
 word in Gen. i. about "the creation of the universe," save in the 
 opening sentence. The word "create" is not used again till we come 
 to the work of the fifth and sixth "days" (verses 21 and 27). And 
 when it is said that God "made" the two great lights and the stars, 
 the word is the same as that used elsewhere of "making" a feast. And 
 when it is said that He "set" them in the heavens, it is the same word 
 as is used of "appointing" cities of refuge. (See Appendix, Note I.) 
 
 The inferences to be drawn from this I cannot discuss here. But 
 it shows that Huxley was right: "What Genesis says" is but little 
 understood. 
 
A Doubterh Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 '"an agnostic's apology'' 
 
 THE natural attitude of a thinking mind to- 
 ward the supernatural is that of scepticism." 
 Scepticism, not agnosticism. The sceptic halts 
 at the cross-roads to take his bearings; but at 
 sight of a cross-road the agnostic gives up his jour- 
 ney altogether. True scepticism connotes intellec- 
 tual caution, but agnosticism is intellectual suicide. 
 
 Not so, it will be said, for agnosticism merely be- 
 tokens the prudence that refuses to proceed if no 
 plain signpost marks the way. But in this life it is 
 not by plain signposts that we have to direct our 
 steps. The meaning of a word moreover must be 
 settled by use, and not by etymology; and this 
 word was coined to express something quite dififer- 
 ent from scepticism. It is the watchword of a 
 special school. And no one will dispute that the 
 late Sir Leslie Stephen may be accepted as an au- 
 thoritative exponent of the teaching of that school. 
 Let us then turn to his treatise entitled An Agnostic's 
 Apology. 
 
 A book about dress would not ofifend us by ridi- 
 culing and denouncing our conventional clothing as 
 uncomfortable, unhealthy, and inartistic. But if 
 the writer went on to urge that we should discard 
 all covering, and go about in our native nakedness, 
 his lucubrations would only excite amusement or 
 
 80 
 
^^An Agnostic's Apology''^ 
 
 disgust. And no one who sympathises with the 
 main argument of the preceding chapters would find 
 much fault with Leslie Stephen's treatise if it were 
 merely an exposure of the superstitions and errors 
 and follies that have corrupted "the Christian re- 
 ligion" and discredited theological controversy. 
 But when he goes on to preach agnosticism as a 
 positive *'faith," and to formulate it as an ideal 
 ''creed/' he stands upon the same level as the 
 preacher of nakedness. 
 
 His Apology opens with a definition of agnosti- 
 cism. "That there are limits to the sphere of human 
 intelligence," no one of course denies. But the 
 agnostic further asserts "that those limits are such 
 as to exclude at least what Lewes called *metem- 
 pirical' knowledge," and "that theology lies within 
 this forbidden sphere." And the meaning of this is 
 emphasised by his statement of the alternative posi- 
 tion — a position which he rejects with scorn — "that 
 our reason can in some sense transcend the narrow 
 limits of experience." 
 
 Now there is a grotesquely transparent fallacy in 
 this ; and I will illustrate it by a grotesquely child- 
 ish parable. As regards what is happening next 
 door at this moment my condition is that of blank 
 agnosticism. My reason can tell me nothing, and 
 happily the partition wall is thick enough to prevent 
 my senses from enlightening me. But if my neigh- 
 bour comes in to see me, my ignorance may be at 
 once dispelled, and my reason "transcends the nar- 
 row limits of my experience." And so here. Every- 
 body admits that in the spiritual sphere reason can 
 
 81 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 tell us nothing. Therefore, our author Insists, we 
 are of necessity agnostics. Not so, the Christian 
 replies, for God has given us a revelation. 
 
 The agnostic's rejoinder will be to reject my 
 implied definition of ''experience," and to deny the 
 possibility of a revelation. And if he were an 
 atheist his denial would be reasonable and consis- 
 tent. But Leslie Stephen's repudiation of atheism 
 undermines his whole position. To acknowledge 
 the existence of a God whose creatures we are, and 
 at the same time to deny on a priori grounds that 
 He can reveal Himself to men — this savours of 
 neither logic nor philosophy. 
 
 If some one came to my house purporting to be 
 the bearer of a letter from my brother, the fact of 
 my having no brother would be a sufficient reason 
 for refusing to receive him. But if I had a brother 
 I should be bound to admit the visitor and read the 
 letter. My having a brother would not prove the 
 genuineness of the letter, but it would make it in- 
 cumbent on me to examine it. And while the fact 
 that there is a God does not establish the truth of 
 Christianity, it creates an obligation to investigate 
 its truth. But the agnostic shuts the door against 
 all inquiry. His agnosticism is positive and dog- 
 matic. It is based on a deliberate refusal to con- 
 sider the matter at all. 
 
 This being so his 'Apology is merely a psean in 
 praise of ignorance, and a sustained appeal to preju- 
 dice. And he makes free use of the well-known 
 nisi prills trick of diverting attention from the real 
 issue by heaping ridicule upon his opponents. His 
 
 82 
 
^^An Agnostic's Apology " 
 
 dialectical juggling about the free-will controversy 
 is a notable instance of this. For as he does not 
 pretend to deny that will is free, his fireworks, 
 effective though they be, all end in smoke. A like 
 remark applies to his discussion about virtue and 
 vice. And his reference to Cardinal Newman is a 
 still more flagrant example of his method. For if 
 Newman is responsible for the statement that "the 
 Catholic Church affords the only refuge from the 
 alternatives of atheism or agnosticism," it merely 
 exemplifies the fact that very great men may say 
 very foolish things. In view of the faith of the 
 Jew, and the facts of Judaism, such a dictum is 
 quite as silly as it is false. 
 
 But even if, for the sake of argument, we should 
 admit everything by which this apostle of agnosti- 
 cism attempts to establish his opening theses, the 
 great problem which he ignores would remain, like 
 some giant tree round which a brushwood fire has 
 spent itself. For the real question' at issue is not 
 whether, as he seems to think, theologians are fools, 
 nor even whether Christianity is true, but whether 
 a Divine revelation is possible. And by his refusal 
 on a priori grounds to accord to Christianity a 
 hearing, he puts himself out of court altogether. 
 His position is not that of enlightened and honest 
 scepticism ; it is the blind and stupid infidelity of 
 Hume. It is the expression, not of an intelligent 
 doubt whether *'God hath spoken unto us by his 
 Son," but an unintelligent denial that God could 
 speak to men in any way. It is a deliberate and 
 systematic refusal to know any thing beyond what 
 
 83 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 unaided reason and the senses can discover. His 
 agnosticism is — to adopt his own description of it 
 — a "creed"; and were we to emulate his method, it 
 might be contemptuously designated a creed of 
 mathematics and mud. 
 
 As a philippic against Christianity, An Agnostic's 
 Apology is all the more effective because its pro- 
 fanities, like its fallacies, are skilfully veiled. And 
 yet the tone of it is deplorable. In England at least, 
 cultured infidels are used to speak of Christianity 
 with respect, remembering that it is the faith of 
 the apostles and the martyrs — the faith, moreover, 
 professed to-day by the great majority of men who 
 hold the highest rank in the aristocracy of learning. 
 But a very different spirit marks this treatise. In 
 the writer's estimation the great doctrines of that 
 faith are but ''old husks," and the profession of 
 them is only ''bluster." And he challenges the 
 Christian to "point to some [Christian] truth, how- 
 ever trifling," that "will stand the test of discussion 
 and verification." 
 
 That challenge the Christian can accept without 
 misgiving or reserve. And the doctrine on which 
 he will stake the issue is not a "trifling" one, but 
 the great foundation truth of the Resurrection. 
 
 In writing to the Christians of Corinth, the Apos- 
 tle restates the Gospel which had won them from 
 Paganism. And the burden of it is the Saviour's 
 death and resurrection. "That Christ died for our 
 sins" is a truth which, in the nature of things, ad- 
 mits of no appeal to human testimony. But though 
 the Resurrection is equally the subject of positive 
 
 84 
 
An Agnostic's Apology " 
 
 revelation, the Apostle goes on to enumerate wit- 
 nesses of it, whose evidence would be accepted as 
 valid by any fair tribunal in the world. Once and 
 again all the Apostles saw their Lord alive on earth 
 after His crucifixion. And on one occasion He was 
 seen by a company of more than five hundred dis- 
 ciples, most of whom were still living when the 
 Apostle wrote. 
 
 The Rationalists suggest tjiat belief in the Resur- 
 rection was the growth of time, ''when a haze of 
 sentiment and mysticism had gathered around the 
 traditions of Calvary." But this figment is explod- 
 ed by the simple fact that the interval was meas- 
 ured by days and not by years. The disciples, 
 moreover, were quite as sceptical as even these 
 "superior persons" would themselves have been. 
 One of the eleven Apostles, indeed, refused to be- 
 lieve the united testimony of his brethren, and for a 
 whole week adhered to the theory that they had 
 seen a ghost. But the Lord's appearances were not 
 like fleeting visions of an "astral body" in a dark- 
 ened room. He met the disciples just as He had 
 been used to do in the past. He walked with them 
 on the public ways. He sat down to eat with 
 them. And more than all this, He resumed His 
 ministry among them, renewing in detail His teach- 
 ing about Holy Scripture, and confirming their faith 
 by a fuller and clearer exegesis than they had till 
 then been able to receive. 
 
 Such was their explicit testimony. And in view 
 of it the Rationalist gloss is utterly absurd. It is 
 sheer nonsense to talk of a haze of sentiment, or of 
 
 85 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religiuii 
 
 Oriental superstition, or of overstrained nerves. If 
 the Resurrection was not a reality, the Apostles, 
 one and all, were guilty of a base conspiracy of 
 fraud and falsehood. Credulous fools they certainly 
 were not, but profane impostors and champion liars 
 — no terms of reprobation and contempt would be 
 too strong to heap on them. And this is what un- 
 belief implies, for in no other way can their testi- 
 mony to the Resurrection be evaded. 
 
 And in addition to this direct evidence, there is 
 abundant evidence of another kind. At the betrayal 
 all the disciples were scattered and went into hid- 
 ing. But at Pentecost these same men came for- 
 ward boldly, and preached to the Jews assembled 
 in Jerusalem for the festival. And Peter, who had 
 not only forsaken Him, but repeatedly denied with 
 oaths that he ever knew Him, was foremost in de- 
 nouncing the denial of Him by the nation. Some- 
 thing must have happened to account for a trans- 
 formation so extraordinary. And what was it? 
 Only one answer is possible — The Resurrection. 
 
 But further. While the three years' ministry of 
 Christ and his Apostles produced only about a hun- 
 dred and twenty disciples in the city of Jerusalem,^ 
 this Pentecostal testimony brought in three thou- 
 sand converts.^ Nor was this the mere flash of a 
 transient success. Soon afterwards the company of 
 the disciples was more than trebled.^ For we read 
 "the number of the men came to be about five 
 thousand,"^ and we may assume that the women 
 converts were at least as numerous. A little later 
 
 Acts i. 15, 2 Ibid. ii. 41. 3 Ibid. iv. 4. 
 
 86 
 
An Agnostic's Apology '^ 
 
 again, we are told, they were further joined by 
 "multitudes both of men and women. "^ And later 
 still, the narrative records, *'the number of the dis- 
 ciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly ; and a great 
 company of the priests were obedient to the faith. "^ 
 All this, moreover, occurred at a time when the 
 opposition of the Sanhedrim and the priests was 
 fiercer and more organised even than before the 
 crucifixion. How then can it be explained? Only 
 one answer is possible — The Resurrection. 
 
 But even this is not all. We have other indirect 
 evidence, still more striking and conclusive. To 
 suppose that the Christianity of the Pentecostal 
 Church was a "new religion" is an ignorant blunder. 
 The disciples preached to none but Jews; all the 
 converts without exception were Jews f and by the 
 religious leaders of the nation they were regarded 
 as an heretical Jewish sect. When the Apostle 
 Paul was put on his defence before Felix, the charge 
 against him was not apostasy but heresy. He was 
 a "leader of the sect of the Nazarenes." And what 
 was his answer to that charge? "According to the 
 Way (which they call a sect) so worship I the God 
 of our fathers, believing all things which are writ- 
 ten in the law and in the prophets."* His position, 
 he thus maintained in the most explicit terms, was 
 that of the orthodox Jew. 
 
 Now there was no ordinance to which the Jews 
 adhered more rigidly than that of the Sabbath. 
 How was it then that with one consent they began 
 to observe the first day of the week? The sceptic 
 
 1 Acts V. 14. 2 Ibid. vi. 7. » Ibid. vii. 1, cf. xi. 19. 
 
 * Acts xxiv. 5, 14. 
 
 87 
 
A Doubter ^s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 may hint at parallels for their success in proselytis- 
 ing, but here is a fact that cannot be thus dismissed. 
 Something of an extraordinary kind must have hap- 
 pened to account for it. What was it then? Only 
 one answer is possible — The Resurrection. 
 
 I am not ignorant of the methods by which in- 
 fidelity has sought to account for the empty tomb. 
 The lie of the Jewish priests — that the disciples 
 stole the body — is too gross for modern rational- 
 ism ; and as an alternative explanation, we are told 
 that Christ had not really died ! And Dr. Harnack, 
 the greatest of living rationalists, disposes of the 
 matter by treating the Resurrection as a mere "be- 
 lief." "It is not our business," he says, "to defend 
 either the view which was taken of the death, or the 
 idea that He had risen again." And he adds: 
 ''Whatever may have happened at the grave and in 
 the matter of the appearances, one thing is certain : 
 this grave was the birthplace of the indestructible 
 belief that death is vanquished, that there is a life 
 eternal." And again : "The conviction that ob- 
 tained in the apostolic age that the Lord had really 
 appeared after His death on the cross may be re- 
 garded as a coefficient." It is not that the fact of 
 the appearances was "a coefficient," but merely the 
 belief that there were appearances. For his mean- 
 ing is made clear by his going on to refer to the 
 "coefficient" of a mistaken expectation of Christ's 
 return.^ There are no facts of any kind in this 
 scheme, but merely "beliefs" and "views" and 
 "ideas." And this being so it involves the absolute 
 
 1 What is Christianity t Saunder's translation, pp. 155, 162, 173. 
 
^^An Agnostic's Apology " 
 
 rejection of the Gospel narrative, and therefore it 
 destroys the only ground on which discussion is 
 possible. 
 
 Here then is our answer to the agnostic's chal- 
 lenge. There are circumstances in which it is idle 
 to speak of spiritual truth; but the resurrection of 
 Christ is a public fact accredited by evidence which 
 will "stand the test of discussion and verification." 
 And when the agnostic denies that Christianity can 
 supply an answer to as much as one of "the hideous 
 doubts that oppress us,"^ the Christian points to 
 that Resurrection as dispelling the most grievous 
 of all the doubts that darken life on earth. For the 
 resurrection of Christ is the earnest and pledge of 
 the resurrection of His people. Such then is the 
 Christian's hope. "A sure and certain hope" he 
 rightly calls it; nor will he be deterred by the 
 agnostic's denunciation of the words as "a cutting 
 piece of satire."- 
 
 Notwithstanding petulant disavowals of atheism, 
 the real issue here involved is not the fact of a reve- 
 lation, but the existence of God — a real God, not 
 "the primordial germ," nor even the Director- 
 General of evolutionary processes, but "the living 
 and true God." From all who acknowledge such a 
 God we are entitled to demand an answer to the 
 Apostle's challenge when he stood before Agrippa : 
 "Why should it be thought Incredible with you that 
 God should raise the dead?"^ 
 
 1 Apology, p. 41. 2 Ibid., p. 4. 
 
 ' Acts xxvi. 8. The Ttap I'/UiV is emphatic. It is not clear whether 
 in this he was addressing the Jews, or appealing from their unbelief to 
 the intelligence of his Roman judges. 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 And this suggests a closing word. Leslie Stephen 
 avers with truth that the "enormous majority of 
 the race has been plunged in superstitions of vari- 
 ous kinds." But the philosophers always omit to 
 tell us how this imiversal craving for a religion can 
 be accounted for. And while they are vainly seek- 
 ing for the solution of the enigma in the monkey 
 house of the Zoological Gardens, sane and sensible 
 folk who make no pretensions to be philosophers 
 will continue to find it in the Genesis story of the 
 Creation and the Fall.^ 
 
 * No one surely will suppose that tlie foregoing is a full statement 
 of the evidence for the Resurrection. To compress such a statement 
 into such a compass would be a feat unparalleled in Apologetics. But 
 even this partial and most inadequate statement is amply sufificient as 
 an answer to Leslie Stephen's challenge. 
 
 What has here been urged in proof of the Resurrection is proof that 
 it was neither a delusion nor a fraud. For the moral and spiritual 
 elements involved are more significant even than the physiological. I 
 might_ further appeal to the baptism of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, 
 the visible proofs of which are vouched for by the men who experi- 
 enced it. And I might appeal to the Ascension and, in connection with 
 it, to the Transfiguration, which I may remark, the Apostle Peter 
 records as matter of evidence (2 Peter i. 15-19), 
 
 90 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE IRRATIONALISM OF INFIDELITY 
 
 CHRIST is still left" is the solace Mill would 
 offer us as we survey the wreck which ra- 
 tionalism makes of Faith. To that life he appeals 
 as supplying a "standard of excellence and a model 
 for imitation." "Who among His disciples," he 
 demands, "was capable of inventing the sayings 
 ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the character 
 revealed in the Gospels?" Do not such words as 
 these suggest that if Christianity would waive its 
 transcendental claims and make terms with unbe- 
 lief, the record of that life might afford the basis 
 for a universal religion, a really "Catholic" faith? 
 But who and what was this "Jesus" of the Ra- 
 tionalist, whose life is to be our model? The 
 answer to this simple question will expose the fal- 
 lacy of the whole position. The Christ of the 
 Gospels was the Son of God, who worked miracles 
 without number, and who claimed with the utmost 
 definiteness and solemnity that His words were in 
 the strictest sense a Divine revelation. But as re- 
 gards His miracles, the Rationalist tells us that His 
 biographers were deceived ; and as for His teaching 
 they misunderstood and perverted it. But if they 
 blundered thus in matters as to which ordinary 
 intelligence and care would have made error or 
 mistake impossible, how can we repose any trust 
 
 91 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 whatever in their records? AVhat materials have 
 we from which to construct a Hfe of Christ at all? 
 
 And if we decide that these Scriptures are not 
 authentic, and that Christ was merely human, the 
 Sermon on the Mount sinks to the level of a homily 
 which Matthew framed on the traditions of his 
 Master's words. And as for the Fourth Gospel, 
 having regard to the time when it was written, and 
 to the fact that the Synoptics know nothing of its 
 distinctive teaching, vv^e must acknowledge that for 
 such chapters as those which purport to record ''the 
 most sacred of all sacred words," spoken on the 
 eve of the Crucifixion, we are mainly indebted to 
 the piety and genius of "the beloved disciple." The 
 modern Jew, moreover, cannot be far astray when 
 he insists that Paul was the real founder of the 
 Christian system. His was "the boldest enter- 
 prise" as Dr. Harnack declares, for he ventured on 
 it "without being able to appeal to a single word of 
 his Master's." If men would but use their brains, 
 they would see that once we drift away from the 
 anchorage of the old beliefs, nothing can save us 
 from being drawn into the rapids which end in 
 sheer agnosticism. This does not prove the truth 
 of Christianity, but it exposes the untenableness of 
 the infidel position. 
 
 These infidel books habitually assume that, if 
 we refuse their nostrums, superstition is our only 
 refuge. This is quite in keeping with the amazing 
 conceit which characterises them. AVisdom was 
 born with the Agnostics ! They have monopolised 
 the meagre stock of intelligence which the evolu- 
 
 92 
 
The Irrationalism of Infidelity 
 
 tionary process has as yet produced for the guid- 
 ance of the race! But there are Christians in the 
 world who have quite as much sense as they have, 
 who detest superstition as much as they do, and 
 who have far more experience in detecting fallacies 
 and exposing frauds. And if such men are Chris- 
 tians it is not because they are too stupid to be- 
 come infidels. 
 
 For faith is not superstition ; and in presence of a 
 Divine revelation unbelief betokens mental obli- 
 quity, if not moral degradation. Thoughtless peo- 
 ple are betrayed into supposing that there is some- 
 thing very clever in ''not believing." But in this life 
 the formula 'T don't believe" more often betokens 
 dull-wittedness than shrewdness. It is the refrain 
 of the stupidest man upon the jury. A mere nega- 
 tion of belief moreover, is seldom possible; it gen- 
 erally implies belief in the alternative to what we 
 reject. The sceptic may hesitate, in order to exam- 
 ine the credentials of a revelation. But no one who 
 has a settled creed ever hesitates at all. And the 
 Atheist has such a creed; he believes that there is 
 no God. If we do not believe a man to be honest, 
 we usually believe him to be a fraud. If we refuse 
 the testimony of witnesses about matters that are 
 too plain and simple to allow of mere misapprehen- 
 sion or honest mistake, we must hold them to be 
 impostors and rogues. And nothing less than this 
 is implied in the position held by men like Her- 
 bert Spencer and Leslie Stephen. 
 
 But the infidel will deny that he impugns the 
 integrity of the Apostles and Evangelists; he only 
 
 93 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 questions their intelligence. He asks us to believe 
 that they were so weak and credulous that their 
 testimony to the miracles, for example, must be 
 rejected. But the miracles were not rare incidences 
 of dark-room seances; they were public events 
 which occurred day by day, and usually in the 
 presence of hostile critics. No person of ordinary 
 intelligence, therefore, could have been mistaken as 
 to the facts. What then do we know of the men on 
 whose evidence we accept them? Their writings 
 have been translated into every known language. 
 They hold a unique place in the classic literature 
 of the world, and the sublime morality and piety 
 which pervade them command universal admiration. 
 Certain it is therefore that if the New Testament is 
 to be accounted for on natural principles, its authors 
 must have been marvellously gifted, both intellec- 
 tually and morally. And yet these are the men 
 whose testimony is to be flung aside with contempt 
 when they give a detailed description of events 
 which happened in open day before their eyes. To 
 talk of offering them a fool's pardon is absurd. If 
 their narratives be false, we must give up all con- 
 fidence in human nature, and write them down as an 
 abnormally clever gang of abnormally profane im- 
 postors and hypocrites. But this alternative is 
 more untenable than the other. It is absolutely 
 certain that the men of the New Testament were 
 neither scoundrels nor fools. 
 
 And no more than this is needed to undermine 
 the infidel position. It is not necessary to prove 
 that the Gospels are a Divine revelation ; it will 
 
 94 
 
The I rraiionalism of hi fide lily 
 
 suffice to show that they are credible records ; and 
 this much is guaranteed to us by the character of 
 the men who wrote them. As a test case let us 
 take the miracle of the feeding of the five thouaand, 
 recorded in all the four Gospels. I begin with the 
 First. And I will not speak of the writer as "Saint" 
 Matthew, the Apostle of Christ, but of Matthew 
 the ex-tax-collector. Such a man, we may be sure, 
 was at least as shrewd and as suspicious as any of 
 the infidels who with amazing conceit dispose of his 
 testimony. He records that on a certain day, in 
 a "desert place," he assisted in distributing bread 
 and fish to a vast multitude that gathered to hear 
 the Lord's teaching — there were five thousand men 
 besides women and children ; that the supply was 
 five loaves and two fishes; that "they did all eat 
 and were filled, and they took up of the fragments 
 that remained twelve baskets full." And this is 
 confirmed by the writer of the Fourth Gospel, who 
 also took part in the distribution of the food, and 
 who gives details which prove the accuracy with 
 which he remembered what occurred. If we as- 
 sume that the other Evangelists were not present, 
 their narratives become incidentally important as 
 showing that the miracle was matter of common 
 knowledge and discussion among the disciples. 
 
 Miracles of another kind the infidel gets rid of 
 to his own satisfaction by taking each in detail and 
 appealing to what we know of the infirmity of 
 human testimony, or the effects of hysteria and the 
 power of mind or will over the body. But this 
 miracle is one of many that cannot possibly be 
 
 95 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 accounted for on natural principles. And mistake 
 or illusion was no less impossible. That "the nar- 
 rative arose out of a parable" is the nonsense of 
 sham sceptics and real fools.^ For the witnesses 
 were admittedly neither idiots nor rogues, but men 
 of the highest intelligence and probity. And this 
 being so the facts are established, and the only ques- 
 tion open is, What explanation can be given of 
 them? What explanation is possible save that 
 Divine power was in operation?- 
 
 The infidel therefore, so far from being the 
 philosopher he pretends to be, is the blind dupe 
 of prejudice. And this is in efifect the defence 
 pleaded for Voltaire by his latest English apologist. 
 To him we are told rinfdme, "if it meant Chris- 
 tianity at all, meant that which was taught in Rome 
 in the eighteenth century, and not by the Sea of 
 Galilee in the first"; "it meant the religion which 
 lit the fires of Smithfield and prompted the tortures 
 of the Inquisition."^ In a word, Voltaire was ignor- 
 ant of the distinction between Christianity and 
 what is called "the Christian religion." Not strange, 
 perhaps, in the case of an eighteenth century 
 Frenchman, but inexcusable in the case of cultured 
 Englishmen of our own times. For the distinction 
 is clear upon the open page of Scripture and of his- 
 tory. How indeed can it be missed by any one who 
 has read the story of the martyrs?* For the mar- 
 
 1 Encyc. Biblica, article "Gospels," § 142. 
 
 2 The Atheist, while admitting that the evidence is adequate and 
 trustworthy, refuses to accept the miracle, because he holds on a priori 
 grounds that miracles are impossible! Thus it was that Hume got rid 
 of certain miracles the evidence for which he admitted to be satisfactory 
 and complete. 
 
 3 Miss Tallantyre's Life of Voltaire. 
 
 * What sort of God have those who believe that He could ever for- 
 
 96 
 
The Irrattonalism of Infidelity 
 
 tyrs were the representatives and champions of 
 Christianity: "the Christian reHgion" it was that 
 tortured and murdered them. But this is a digres- 
 sion. 
 
 While the aggressive infidel has no special claim 
 to consideration, the honest-minded sceptic is en- 
 titled to respect and sympathy. And never was 
 the path of the truth-seeker more beset with diffi- 
 culties. For the development of the rival aposta- 
 sies of the last days, so plainly revealed in Scrip- 
 ture, goes on apace. On the one side there is a 
 national lapse toward the errors and superstitions 
 from which we supposed the Reformation had for 
 ever delivered us, and on the other there is an 
 abandonment of the great truths to which the 
 Reformation owed its power. 
 
 These apostasies moreover are well organized 
 under zealous and able leaders. And while their 
 discordant cries are ever in our ears, "truth is fal- 
 len in the street." In the National Church the 
 great Evangelical party has effaced itself, and 
 fallen into line behind the champions of the pagan 
 superstitions of "the Christian religion."^ And 
 though in the "Free" churches, as in the Estab- 
 lishment, there are great numbers of true and earn- 
 est men who refuse to bow the knee to any Baal, 
 
 give those hideous crimes of "the Professing Church"? His grace 
 toward the individual sinner is infinite, but a corporation God never 
 forgives. But the fulfilment of Rev. xviii. 4-8 belongs to a time still 
 future. And see p. 99 post. 
 
 1 Bishop Lightfoot of Durham and Dr. Salmon of Dublin would, I 
 suppose, be regarded by all Evangelicals as among the greatest theo- 
 logians of our time; and their writings might serve to check the present 
 apostasy of the Church of England, Lightfoot's treatise on the Mm- 
 istry, for example, (Epistle to the Philippians), supplies a crushing 
 answer to the pricstlv pretensions now in the ascendant. But to-day 
 these great men and their writings are contemptuously ignored. 
 
 97 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 the only corporate testimony ever heard is ''the 
 gospel of humanity," which, as Scripture warns us, 
 will lead at last to the worship of the Antichrist. 
 We are pestered by the nostrums of ''feather-headed 
 enthusiasts who take the first will-o'-the-wisp for 
 a safe guide, and patch up a new religion out of 
 scraps and tatters of half-understood science," or of 
 quasi-Christian ministers who are busy "framing 
 systems of morality apart from the ancient creeds" 
 and "trying to evolve a satisfactory creed out of 
 theosophical moonshine."^ 
 
 In the past, superstition and rationalism were the 
 open enemies of the faith, but now they are en- 
 trenched within the citadel, and half the churches 
 and chapels in the land are places to be shunned. 
 Organised Christianity is becoming an organised 
 apostasy, and the time seems drawing near when 
 practical expression must be given to the cry, "To 
 your tents, O Israel !" "The very Church of God 
 which ought to be the appeaser of God is the pro- 
 voker of God." These words seem as apt to-day as 
 when they were written fifteen centuries ago. 
 
 I will here avail myself of the language of a 
 great commentator and divine, Dean Alford of Can- 
 terbury. After speaking of the apostasy of "the 
 Jewish Church" beginning with the worship of "the 
 golden calf," he proceeds as follows: — 
 
 "Strikingly parallel with this runs the history of 
 the Christian Church. Not long after the Apostolic 
 times, the golden calves of idolatry were set up by 
 
 ^ These words were not penned with reference to Sir Oliver Lodge's 
 Catechism or "the New Theology"; they are taken from Sir Leslie 
 Stephen's Apology (pp. 339, 354). 
 
 98 
 
The Irrationalts7n of Infidelity 
 
 the Church of Rome. What the effect of the cap- 
 tivity was to the Jews, that of the Reformation has 
 been to Christendom. The first evil spirit has been 
 cast out. But by the growth of hypocrisy, secular- 
 ity, and rationalism, the house has become empty, 
 swept and garnished: swept and garnished by the 
 decencies of civilisation and the discoveries of secu- 
 lar knowledge, but empty of living and earnest 
 faith. And he must read prophecy but ill, who does 
 not see under all these seeming improvements the 
 preparation for the final development of the man of 
 sin, the great repossession, when idolatry and the 
 seven [other more wicked spirits] shall bring the 
 outward frame of so-called Christendom to a fear- 
 ful end."i 
 
 1 Greek Test. Com., Matt. xii. 43-45. Alford is not speaking here 
 of the Spiritual Church, the Body of Christ, of which Christ Him^ 
 self is at once the Builder and the Head (Matt. xvi. 18; Eph. i. 22, 23) 
 but of the Professing Church on earth, the administration of which 
 was entrusted to men. The one ends in glory, the other in apostasy 
 and judgment. The religion of Christendom confounds the one with 
 the other; and it also confounds the Church with "the kindom of 
 heaven," the "keys" of which were committed to the Apostle of the 
 Circumcision. 
 
 The following weighty words relating to the Church on earth are 
 quoted from Canon T. D. Bernard's Progress of Doctrine (The Bamp- 
 ton Lecture, 1864) : — 
 
 "How fair was the morning of the Church! how swift its progress! 
 what expectations it would have been natural to form of the future 
 history which had begun so well! Doubtless they were formed in 
 manv a sanguine heart; but they were clouded soon. ... 
 
 "While the Apostles wrote, the actual state and the visible tendencies 
 of things showed too plainly what Church history would be; and at the 
 same time, prophetic intimations made the prospect still more dark. . . . 
 
 "I know not how any man, in closing the Epistles, could expect to 
 find the subsequent history of the Church essentially different from what 
 it is. In those writings we seem, as it were, not to witness some passing 
 storms which clear the air, but to feel the whole atmosphere charged 
 with the elements of future tempest and death. ... 
 
 "The fact which I observe is not merely that these indications of 
 the future are in the Epistles, but that they increase as we approach 
 the close, and after the doctrines of the Gospel have been fully wrought 
 out, and the fulness of personal salvation and the ideal character of 
 the Church have been placed in the clearest light, the shadows gather 
 and deepen on the external history. The last words of St. Paul in 
 the Second Epistle to Tiirothv, and those of St. Peter in his Second 
 Epistle, with the Eoistles of St. John and St. Jude, breathe the lan- 
 guage of a time in "which the tendencies of that history had distinctly- 
 shown themselves; and in this respect these writings form a prelude and 
 a passage to the Apocalypse." qq 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 A sceptic's plea for faith 
 
 ONE who is himself a sceptic both by tem- 
 permanent and by training can appreciate the 
 difficulties of the honest truth-seeker. And to 
 such I would offer the assurance of respectful sym- 
 pathy, and such counsel as my own experience may 
 enable me to give. 
 
 And first, I would say with emphasis, Ignore the 
 atheistical section of the scientists. To quote the 
 words of ''that prince of scientists'* Lord Kelvin, 
 *'If you think strongly enough you will be forced 
 by science to the belief in God."^ And I would add, 
 quoting Lord Kelvin again, "Do not be afraid of 
 being free thinkers." For the free thinker will re- 
 fuse to be either prejudiced or discouraged by the 
 confusion and error which abound on every side, 
 and which have always marked the history of the 
 professing Church. 
 
 Fifteen centuries ago the great Chrysostom de- 
 plored that even in those early days, every Christian 
 ordinance was parodied, and every Christian truth 
 corrupted. And if it be demanded, Where can we 
 look for guidance amid the din of the discordant 
 cries which beat upon our ears to-day? his words 
 may best supply the answer : — 
 
 "There can be no proof of true Christianity," he 
 says, "nor any other refuge for Christians wishing 
 
 '^Christian Apologetics, see p. 23 ante. 
 
 100 
 
A Sceptic's Plea for Faith 
 
 to know the true faith, but the Divine Scriptures. 
 . . . Therefore the Lord, knowing that such a con- 
 fusion of things would take place in the last days, 
 commands on that account that Christians should 
 betake themselves to nothing else but the Scrip- 
 tures" (Matthew, Hom. XLIIL). 
 
 'The Scriptures!" some one may exclaim, "but 
 what about Moses and Jonah and Daniel?" Some 
 people will believe nothing, unless they can believe 
 everything. But men who make fortunes in com- 
 merce are content with small beginnings, enough 
 for the necessaries of life. The "Catholic Church," 
 it is true, would hand us over to "the secular arm" 
 for failing, not only to accept the whole Bible, but 
 to swallow all its own superstitions. And to fit us 
 for this achievement, Pascal's advice would be to 
 take to "religion." For, he said, "that will make 
 you stupid, and enable you to believe."^ 
 
 But a very different spirit marks the Divine deal- 
 ings with sinful men. "He that cometh unto God 
 must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder 
 of them that diligently seek Him." "That He is" : 
 for not a few of the difficulties which men find in 
 the Bible are practically atheistical. And if even 
 in the natural sphere it is the "diligent seeker" who 
 succeeds, no one need wonder if in the spiritual 
 sphere it is the "diligent seeker" who secures the 
 treasure. 
 
 Here then is my advice to any who are troubled 
 with sceptical doubts: Be in earnest; and begin at 
 the beginning. God does not require of us that 
 
 1 Quoted from the Preface to Matthew Arnold's God and the Bible. 
 
 101 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 before we come to Him we shall believe in Daniel 
 and Jonah and Moses. But, to render the words 
 with slavish literalness, "It is necessary for the 
 comer unto God to believe that He exists, and that 
 He is a rewarder of them that seek Him out." 
 Men do not find pearls upon the open beach, or 
 nuggets of gold upon the public road. Even in 
 this world the principle of "the narrow way" pre- 
 vails. And it is only the few who find it. Even in 
 the mundane sphere, success is not for the trifler or 
 the faddist. But while in this world the diligent 
 seeker is often thwarted, and sometimes crushed, 
 it is never so with God : He never says, "Seek ye 
 Me in vain." 
 
 I repeat then, "Do not be afraid of being free 
 thinkers." In peace-time a war-ship may carry top- 
 hamper without endangering her safety; but in 
 presence of an enemy the first order is to clear the 
 decks. And in these days, when it is necessary to 
 "contend earnestly for the faith once delivered," we 
 cannot be too fearless or too ruthless in jettisoning 
 all error and superstition. The schoolboy's defini- 
 tion of "faith" is not the right one : he described it 
 as "believing what we know to be untrue." The 
 God of revelation is the God of nature ; and in the 
 spiritual, as in the natural sphere, there are difH- 
 culties which perplex and distress us. But though 
 the Word of God, like the works of God, may be 
 full of mystery, it is wholly free from falsehood and 
 folly. 
 
 Some one may object that the truth here urged is 
 quite too elementary to be vital. But elementary 
 
 102 
 
A SceMic's Plea for Faith 
 
 truths are often the deepest, and always the most 
 important. And it is a significant fact that, in view 
 of the completed revelation of Christianity, the last 
 of the doctrinal books of the New Testament closes 
 by reiterating this most elementary of all truths: 
 We know that the Son of God is come and has 
 given us an understanding that we may know Him 
 that is true. . . . This is the true God." Faith be- 
 gins by giving up belief in the Deity as a mere 
 abstraction, like "the Monarchy" or "the State," 
 and learning to believe in "the living God" who is 
 "the Rewarder of them that seek Him." This is 
 the alpha of the alphabet of faith. We reach the 
 omega when, giving up "the historic Jesus," we 
 come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, "the Son 
 of God." Just as "all the law and the prophets" 
 are included in love to God and our neighbour, so, 
 in the same sense, the whole revelation of Chris- 
 tianity is an unfolding of this truth. Not, as the 
 rationalist has it, "that a man of the name of Jesus 
 Christ once stood in our midst," but that "the Son 
 of God is come," He who was in the beginning with 
 God, and who was God, and by whom all things 
 were made" — that He once stood in our midst. 
 "God hath spoken to us in His Son." 
 
 "But," It may be said, "there Is a fallacy here. 
 Belief in God belongs to the sphere of natural 
 religion, but belief In Christ depends upon revela- 
 tion; and this raises the question of the inspiration 
 of Scripture." I challenge that statement. The 
 question of inspiration Is of vital importance in Its 
 own place, but this is not Its place. Here and now 
 
 103 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 we are concerned with facts — the public facts of 
 the ministry of Christ, including His miracles and 
 His resurrection from the dead. For the genuine- 
 ness of the records is admitted, and, as we have 
 seen, their authenticity is guaranteed by the 
 character of the men who wrote them. And I 
 need not repeat the argument that the denial of 
 their inspiration compels us to form a still higher 
 estimate of their personal competence.^ 
 
 In order to evade the force of their testimony 
 the infidel points to the lapse of time since these 
 events occurred, and he tries to raise a cloud of 
 prejudice by ringing the changes on the apostasy 
 of the Christian Church. But this is only nisi prius 
 claptrap. The significance of facts such as those 
 we have here in view cannot be impaired either by 
 the lapse of centuries or by any amount of human 
 failure and folly. I put this question therefore to 
 all fair and earnest thinkers. Suppose the ministry 
 of Christ belonged to the nineteenth century, 
 instead of the first, what effect would it have upon 
 you? How would you account for it? Is not the 
 only reasonable explanation of it this, *'that the 
 Son of God is come"? 
 
 The New Testament records but one apostolic 
 sermon addressed to a heathen audience. Jews 
 could be referred to the Hebrew Scriptures in proof 
 ''that Jesus was the Christ." But when preaching 
 to the Areophagites of Athens the Apostle appealed 
 to their own religion, the writings of their poets, 
 and the phenomena of nature, to prove the existence 
 of an intelligent, personal, and beneficent God ; and 
 
 ^ See p. 94 ante. 
 
 104 
 
A Sceptic's Plea for Faith 
 
 he pointed to the resurrection of Christ in proof 
 that God had declared Himself to men. The times 
 of ignorance which God could overlook were past. 
 ''He now commandeth all men everywhere to 
 repent"; for agnosticism has become a sin that 
 shuts men up to judgment, ^'whereof He hath 
 given assurance unto all men in that He hath raised 
 Him from the dead." ^ 
 
 There is not a word here about the inspiration 
 either of writings or of men. That is a question 
 for "the household of faith," the home circle of the 
 family of God. But here we have to do with what 
 concerns ''all men everywhere." And, I repeat, the 
 fact that " the Son of God is come," and the solemn 
 warning that judgment is assuredly to follow, are 
 wholly unaffected by accidents of time or place. 
 I am not fencing with professional sceptics, but 
 appealing to real truth-seekers, and upon such I 
 again press the question, What bearing has this 
 upon you? 
 
 No one who will read these pages is more scep- 
 tical than the writer of them, none who feels a 
 stronger antipathy to superstition and error and 
 nonsense. But the falsehoods and follies of "the 
 Christian religion" in its many phases, whether 
 venerable or newfangled, must not be allowed to 
 obscure the issue here involved. "The Son of God 
 is come." And in view of that supreme fact God 
 commands repentance, "for He has appointed a day 
 in the which He will judge the world in righteous- 
 ness by that man whom He has ordained." 
 
 And in that day no one will be condemned 
 
 lActs xvii. 22-31. 
 
 105 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 because he did not belong to this Church or that, 
 or because he failed to accept the inspiration of one 
 book or another. The judgment will turn on this, 
 ''that God sent His Son into the world." Here are 
 His own words — the words of Him who is Himself 
 to be the Judge; ''This is the condemnation, that 
 light is come into the world, and men loved dark- 
 ness rather than light because their deeds were evil." 
 
 A blind and unreasoning infidelity denies the 
 resurrection. But to aver that God could not 
 raise Christ from the dead is practical atheism : 
 to aver that He would not raise Him from the dead 
 is mere nonsense; and to assert that He did not 
 raise Him from the dead is to deny a public fact, 
 *'the certainty of which can be invalidated only by 
 destroying the foundations of all human testimony." 
 
 And by the resurrection He was "declared to be 
 the Son of God." ^ How else can the resurrection 
 be explained? What other significance can possi- 
 bly be assigned to it? That Christ Himself claimed 
 to be the Son of God is not a matter of inspiration 
 but of evidence. His crucifixion by the Jews estab- 
 lishes it. The Jews were not savages who murdered 
 their Rabbis. They honoured them. But, we read, 
 when He said, "Before Abraham was, I am, then 
 took they up stones to cast at Him." And when 
 He said, "I and My Father are one, then the Jews 
 took up stones again to stone Him." And in an- 
 swer to His remonstrance they exclaimed "Thou 
 being a man makest thyself God."- If He was not 
 Divine He was a blasphemer, and by their law 
 
 1 Rom. i. 4. 
 
 2 John viii. 58, 59; x. 30-33. 
 
 106 
 
A Sceptic's Plea for Faith 
 
 deserved to die. But the resurrection proved Him 
 to be Divine. 
 
 And can the appalHng fact that the Son of God 
 has thus died at the hands of men be dismissed 
 as a mere incident in history, or as a commonplace 
 of religious controversy! *'As He had laid aside 
 His glory, He now restrained His power, and 
 yielded Himself to their guilty will. In return for 
 pity He earned but scorn. Sowing kindnesses and 
 benefits with a lavish hand, He reaped but cruelty 
 and outrage. Manifesting grace, He was given up 
 to impious law without show of mercy or pretence 
 of justice. Unfolding the boundless love of the 
 heart of God, He gained no response but bitterest 
 hate from the hearts of men." The fate of the 
 heathen who have never heard of Him rests with 
 God ; but to us the Cross must of necessity bring 
 either blessing or judgment. In presence of it we 
 must take sides. And he who takes sides with God 
 is safe. 
 
 And now, having reached this stage, can we not 
 advance another step? ''Scientific thought compels 
 belief in God." And here "Agnosticism assumes 
 a double incompetence, the Incompetence not only 
 of man to know God, but of God to make Himself 
 known. But the denial of competence is the nega- 
 tion of Deity. For the God who could not speak 
 would not be rational, and the God who would not 
 speak would not be moral. The idea of a written 
 revelation, therefore, may be said to be logically 
 involved in the notion of a living God." And with 
 overwhelming force this applies to the matter here 
 
 107 
 
A Doubter'* s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 at issue. If ''the Son of God is come," is it credible, 
 it is possible, that God has not provided for us an 
 authentic record of His mission and ministry? 
 Even the credulity of unbelief might well give way 
 under the strain of such a supposition. Whether 
 you describe it as "inspiration" or "providence" — 
 call it by what term you please — must not the exis- 
 tence of such a record be assumed? If men are 
 doubters here, it must be because they doubt either 
 that "God is," or that "the Son of God is come." 
 But "we knozv that the Son of God is come." With 
 certainty, therefore, we accept the record. And 
 here are His words: — 
 
 "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
 even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that 
 whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but 
 have eternal life. For God so loved the world that 
 He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever 
 believeth in Him should not perish, but have ever- 
 lasting life." 
 
 And if this be Divine truth, who will dare to 
 cavil at the words which follow: "He that believeth 
 on Him is not condemned : but he that believeth 
 not is condemned already, because he hath not 
 believed in the name of the only begotten Son of 
 God." ^ 
 
 It is not death that decides our destiny, but our 
 acceptance or rejection of the Gospel of Christ. 
 For the consequences of receiving or rejecting Him 
 are immediate and eternal. 
 
 ijohn iii. 14-18. 
 
 108 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 HOW TO READ THE BIBLE 
 
 THE preceding chapter opened by quoting 
 words spoken by the most eminent of living 
 scientists : this chapter shall be prefaced by quoting 
 a man of the highest eminence in another sphere— 
 the greatest philologist of our time. The following 
 is an extract from a letter written in one of the 
 later years of his life by Prof. Max Miiller of 
 Oxford :— 
 
 "How shall I describe to you what I found in the 
 New Testament ! I had not read it for many years 
 and was prejudiced against it. The light which 
 struck Paul with blindness on his way to Damascus 
 was not more strange than that which fell on me 
 when I suddenly discovered the fulfilment of all 
 hopes. ... If this is not Divine I under- 
 stand nothing at all. In all my studies of the 
 ancient times I have always felt the want of some- 
 thing, and it was not until I knew our Lord that 
 all was clear to me." ^ 
 
 Testimonies of this kind— and they might be 
 multiplied indefinitely — have no efifect upon the 
 aggressive infidel. But they cannot fail to influence 
 honest and earnest men who are willing to deal 
 fairly with the Scriptures. 
 
 And here another testimony of a wholly diflferent 
 kind will be opportune. Among the many learned 
 
 * This letter was publisked in the Standard newspaper of May 20, 
 
 1905 
 
 109 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 and brilliant assailants of the Bible whom Germany 
 has produced, no name ranks higher than that of 
 Ferdinand Christian Baur, the leader of "the 
 Tubingen School" of critics, by whom the New 
 Testament was rejected "as a tissue of deceptions 
 and forgeries." Among living exponents of the 
 so-called "Higher Criticism" Germany possesses 
 no greater authority than the Principal of Berlin 
 University. But the result of Baur's labours Dr. 
 Harnack dismisses as "an episode" which had bet- 
 ter be forgotten ; and as the outcome of his own 
 investigations, he declares, "The oldest literature 
 of the Church, in all main points and in most 
 details, from the point of view of literary criticism, 
 is genuine and trustworthy." ^ 
 
 The importance of this testimony can scarcely 
 be exaggerated. For Dr. Harnack is as uncom- 
 promising a rationalist as was Baur himself. And 
 when this great scholar and critic, reviewing Baur's 
 conclusions, vouches for the genuineness and trust- 
 worthiness of the New Testament writings, the 
 most sceptical of men may rest assured that we 
 possess reliable records of the ministry of Christ 
 and His Apostles. 
 
 And now may we not appeal to any who are 
 really honest doubters to face this matter with an 
 open mind? To such we would say, begin your 
 Bible study, not with Genesis or Jonah, but with 
 
 ^ The Chronology of the Oldest Christian Literature. He adds: "In 
 the whole New Testament there is in all probability only a single writing 
 that can be looked upon as pseudonymous in the strictest sense of 
 the word— i.e. 2 Peter." I infer, however, from his book, What is 
 Christianity? that the exigencies of his rationalistic scheme, as un- 
 folded in that work, compelled him to place the Fourth Gospel in the 
 same category. 
 
 110 
 
How to Read the Bible 
 
 the historical books of the New Testament. Max 
 Miiller's study of them, in spite of his avowed 
 prejudice, convinced him that Christianity was 
 Divine, and you may expect to reach the same 
 conclusion. 
 
 And when you come upon difficulties and seem- 
 ing contradictions, pass them by. They will 
 possibly appear to you in a different light when 
 you come back to them afterwards with a more 
 educated mind. It is always so in the study of 
 Nature, and it is not strange that it should be so 
 in the sphere of revelation. And as you read the 
 Gospel narratives keep in view the purpose with 
 which "these things were written," namely "that 
 ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son 
 of God, and that believing, ye might have life 
 through His name." ^ They deal, therefore, with 
 issues the most important and solemn that can 
 possibly occupy the thoughts of men. For they 
 reveal the secret of peace, and even of joy, in a 
 world that is full of doubt and sadness and sorrow 
 and pain and sin and death. That evil is a mere 
 fantasy, and sin but a defect of character or pur- 
 pose — this is the dream of fools. These things are 
 terribly real. And if it be not true that "the Son 
 of God is come" — if Christianity be a delusion or 
 a fraud — we must resign ourselves to the "deepen- 
 ing gloom" of life in this world unrelieved by any 
 hope beyond it. 
 
 And what is the alternative? What if Christianity 
 be true? The answer shall be given by one whose 
 
 1 John XX. 31. 
 
 Ill 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 testimony will command universal respect and 
 confidence, the late Earl Cairns, three times Lord 
 High Chancellor of England, and the greatest 
 Chancellor perhaps of modern times. The follow- 
 ing words were spoken by him to a company of 
 working men, that included agnostics and infidels 
 who deprecated any reference to ''religion" on the 
 occasion : — 
 
 ''As I am a stranger among you I do not know 
 that I have any right to intrude my opinions. All 
 I can do is to tell you how this question afifects 
 me personally. If I could take you to my home 
 you would think it a luxurious one, and the food 
 on my table is abundant. You would say that with 
 all this I ought to be a happy man. I am indeed 
 a happy man, but I do not think my furniture and 
 food have much to do with it. Every day I rise 
 with a sweet consciousness that God loves me and 
 cares for me. He has pardoned all my sins for 
 Christ's sake, and I look forward to the future with 
 no dread. And His Spirit reveals to me that all 
 this peace is only the beginning of joy which is to 
 last throughout eternity. Suppose it were possible 
 for someone to convince me that this happiness 
 was altogether a delusion on my part, my home 
 would give me little repose, and food would often 
 remain upon the table untasted. I should wake in 
 the morning with the feeling that it was scarcely 
 worth while to get up, so little would there be to 
 live for; all would be so dark to me." 
 
 "What is it about?" is a legitimate question to 
 112 
 
How to Read the Bible 
 
 ask when a book is placed in our hands. And an 
 intelligent answer to that question, as we open the 
 Bible, will save us from many a prejudice and many 
 an error. It is strange that any one can be deceived 
 by the figment that the Old Testament is the his- 
 tory of the human race. Except for a brief preface 
 of eleven chapters, its burden is unmistakably the 
 history of that people *'of whom, as concerning the 
 flesh, Christ came." It has, indeed, an esoteric 
 meaning, for its hidden purpose is to foretell, and 
 lead up to, that supreme event. But this shall be 
 dealt with in the sequel. 
 
 This clew to the true character and vital unity 
 of the Bible will guard us against another popular 
 error. '*To us there is but one God," the Apostle 
 writes ; but most people have two — the God of 
 Nature and providence, and the God of revelation. 
 And a great many Christians have three; for with 
 them the God of the Old Testament is not the God 
 of the New. This error is largely due to a false 
 conception of the place held by the Jew in the 
 previous dispensation ; and as the result of it the 
 semi-infidel "Christian literature" of the day uses 
 language about Israel's Jehovah Avhich I will not 
 pollute the page by reproducing here. It represents 
 Him as callously devoting the mass of men to 
 destruction, and having no care or thought save 
 for one specially favoured race. This betrays 
 extraordinary ignorance of Scripture. 
 
 The Bible begins by recording the Creation and 
 the Fall, the apostasy of the sinful race, the world 
 judgment of the Flood, and the post-diluvial apos- 
 
 113 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science mid Religion 
 
 tasy of Babylon. And then follows the call of 
 Abraham. The religion of Babylon was a syste- 
 matised perversion of Divine truth. Its ''Bible'* 
 travestied both the primeval revelation of which 
 the opening chapters of Genesis contain the authen- 
 tic record and the sacrificial cult by which God 
 sought to teach mankind that death was the penalty 
 of sin. The earlier apostasy had been wiped out by 
 the Flood, but God had in mercy promised that 
 that judgment would never be repeated.^ And the 
 truth and value of that promise were displayed 
 in the call of Abraha.m and the segregation of the 
 covenant people. The Divine purpose was thus to 
 guard the truth from corruption, and to establish 
 a centre from which it might enlighten the world. 
 
 Among the many advantages enjoyed by the 
 favoured people, the greatest was ''that unto them 
 were committed the oracles of God."- When the 
 owner of some famous vineyard establishes an 
 agency in London or New York, his object in doing 
 so is not to hinder the public from procuring his 
 wines, but to ensure that what is sold as his shall 
 be genuine and pure. And agency, as distinguished 
 from monopoly, illustrates the position which in the 
 old dispensation was Divinely accorded to the Jew. 
 
 In days before books were within reach of all, 
 the knowledge of literature and the arts was kept 
 alive in certain great seats of learning, and in like 
 manner it was intended that the light of Divine 
 truth should be kept burning in Jerusalem, and 
 that the Temple of Zion should be "a house of 
 
 1 Gen. viii. 21, 22 
 a Rom. iii. 1, 2. 
 
 114 
 
How to Read the Bible 
 
 prayer for all nations."^ But just as the Christian 
 Church of this dispensation has failed, so the "Jew- 
 ish Church" was false to its trust. And as the 
 result the God of the New Testament is blasphemed 
 by infidels, and the Jehovah of the Old Testament 
 is blasphemed by Christian Professors of theology. 
 
 Errors of another kind prevail, which we need 
 to guard against. Here is a typical one. Israel 
 was a theocracy, and therefore the Divine code 
 included, not merely "the moral law," but enact- 
 ments of various kinds relating to social and 
 commercial life, sanitation, and crime. If all 
 Scripture be "God-breathed," we may be assured 
 that all is "profitable";- but yet we must use it 
 with mtelligent discrimination. "Every creature 
 of God is good, and nothing to be rejected." But 
 we do not on that account feed our babies on beef 
 and potatoes. Some people do so, indeed; and they 
 are not more unintelligent than the Christians who 
 ply their children with these ordinances of the 
 Mosaic code, when they ought to be giving them 
 "the sincere milk of the Word." 
 
 A somewhat similar abuse of Scripture is 
 denounced in the Sermon on the Mount. People 
 imagine that love is the abrogation of law, but 
 
 1 Mark xi. 17 (R.V.); Isa. Ivi. 7. This appears in the plainest way 
 in the great dedication service of the Temple (see 2 Chron. vi.- 32, 33, 
 about "the stranger who is not of Thy people Israel, but is come 
 from a far country ... if they come and pray in this house, 
 then hear Thou . . . that all people of the earth may know Thy 
 name and fear Thee"). In this connection reference may be made 
 also to the precepts of the law for hospitality and kindness in the 
 treatment of foreigners. They have no parallel in the code of any 
 Christian country. 
 
 2 In writing on crime I have given grounds for believing that if the 
 two main features of the Mosaic code were accepted in our criminal 
 law the reform would lead to a substantial and immediate decrease of 
 crime. 
 
 U5 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 Scripture teaches that it is the ''fulfilling" of it. 
 Therefore it was that to "the Beatitudes" the Lord 
 immediately added words to guard against the 
 error, which half of Christendom has adopted, of 
 supposing that His purpose was to set aside, or in 
 some way to disparage, the law. But the law had 
 two aspects. Christianity itself knows no higher 
 standard than love to God and one's neighbour; 
 and this was expressly declared to be the esoteric 
 teaching of the Mosaic law. In this aspect of it 
 the law proclaimed what a man ought .to he; in 
 its lower aspect it prohibited what men ought not to 
 do. But in this its lower form "the law was not 
 made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and 
 disobedient." And yet "the righteousness of the 
 Scribes and Pharisees" consisted in non-violation 
 of the "Thou shalt not's" of the penal code of the 
 theocracy. But what was not the righteousness 
 of those who desired to be sons of the Father in 
 heaven, nor would it give entrance into the King- 
 dom. Theirs was a far different standard of life 
 than mere discharge of their responsibilities as citi- 
 zens of the Commonwealth.^ 
 
 Error is altogether human and may be detected 
 by the use of our natural faculties. Hence our 
 Lord's indignant rebuke addressed to the Pharisees, 
 
 ^ Comnare the 20th with the 45th verse of Matt. v. Immediately 
 preceding verse 20 is the express statement that "one jot or one tittle 
 shall in no wise pass from the law." Immediately following it are the 
 instances above referred to, beginning "Ye have heard that it was said 
 to [not by} them of old time, Thou shalt not kill," etc. As a citizen 
 a Jew committed no crime in being angry with his brother; but as a 
 child of his I-'ather in heaven (verse 45) he was guilty of sin. The 
 formula "Ye have heard," etc., repeated in verses 21, 27, 33, 38, 43, 
 clcarlv indicates that the Lord was referring to the teaching of their 
 instructors, and probably to some "catechism" in common use. For it 
 was not in this fashion that He was used to quote Holy Scripture, 
 
 116 
 
How to Read the Bible 
 
 *'How is it that even of yourselves ye do not judge 
 what is right?" Lord Kelvin's dictum therefore 
 is apt and useful : "Do not be afraid of being free 
 thinkers." But a caution is needed here. While 
 common sense may save us from much of the error 
 and nonsense by which the language of the Bible 
 is perverted or obscured, our natural faculties will 
 not avail to reveal to us its deeper teaching. For 
 Divine truth is spiritually discerned, and therefore 
 spiritual intelligence is needed for the apprehension 
 of it. And there are difficulties in the Bible which 
 even spiritual intelligence will fail to solve, 
 difficulties which seem nearly as insoluble and dis- 
 tressing as are God's providential dealings with His 
 people in their life on earth.^ 
 
 But such difficulties cannot shake the faith of 
 those who have learned to trace the golden threads 
 of type and promise and prophecy, which are 
 spread through all the sacred writings, giving proof 
 of their unity and testifying to their Divine author- 
 ship. **These are they which testify of Me" was 
 the Lord's description of the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 And in His post-resurrection ministry, we are told, 
 "beginning at Moses, and all the prophets, He 
 expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the 
 things concerning Himself." On this Dean Alford 
 writes: "I take the [words] to mean something 
 very different from mere prophetical passages. 
 The zvhole Scriptures are a testimony to Him; the 
 whole history of the chosen people, with its types, 
 
 * It IS a most significant fact that the greatest difficulties in Scrip- 
 ture are of this character. If the wavs of God in providence so often 
 try our faith, it is not strange that this method should be true also of 
 the words of God in revelation. 
 
 117 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 and its law, and its prophecies, is a showing forth 
 of Him: and it was here the zvlwle that He laid 
 before them." ^ 
 
 And these golden threads unite the later with 
 the earlier Scriptures. Indeed, the Gospels belong 
 as much to the Old Testament as to the New. For 
 the Christ of the Gospels is ''the son of David, the 
 son of Abraham." And the ministry there recorded 
 is that of the Jews* Messiah. It is not till we come 
 to the Epistles that we are confronted by the new 
 and startling fact that Divine Scriptures are 
 addressed to Gentiles. And the Acts of the Apos- 
 tles explains the change. Because they rejected 
 the Messiah, the covenant people are themselves 
 rejected. Their position as the Divine agents upon 
 earth is determined, and the Gospel now goes out 
 unfettered to the world. 
 
 The unbelief of infidels is seldom as unintelligent 
 as that of professing Christians. ''Back to Christ" 
 is the shibboleth of a school that seeks to set one 
 part of Scripture against another, and to disparage 
 the ministry of Paul. But unless Christ was to 
 come back in person, the new and special revelation 
 consequent upon the great dispensational change 
 involved in setting aside the earthly people must 
 needs have been made by the ministry of human 
 lips and pen ; and Divine sovereignty made choice 
 of the Apostle of the Gentiles. And to disparage 
 the Apostle Paul, or the revelation entrusted to 
 him, is not to get back to Christ, but to put our- 
 
 ^ This is too commonly ignored; and as the result very many present- 
 day expositors betray ignorance of the language in which the New 
 Testament is written — not Greek (for that is merely the outward shell) 
 but the types and prophecies of the earlier Scriptures. 
 
 118 
 
How to Read the Bible 
 
 selves back into the position which the Gentiles 
 occupied in the days of His earthly ministry. 
 
 The intelligent student of Scripture will find 
 ever increasing proofs of what Pusey aptly calls 
 its "hidden harmony." "Not harsh and crabbed, 
 as dull fools suppose" is the poet's vindication of 
 "divine philosophy"; and with still fuller meaning 
 and deeper truth may these words be used of the 
 Divine Book. 
 
 119 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
 
 "DlBLE students nowadays seem to be haunted 
 ^^ by the grim spectre of the /'Higher Criti- 
 cism." But if instead of running away from ghosts 
 we face them boldly, our fears generally give place 
 to feelings of contempt or indignation. And this 
 is the experience of many who have fearlessly 
 examined what are called ''the assured results of 
 modern criticism." The fact that these attacks 
 upon the Bible originated with German rationalism 
 formerly barred their acceptance by Christians of 
 the English-speaking world. But in our day they 
 have been accredited by distinguished scholars on 
 both sides of the Atlantic, whose reputation for 
 piety and reverence for things Divine is deemed 
 a guarantee that they are legitimate and harmless 
 I am not referring to that admirable and useful 
 system of Bible study to which the title of Higher 
 Criticism properly belongs/ but to "the Higher 
 Criticism" in inverted commas — a German rational- 
 istic crusade against the Scriptures. The New 
 Testament was at one time its chief objective; and 
 we have seen with what results.- The much 
 vaunted conclusions of the Tubingen School of 
 critics are now relegated to the same limbo as the 
 Bathybius of the scientists.^ And it may be pre- 
 
 1 It has for its aim to settle the human authorship of the sacred 
 books, and the circumstances in which they were written. 
 
 2 See p. 110 ante. s See p. 45 ante. 
 
 120 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 dieted with confidence that a generation hence the 
 present-day attacks upon the Old Testament will 
 be equally discredited. Meanwhile, however, they 
 must be reckoned with. 
 
 But while these attacks cannot be ignored, no 
 one surely will suppose that they can be fully dis- 
 cussed in a brief concluding chapter. My aim here 
 is limited to destructive criticism of the critics. 
 I do not pretend, for example, to establish the 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch — that would 
 need a treatise of some magnitude — but the reader 
 will here find proof that "the critical hypothesis" 
 of its origin is untenable. 
 
 It is commonly assumed that these ''assured 
 results of modern criticism" are the outcome of 
 an honest and impartial examination of the text 
 by Hebrew scholars, whereas in fact the critics 
 began with the ''results," and all their labours have 
 been directed to the task of finding facts and argu- 
 ments to justify them. 
 
 Rationalism gained such an ascendency in the 
 latter part of the eighteenth century that it well 
 nigh swamped the Christianity of Germany. And 
 Eichhorn, "the founder of Old Testament criticism," 
 took up the task of "winning back the educated 
 classes to religion." ^ To accomplish this it was 
 necessary to bring the Bible down to the level of 
 a purely human book, and therefore every feature 
 savouring of what is called "the supernatural" had 
 to be eliminated. All miracles had, of course, to be 
 got rid of. But the only element of real Higher 
 
 1 Prof. Cbeyne's Founders of Old Testament Criticism. 
 121 
 
A Doubter'' s Doiibts about Science and Religion 
 
 Criticism in the business was Astruc's discovery, 
 made in the year of Eichhorn's birth, that the early 
 chapters of Genesis are possibly ''mosaic" in the 
 secondary sense of that term, and that they incor- 
 porated documents of an earlier era. 
 
 Astruc's theory, however, has no bearing upon 
 the issue here involved. For it seems incredible 
 that there was no written revelation before the 
 epoch of the Exodus; and if such a revelation ex- 
 isted, we should naturally expect to find traces of it 
 in Genesis.^ 
 
 How then was the Pentateuch to be discredited? 
 One scheme after another was broached, as suc- 
 ceeding generations of critics faced the problem; 
 and that which at last gained acceptance was that 
 the books were literary forgeries of the Exilic Era. 
 But let it be kept clearly in view that these various 
 theories were not the outcome of honest inquiry. 
 One and all, they were devised to sustain the fore- 
 gone conclusion which rendered them necessary. 
 And that conclusion rests on no better foundation 
 than a few isolated and perverted texts. Chief 
 among these is the statement that in Josiah's reign 
 "the book of the law" was found in the Temple — 
 not a very strange discovery, seeing that the law 
 itself ordered it to be kept there V 
 
 But, it will be said, this implies that our Chris- 
 tian scholars have lent themselves to what is on 
 the face of it a fraud? By no means. The whole 
 
 * Chap. VII., ante, deals with the cosmogony of Moses. 
 
 2 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14 cf. Deut. xxxi. 26. It was not "a book of 
 the law" as in A.V., but the book, the known record of "the law of the 
 Lord given by Moses,' but neglected and forgotten during the apos- 
 tasy of Manasseh's long and evil reign. 
 
 122 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 business is German from first to last. Our own 
 scholars have not contributed one iota to the 
 ''Higher Criticism." The only ''independent work" 
 done by them has been to check and verify the 
 labours of the Germans, and this they have done, 
 of course, with skill and care. And as the result 
 they assure us that in their judgment the case has 
 been established against the Mosaic Books. ^ 
 
 "But," some one will exclaim, "is not this an 
 end of controversy in the matter?" One might 
 have supposed that the egregious fallacy here 
 involved would be apparent to all thoughtful peo- 
 ple. For it assumes that anything supported by 
 a clear and complete case must be true. But no 
 one who is brought before a court of justice, either 
 in a civil action or on a criminal charge, is ever 
 required to open his lips in his defence unless a 
 clear and complete case is established against him — 
 such a case as must, if unanswered, lead to a hos- 
 tile verdict. And the object of a trial is to sift 
 that case and to hear what is to be said upon the 
 other side. "Critic" is Greek for judge, but the 
 "Higher Critics," like the Dreyfus tribunal, took 
 the place of prosecutors ; and beginning with a 
 hostile verdict, they then set to work to justify it. 
 This is not rhetoric but fact. It was essential to 
 their purpose to prove that the Bible is purely 
 human. And therefore, as no one would believe in 
 miracles if unsupported by contemporary evidence, 
 the Pentateuch was assigned to the era of the 
 Captivity. 
 
 ^ See Prof. Driver's Introduction, p. xiv. 
 123 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 The main ground on which this scheme found 
 acceptance with Christian scholars is now dis- 
 carded as a blunder. It was deemed to be 
 impossible that such a literature could have orig- 
 inated in an age which was supposed to be 
 barbarous. And until recent years the question 
 was solemnly discussed whether the art of writing 
 prevailed in the Mosaic age. But to-day it is a 
 matter of common knowledge that long before' the 
 time of Moses literature flourished ; and archaeo- 
 logical discovery tells us that "in the century before 
 the Exodus Palestine was a land of books and 
 schools." ^ 
 
 But further. The idea was scouted that such 
 a code of laws could have been framed at such 
 an early period. Recently, however, the spade of 
 the explorer unearthed the now famous code of 
 Hammurabi, who ruled in Babylon four centuries 
 before the Exodus. And this discovery under- 
 mined the very foundations of ''the critical hypo- 
 thesis." But instead of repenting of their error and 
 folly, the critics turned round, and with amazing 
 effrontery declared that the Mosaic code was bor- 
 rowed from Babylon. This is a most reasonable 
 conclusion on the part of those who regard the 
 Mosaic law as a purely human code. But here 
 the critic is "hoist with his own petard." For if 
 the Mosaic law were based on the Hammurabi 
 code, it could not have been framed in the days 
 of Josiah long ages after Hammurabi had been 
 forgotten. This Hammurabi discovery is one of 
 
 1 Prof. Sayce in Lex Mosaica (p. 9). 
 
 124 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 the many that led Professor Sayce to declare that 
 "the answer of archaeology to the theories of mod- 
 ern "criticism" is complete : the Law preceded the 
 Prophets, and did not follow them." ^ 
 
 But even this is not all. It is a canon of ''criti- 
 cism" with these men that no Biblical statement 
 is ever to be accepted unless confirmed by some 
 pagan authority ; Genesis xiv. was therefore dis- 
 missed as fable on account of its naming Amraphel 
 as a King of Babylon. But Amraphel is only 
 another form of the name of Hammurabi, who now 
 stands out as one of the great historical characters 
 of the past.- 
 
 ''His nonsense suited their nonsense," was the 
 explanation Charles H. offered of the popularity 
 of a certain preacher with his flock. And the clap- 
 trap by which the minor prophets of this cult 
 commend it to the ignorant multitude may be 
 dismissed in similar fashion. To trade on prejudice, 
 however, is not my method. The case against the 
 Pentateuch shall be stated in the words of a scholar 
 and teacher whose name and fame stand high in 
 the Universities of Christendom — I refer to Pro- 
 fessor Driver of Oxford. Here is his summary of 
 the critics' case against the Mosaic books, as for- 
 mulated in his great work The Infrodtiction to the 
 Literature of the Old Testament: — 
 
 "We can only argue upon grounds of probability 
 derived from our view of the progress of the art 
 of writing, or of literary composition, or of the 
 
 1 Mon. Facts and H. C. Fancies, p. 83. 
 
 2 " 'Ammurapi ilu' is letter for letter the 'Amraphel' of Genesis," 
 Mon Facts and H. C. Fancies, p. 60. 
 
 125 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 rise and growth of the prophetic tone and feeling 
 in ancient Israel, or of the period at which the tra- 
 ditions contained in the narratives might have taken 
 shape, or of the probability that they would have 
 been written down before the impetus given to 
 culture by the monarchy had taken effect, and 
 similar considerations, for estimating most of 
 which, though plausible arguments on one side or 
 the other may be advanced, a standard on which 
 we can confidently rely scarcely admits of being 
 fixed" (sixth ed., p. 123). 
 
 'Tlausible arguments" and ''grounds of proba- 
 bility": such are the foundations on which rest 
 "the assured results of modern criticism"! But 
 even if the critics' position were as strong as it is 
 feeble, we could call a witness whose unaided testi- 
 mony would suffice to destroy it. I refer to the 
 Samaritan Bible. And here again their case shall 
 be stated by one of themselves, a writer whom they 
 hold in the highest honour, the late Professor Rob- 
 ertson Smith. In the judgment of the Samaritans 
 he tells us, ''Not only the temple of Zion, but the 
 earlier temple of Shiloh and the priesthood of Eli, 
 were schismatical." And yet, he adds, "their relig- 
 ion was built on the Pentateuch alone." Where 
 then, and when, did they get the Pentateuch? Here 
 is the critics' account of it : — 
 
 "They [the Samaritans] regard themselves as 
 Israelites, descendants of the ten tribes, and claim 
 to possess the orthodox religion of Moses. . . . 
 The priestly law, which is throughout based on 
 the practice of the priests in Jerusalem before the 
 
 126 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 Captivity, was reduced to form after the Exile, 
 and was published by Ezra as the law of the rebuilt 
 temple of Zion. The Samaritans must therefore 
 have derived their Pentateuch from the Jews after 
 Ezra's reforms." 
 
 Now mark what this implies. We know the 
 bitterness of racial and religious quarrels. And 
 both these elements combined to alienate the 
 Samaritans from the Jews. But this was not all. 
 At the very time when they are said to have 
 ''derived their Pentateuch from the Jews" these 
 antipathies had deepened into hatred — "abhorrence" 
 is Robertson Smith's word — on account of the con^ 
 tempt and sternness with which the Jews spurned 
 their proffered help in the work of reconstruction 
 at Jerusalem. And yet we are asked to believe 
 that in such circumstances, and at that time, when 
 their feelings toward the Jews were such as now- 
 adays Orangemen bear to "Papists," they accepted 
 these Jewish books as their "Bible,' to the exclusion 
 of the writings, not only of their own Israelite seers, 
 but also of those sacred and venerated historical 
 books known as "the former prophets." 
 
 In the whole range of controversy, religious or 
 secular, was there ever propounded a theory more 
 utterly incredible and preposterous ! What have 
 the critics to say for it? Here is the defence they 
 offer in the new volume of the accredited handbook 
 of their heresies — Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible : — 
 
 "There is at least one valid ground for the con- 
 clusion that the Pentateuch was first accepted by 
 the Samaritans after the Exile. Why was their re- 
 
 127 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 quest to be allowed to take part in the building of 
 the second temple refused by the heads of the Jeru- 
 salem community? Very probably because the 
 Jews were aware that the Samaritans did not as yet 
 possess the Law-book. It is hard to suppose that 
 otherwise they would have met with this refusal. 
 Further, any one who, like the present writer, re- 
 gards the modern criticism of the Pentateuch as 
 essentially correct, has a second decisive reason for 
 adopting the above view." (Prof. Konig's article, 
 ^'Samaritan Pentateuch," p. 68.) 
 
 The question is, When and how did the Samari- 
 tans get the Pentateuch? A ''valid ground" for 
 the critical theory, we are told, is that "very prob- 
 ably, the reason why the Jews under Ezra refused 
 their help was because they had not then got the 
 forged books, and it is ''hard to suppose" anything 
 else! But the "decisive reason" for accepting the 
 critical hypothesis is that the critical hypothesis is 
 "essentially correct" ! Men of common sense will 
 "very probably" conclude that if "the modern criti- 
 cism of the Pentateuch" can be supported only by 
 such drivel as this, it may be dismissed as unworthy 
 of discussion. 
 
 The fetich of "modern criticism" seems to have 
 a sinister influence even on scholars of eminence. 
 The Samaritan Bible is conclusive proof that the 
 "critical hypothesis" of the origin of the Pentateuch 
 is absolutely untenable. And its acceptance by 
 the Higher Critics is proof of their utter incapacity 
 for dealing with evidence. 
 
 And this leads me to say with emphasis that 
 the grounds on which these men claim the "Higher 
 
 128 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 Criticism" as their own peculiar province are as 
 futile as are their arguments in its support. The 
 language of the incriminated books has very little 
 bearing on the issues involved ; and in the case of 
 the Pentateuch its testimony is against the critics. 
 The problems of the controversy fall within the 
 sphere, not of philology, but of evidence. And this 
 being so, a Professor of Theology or of Hebrew, 
 as such, has no special fitness for dealing with them. 
 *'As such" I say, for of course a knowledge of 
 languages and of Biblical literature is not a dis- 
 qualification. But experience abundantly proves 
 that the pursuit of studies of that character creates 
 no fitness for handling problems of evidence ; and 
 these should be left to men who by training and 
 practical experience are qualified for the task. 
 
 Proofs of this, both numerous and striking, might 
 be culled from the controversy respecting the 
 genuineness of the Book of Daniel. But I have 
 published so much on that subject elsewhere, that 
 I will not introduce it here.^ And other books, 
 moreover, will furnish further illustrations of my 
 statement. Take the *'two Isaiahs" figment, for 
 example. There is no element of profanity in this 
 hypothesis, and we can afiford to examine it on its 
 merits. What does it involve? 
 
 Having regard to the scathing denunciations of 
 the national religion which abound in the earlier 
 portions of the Book of Isaiah, it would not be 
 strange if their author's name had been deliberately 
 efifaced from the national annals. But the later 
 
 * But see Appendix, Note II. 
 
 129 
 
A Doubter'' s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 chapters, attributed by the critics to Isaiah II., are 
 not only marked by extraordinary brilliancy, but 
 they abound in words of cheer and hope and joy, 
 unparalleled in all the Hebrew Scriptures. A 
 prophet raised up in the dark days of the exilic 
 period to deliver such messages of comfort and 
 gladness would have become immortal. His name 
 would have been enshrined with those of Moses 
 and Samuel and David and Ezra, and his fame 
 would have been blazoned on many a page of 
 apocryphal literature. But the critics ask us to 
 stultify ourselves by believing that he appeared and 
 vanished like a summer mist, without leaving even 
 the vaguest tradition of his personality or career. 
 There is no limit to the credulity of sham 
 scepticism ! 
 
 The aim of the "Higher Criticism" is, as we 
 have seen, to banish God from the Bible. The 
 Rationalists, therefore, invented a sham Isaiah in 
 order to oust the element of Divine prophecy from 
 the writings of the real Isaiah. But the invention 
 of a sham Jonah would not have got rid of the 
 whale, so the Book of Jonah had to be torn out 
 of the Bible altogether. A serious matter this ; for 
 "Christ was raised from the dead the third day, 
 according to the Scriptures," and the Book of Jonah 
 was the only Scripture to which the Lord Himself 
 appealed in this connection. He placed it in the 
 foreground of His testimony, using it again and 
 again with the greatest emphasis and solemnity. 
 In the day of judgment. He declared, the men of 
 Nineveh would rise up to condemn the Jews for 
 
 130 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 their rejection of Him, because they repented at 
 the preaching of Jonah when the prophet came to 
 them accredited by the "sign" of his deliverance 
 from death. ^ 
 
 Some of the critics dismiss this reference to Jonah 
 by attributing it to the Lord's deplorable ignorance 
 of the Scriptures which it was His Divine mission 
 to fulfil; others, by representing it as merely a 
 rhetorical illustration. This latter view is not so 
 profane as the other; but it is wholly inadequate, 
 and moreover it is inconsistent with the plain state- 
 ments of the Gospel narrative.^ 
 
 The rationalist denies the Jonah miracle, because 
 he holds miracles to be impossible. But why should 
 a Christian reject it? Why should we refuse to 
 believe that God delivered His prophet from death? 
 To say He could not deliver him is atheism; to say 
 He would not is nonsense ; and to say He did not 
 is to pour contempt on the words of our Divine 
 Lord, and to repudiate His authority as a teacher. 
 And this, and nothing less than this, the critics 
 demand of us. 
 
 Men who plan elaborate crimes are apt to give 
 themselves away by some glaring oversight or 
 blunder; and so is it with these critics who would 
 commit the supreme crime of filching the Bible 
 from us. They admit, for it cannot be disputed, 
 that the Lord accredited the Hebrew Scriptures in 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 39-41. 
 
 2 The Bible must not be held responsible for the unwise things writ- 
 ten in its defence. The statement, ex. gr., that "God prepared a great 
 fish" does not mean that He extemporised a sea monster. It is the 
 word used in Dan. i. 5, when Nebuchadnezzar appointed a daily pro- 
 vision for Daniel. I have dealt with the subject in The Bible and 
 Modern Criticism, chap. xi. 
 
 131 
 
A Doubter* s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 the most unequivocal and solemn terms. But they 
 dare to aver that in the ministry of His humiliation 
 He was so entirely subject to the limitations of 
 human knowledge, that words which He declared 
 to be not His own, but the Father's who sent Him, 
 expressed in fact "the current Jewish notions" of 
 the time. But such is the blindness or obliquity 
 with which they read the Scriptures, that they have 
 entirely overlooked His post-resurrection ministry. 
 Kcnosis theories are but dust thrown up to obscure 
 the issue. They have no relevancy here. "I have 
 a baptism to be baptized with," the Lord exclaimed, 
 "and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" 
 But now, that baptism is past. All limitations are 
 for ever at an end. And speaking as the Son of 
 God, to whom all power in heaven and earth has 
 been given. He adopts and confirms all His pro 
 vious teaching about the Hebrew Scriptures. 
 Referring to that very teaching, He addresses words 
 like these to His disciples: "These are the words 
 which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, 
 that all things must be fulfilled which were written 
 in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in 
 the Psalms, concerning Me." 
 
 And the record adds, "Then opened He their 
 understanding that they might understand the 
 Scriptures." Professor Driver tells us that "He 
 accepted as the basis of His teaching the opinions 
 respecting the Old Testament current around 
 Him." Or, as his Bible Dictionary coarsely 
 phrases it, "He held the current Jewish notions" 
 of His time. Could any words be more utterly 
 
 132 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 opposed to fact? "Current Jewish notions"! All 
 His teaching was in direct opposition to the deep, 
 strong current of prevailing ignorance and error 
 respecting the character and scope of these very 
 Scriptures. Therefore it was that the Jews rejected 
 Him. Therefore it was that even His own disciples 
 failed to understand Him. But now *'He opened 
 their understanding." And it was this post-resur- 
 rection teaching which guided and inspired all their 
 after-ministry. The New Testament writings are 
 the unfolding of it. And yet, according to the 
 "Higher Critics," this was all a blunder, if not a 
 fraud. 
 
 The Christian is consistent in his faith and the 
 rationalist in his unbelief. Both are entitled to 
 respect, for either position is intellectually unas- 
 sailable. But what shall be said of men who cling 
 to an edifice the foundations of which they have 
 themselves destroyed? What of the superstition 
 which holds that though Christ and His Apostles 
 were deceived and in error, the Church which they 
 founded is infallible, and that its teaching affords 
 a sure resting-place for faith? What of the folly 
 which deludes itself by claptrap about the inspira- 
 tion of writings which are declared to be a mosaic 
 of myth and legend and forgery and falsehood?^ 
 The devout may well be shocked by the profanity 
 
 1 These words are not aimed at the rationalists, represented by Pro- 
 fessor Harnack of Berlin, or Professor Cheyne of Oxford and his 
 colleagues of the Encyc\opaed^a BxbUca. . Nor do they apply to the 
 Church of Rome, whose claim to be the infallible exponent of an m- 
 fallible Bible is at least intelligent and consistent. But they accurately 
 describe the position of Professor Driver and his followmg. whose 
 "confession of unfaith" is the Bible DxcUonary btUl more definitely 
 do they apply to the Bishop of Birmingham and his Lux Mundt school. 
 
 133 
 
A Doubter* s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 of such a scheme. But all sensible men will appre- 
 ciate the folly of attempting to reconcile it with 
 belief in Christianity. 
 
 To the rationalist it is a matter of indifiference 
 whether the books of the Bible were written at 
 one time or at another; but it is essential to his 
 position to destroy their claim to be Divine. And 
 even this is but an outwork: his main objective 
 is the citadel of the Christian faith — the Deity of 
 Christ. For if the Scriptures be discredited, the 
 foundations of the Lord's ministry ''are swept away, 
 so that Christ came to fulfil nothing, and becomes 
 only a teacher or a martyr." ^ And how can we 
 trust Him even as a teacher if His teachings be 
 unreliable in the only sphere in which we are com- 
 petent to test it. For no amount of sophistry can 
 get rid of the fact that He accredited the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, and unreservedly identified Himself 
 with them. It is not a question, therefore, of super- 
 stitious reverence for a book — that we may leave to 
 Professor Driver and his school — but of intelligent 
 faith in our Divine Lord and Saviour. 
 
 ''Criticism in the hands of Christian scholars," 
 Professor Driver tells us, "presupposes the inspira- 
 tion of the Old Testament." But criticism in the 
 hands of honest men presupposes nothing. It 
 enters on its task without prejudice, and accepts 
 its results without fear, whatever they may be. 
 And the legitimate results of this sort of criticism 
 of Scripture are to be found in the writings of 
 great thinkers like Dr. Harnack, and not in the 
 
 1 Alford on Matt. v. 18. See Appendix, Note III. t>osi. 
 
 134 
 
The Higher Criticism 
 
 books of men whose minds are warped or blinded 
 by the, superstitions of religion. 
 
 In the ''New Theology" of the day, which is 
 but a crude and popular phase of Dr. Harnack's Neo- 
 Christianity the ''Higher Criticism" has produced 
 the results intended by its authors. Christianity 
 has been dragged down to the rationalistic level. 
 And at what a cost ! Instead of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ, whose words were God-given 
 and eternal, we have a "Jesus" whose teaching was 
 marred by ignorance and error, albeit he demanded 
 acceptance of it as Divine. Infidelity has thus 
 achieved its triumph. In disparaging the Bible, 
 they deny the Christ of whom the Bible speaks. 
 
 "The Christ of ages past 
 Is now the Christ no more! 
 Altar and fire are gone, 
 The Victim but a dream ! 
 
 "If these conclusions be demanded by irrefutable 
 fact, let them be made and accepted — but not light- 
 heartedly, and as if we were the freer for them, 
 and could talk glibly about them in the best modern 
 style. Let us make them with a groan, and take 
 care to carve no more the unauthentic promise on 
 the tombs of our beloved." ^ Or, to express these 
 thoughts in still plainer terms, if the rationalists 
 have proved their case, let us be done with all cant 
 and superstition, and frankly and honestly give up 
 belief in the Deity of Christ. 
 
 Here we stand at the parting of the ways. Hon- 
 est and clear-headed men of the world, to whom 
 
 1 The Bishop of Durham, in his Preface to The Bible and Modern 
 Crtttcism. 
 
 135 
 
A Doubter's Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 these pages are addressed, will refuse all by-patlis 
 of superstition, and fearlessly make choice between 
 a firmer faith and a bolder unbelief. And my main 
 purpose will be satisfied if they here find proof that 
 those who attack the Bible, whether from the stand- 
 point of a false science or of a false criticism, can be 
 met and refuted on their own ground. But while 
 destructive criticism has thus been my aim and 
 method, I would fain hope that some at least who 
 may read this 'Tlea for the Faith" will be led to 
 study the Scriptures for themselves, with minds 
 unbiassed by infidel prejudice or religious super- 
 stition, and that the study may lead them to believe 
 in the Son of God, and in believing to receive life 
 through His name. 
 
 136 
 
KppmUx 
 
 NOTE I. 
 
 (Chap. VII. p. 79 ante.) 
 
 The Creation. 
 
 As already noticed, if the first chapter of Genesis speaks of 
 "the Creation of the Universe" at all it is in the first verse. 
 The very word "create" is not used again save in verses 
 21 and 27, which relate to the work of the fifth and sixth 
 "days." And if the truth of evolution could be scientifically 
 established, the evolutionist might appeal to the language 
 of verses 11, 20, and 24 as affording proof that it has 
 biblical sanction. And the word rendered "create" has as 
 wide a range of meaning as its English equivalent. Neither 
 in Hebrew nor in English does the word necessarily connote 
 a making out of nothing. Just as counters may represent 
 different values at different times, so is it with words; for 
 words are only counters. And we need to keep this in view 
 as we read Gen, i. and ii. For instance, we are told that 
 God created man, and yet that He made him out of the 
 dust of the earth. 
 
 Gen. i. 1 is almost always read as though "created" were 
 the emphatic word in the verse. But in the Hebrew the 
 structure of the sentence throws the emphasis on God; and 
 the Massorah intensifies this by inserting the Athnah, or 
 pause mark, after the Divine name. The burden of the 
 first verse is that God was the Creator. The second verse 
 tells that at the time of which the narrative speaks the earth 
 existed in a condition of desolation and emptiness. But 
 Isa. xlv. 18 declares that this was not its condition according 
 to the design of its maker. Of its earlier history we know 
 nothing, save what geology may teach us; but the sequel 
 
 1 The Coming Prince (Sth and later editions) ; and Daniel in the 
 Critics' Den (2nd edition). 
 
 137 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 describes the refitting and refurnishing of the planet as a 
 home for the Adam race. 
 
 Our English version suggests that the heavenly bodies came 
 into existence on the fourth day; and this, combined with the 
 figment that they are mere satellites, has been seized on by 
 infidels to discredit Scripture. But we must insist that the 
 same canon by which all other writings are construed shall 
 prevail in scriptural exegesis, viz., that when words bear 
 different meanings, that meaning is to be accepted which 
 is consistent with the context and with known facts. And, 
 as we have seen. Gen. i. 14-18 may be the description of 
 phenomena. My purpose here, however, is not to expound 
 the Scripture, but merely to enter a protest against confound- 
 ing what Genesis says with what men say about it. 
 
 NOTE 11. 
 
 (Chap. XII. p. 125 «;//£-.) 
 
 The Book of Daniel. 
 
 Professor Driver's Book of Daniel ("Cambridge Bible" 
 series), which is an. expansion of the "Daniel" section of his 
 Introduction, reproduces the farrago of "errors" and argu- 
 ments which were formulated by Bertholdt just a century ago, 
 and have been the stock-in-trade of the rationalists ever since. 
 Archaeological discoveries have disposed of most of them, 
 but still they serve their purpose. I have dealt with them 
 elsewhere fully and in detail.^ And even if they were all as 
 weighty as most of them are frivolous, the Christian would 
 brush them aside in view of the fulfilled prophecy of "the 
 Seventy Weeks," and the fact that the book has been accre- 
 dited by Christ. 
 
 The presence of Greek words in Daniel, we are told, 
 "demands" a date for the book after Alexander's conquests. 
 In Bertholdt's day the presence of Greek words in Daniel did 
 seem to "demand" a late date for the book; for it was then 
 supposed that there were ten such words, and that there was 
 
 138 
 
Appe7idix 
 
 no intercourse between ancient Babylon and Greece. But in 
 view of the discoveries of the last century, the now admitted 
 fact that the Greek words in Daniel are not ten, but only tivo, 
 and these the names of musical instruments, the rejection of 
 the book on philological grounds is in part an anachronism 
 and in part a puerility, 
 
 A like remark applies to his list of "historical errors." 
 When I last reissued my Daniel in the Critics' Den, 
 Darius the Mede was the only "historical difficulty" 
 which seemed to remain unsolved. But there appears 
 to be no longer any doubt that this Darius was Gobryas, 
 Governor of Kurdistan, the General who commanded the 
 army of Cyrus that captured Babylon. Gobryas was the 
 son of Cyaxeres (Ahasuerus in the Hebrew) and the brother 
 and heir apparent of Astyages, the last King of the Medes. 
 (Xenophon calls him his son, in error, for Herodotus states 
 that Astyages had no son.) In his youth he would have 
 known Cyrus, who attended the Median Court; and this, 
 combined with the fact of his kingly rank, may well have led 
 Cyrus to trust and honour him. "Darius" was doubtless a 
 "throne name" (like "Artaxerxes." Josephus mentions that 
 he had another name among the Greeks). A most striking 
 confirmation of this is supplied by a statement in Ezra vi. 1, 2. 
 The decree issued by Cyrus for the building of the temple, 
 which could not be found either in the Chaldean or the 
 Persian capital, was at last discovered in the capital of 
 Kurdistan. How, then, could it have got to Ecbatana? The 
 obvious solution of this enigma is that, for some reason or 
 other, Gobryas was sent back to his own province, and that 
 he carried with him the archives of his rule in Babylon. The 
 language of Daniel ix. 1 clearly indicates that he was a vassal 
 king (he "was made king over the realm.") 
 
 The most important item in "the errors of Daniel" is the 
 opening statement of the book, that in the third year of 
 Jehoiakim Nebuchadnezzar besieged and took Jerusalem. But 
 the ground on which this is rejected as a blunder is itself a 
 blunder so grotesque that it deserves more than a passing 
 
 notice. 
 
 139 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 Josephus gives an extract from the lost history of Berosus, 
 which states that while on this expedition Nebuchadnezzar 
 received tidings of his father's death, and that "he hastened 
 home across the desert." And blindly following his German 
 guides, Professor Driver's gloss on this is that the news 
 reached him at Carchemish, after the battle in which he 
 defeated the Egyptians, and that he returned from there to 
 Babylon and never invaded Judaea at all. But Carchemish 
 is on the Euphrates; and "to hasten home" from Carchemish 
 to Babylon across the desert would be as extraordinary a 
 feat as if Professor Driver hastened home from London 
 to Oxford across the county of Kent or Hampshire! The 
 fact that the desert lay between Nebuchadnezzar and Babylon 
 is conclusive proof that in his homeward journey he set out 
 from Palestine. 
 
 But this is only a part of the blunder. The extract from 
 Berosus, which Professor Driver quotes, mentions expressly 
 his Jewish prisoners. How could he have had Jewish prisoners 
 if he had not invaded Judaea? The Jews were not a party 
 to the Battle of Carchemish. That battle, moreover, was 
 in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and after Nebuchadnezzar's 
 accession (Jer. xlvi. 2; cf. xxv. 1); whereas the expedition 
 mentioned by Berosus and Daniel was in his third year, be- 
 fore his father's death. This, I may add, reconciles every 
 chronological statement in the various books. 
 
 NOTE III. 
 
 (Chap. XH. p. 134.) 
 
 The Old Testament and the Critics. 
 
 As I wish to be fair to my opponents, I give here in extenso 
 the concluding passage of the Preface to Professor Driver's 
 Introduction. He writes: — 
 
 "It is objected, however, that some of the conclusions of 
 critics respecting the Old Testament are incompatible with the 
 
 140 
 
Appendix 
 
 authority of our blessed Lord, and that in loyalty to Him we 
 are precluded from accepting them. That our Lord appealed 
 to the Old Testament as the record of a revelation in the past, 
 and as pointing forward to Himself, is undoubted; but these 
 aspects of the Old Testament are perfectly consistent with a 
 critical view of its structure and growth. That our Lord in 
 so appealing to it designed to pronounce a verdict on the 
 authorship and age of its different parts, and to foreclose all 
 future inquiry into these subjects, is an assumption for which 
 no sufficient ground can be alleged. Had such been His aim, 
 it would have been out of harmony with the entire method 
 and tenor of His teaching. In no single instance (so far as 
 we are aware) did He anticipate the results of scientific 
 inquiry or historical research. The aim of His teaching was 
 a religious one ; it was to set before men the pattern of a 
 perfect life, to move them to imitate it, to bring them to 
 Himself. He accepted as the basis of His teaching the opin- 
 ions respecting the Old Testament current around Him : He 
 assumed, in His allusions to it, the premises which His oppo- 
 nents recognized, and which could not have been questioned 
 (even had it been necessary to question them) without raising 
 issues for which the time was not yet ripe, and which, had 
 they been raised, would have interfered seriously with the 
 paramount purpose of His life. There is no record of the 
 question whether a particular portion of the Old Testament 
 was written by Moses, or David, or Isaiah, having been ever 
 submitted to Him ; and had it been so submitted, we have no 
 means of knowing what His answer would have been. The 
 purposes for which our Lord appealed to the Old Testament; 
 its prophetic significance, and the spiritual lessons deducible 
 from it, are not, as has been already remarked above, affected 
 by critical inquiries. Criticism in the hands of Christian 
 scholars does not banish or destroy the inspiration of the 
 Old Testament — it presupposes it ; it seeks only to determine 
 the conditions under which it operates, and the literary forms 
 through which it manifests itself; and it thus helps us to 
 frame truer conceptions of the methods which it pleased God 
 to employ in revealing Himself to His ancient people of 
 
 141 
 
A Doubter^ s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 Israel, and in preparing the way for the fuller manifestation 
 of Himself in Christ Jesus." 
 
 I appeal to all spiritual Christians whether it is not a 
 thorough misrepresentation of the Lord's ministry to assert 
 that "the aim of His teaching . . . was to set before men 
 the pattern of a perfect life." He could not but be the Great 
 Exemplar, but this was purely incidental. His supreme aim 
 was to fulfil "all things which were written in the Law of 
 Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning 
 Himself." 
 
 And I appeal to all honest men whether the words quoted 
 are not a flagrant misrepresentation of the question here 
 at issue; which is not as to the authorship and date of 
 writings accepted ^s inspired Scriptures, but as to whether 
 the Mosaic books be priestly forgeries of the later period 
 of the Monarchy. The Book of Jeremiah enlightens us as to 
 the character of the priests of that era. Against them it was 
 that his prophecies were mainly directed (see, e. g., i. 18; 
 V. 31) ; and the "laity" had to intervene to prevent their 
 murdering him (xxvi. 8, 16). Yet the "critical hypothesis" 
 \i that the books were concocted by these miscreants! 
 
 The great covenant name of God is deemed so sacred and 
 held in such awe by the Jews that they never utter it even in 
 public worship; and yet in Leviticus — the briefest book of the 
 Pentateuch— it is used more than 300 times, and nearly 
 40 times we find the solemn formula, "Jehovah spake unto 
 Moses." If this be not the authentic record of a Divine 
 revelation, the wanton profanity of it is unspeakably infamous. 
 It need not be said that Dr. Driver is incapable of either 
 wilful misrepresentation or profanity; but it is evident 
 that his mind is swayed by the superstitious belief that 
 because "the Church" accredits the whole Bible as Divine it 
 is immaterial whether its contents are the work of inspired 
 prophets or of apostate priests. Certain it is that he and his 
 co-editors and writers of the Bible Dictionary are the dupes 
 of "current German notions respecting the Divine authority 
 and revelation of the Old Testament." 
 
 By thus acting as jackals to the German rationalists these 
 
 142 
 
Appendix 
 
 men have lowered the standard of biblical scholarship on both 
 sides of the Atlantic. But infinitely more deplorable is it that 
 they have dethroned the Bible from the place it used to hold 
 in every Christian home; and as the result "family worship" 
 — to use the good old term — is fast dying out. For the 
 practical common sense of the Britisher and the American 
 cannot be deluded by pious claptrap about the inspiration 
 of writings which, if the "Higher Criticism" has proved its 
 case, ought to be relegated to the Apocrypha. We are charged, 
 forsooth, with superstitiously clinging to discredited tradi- 
 tional beliefs ! My answer is, first, that such a taunt comes ill 
 from such a quarter. Both Christian and Rationalist stand 
 clear of superstition; but superstition alone supports the 
 attempted compromise between infidelity and faith, which 
 even their ally. Professor Cheyne, deplores in this Bible Dic- 
 tionary school of critics. And further, "the assured results- 
 of modern criticism" will not bear examination by any one 
 who is competent to test them (see Chap, XII. ante). The 
 sham "Higher Criticism" will live only so long as it remains 
 the preserve of the preacher and the pundit. 
 
 I will quote in conclusion the following bold and honest 
 words of Dean Alford: — 
 
 "It is important to observe in these days how the Lord here 
 includes the Old Testament and all its unfolding of the Divine 
 purposes regarding Himself in His teaching of the citizens of 
 the kingdom of heaven. I say this, because it is always in 
 contempt and setting aside of the Old Testament that Ration- 
 alism has begun. First its historical truth, then its theocratic 
 dispensation and the types and prophecies connected with it, 
 are swept away; so that Christ came to fulfil nothing, and 
 becomes only a teacher or a martyr; and thus the way is 
 paved for a similar rejection of the New Testament — begin- 
 ning with the narratives of the birth and infancy as theocratic 
 myths — advancing to the denial of His miracles — then attack- 
 ing the truthfulness of his own sayings, which are grounded 
 on the Old Testament as a revelation from God — and so 
 finally leaving us nothing in the Scriptures but, as a German 
 
 143 
 
A Doubter\s Doubts about Science and Religion 
 
 writer of this school has expressed it, 'a mythology not so 
 attractive as that of Greece.' That this is the course which 
 unbelief has run in Germany should be a pregnant warning 
 to the decriers of the Old Testament among ourselves. It 
 should be a maxim for every expositor and every student 
 that Scripture is a whole, and stands or falls together." 
 {Greek Testament, Matt. v. 18). 
 
 144 
 
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