y. / c Stom f^e feifirarg of gprofeBBor n^^tfPiam J^enrg (Bteen Q$eciueaf^e^ 6g ^tm fo t^e fcifirarg of (f)tinceton C^eofo^icaf ^eminarg BS 650 .L48 1856 Lewis, Tayler, 1802-1877 The Bible and science n THE BIBLE AND SCIENCE: OE, THE WORLD-PROBLEM. y By TAYLER lewis, PROFESSOR OF GREEK, UNION COLLEGE. Cuncta fecit bona in tempore suo, et MUNDUM tradidit disputationi eo- rum, ut non inveniat homo quod operatus est DeuP, ab initio usque ad fi- nem. — EccUsiastcs iii, 11. And there was a voice from the tirmnment that was over the heads of the living creatures. — Ezekicl i, 25. SCHENECTADY : G. Y. VAN DEBOaERT. 1856. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, BY GILES T. VAN DEBOGERT, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Northern District of New- York. KIGG-s, PRI.VTEU, SCHENECTADY. PREFACE. ISoME apology is due for -what may seem the miscellane- ous character of the present volume, and especially the mingling of the controversial. Such apology is found in its history. There had grown upon the author's hands, Scriptural notes and other matter designed for an appen- dix to the third edition of the work entitled The Six Days of Creation. In the meantime, however, that work had been the subject of a number of extended reviews ; no less than three by the editor of the Theological and Literary Journal, whilst the conductors of the Andover Bibliotheca Sacra have honored it by a whole year's notice, with a promise of continuance. The author's friends thought that he ought to make some reply. The Andover periodical, however, was closed to his de- fence, although his writings had been charged in it with " having a decidedly infidel tendency." A pamphlet, therefore, was thought of. This grew in size, and as it was found that the other matter would much exceed the IV PREFACE. original bounds assigned to it, it was thought best to combine both objects in the volume now presented to the pubUc. Professor Barrows' review in the Bibliotheca came out too late for notice. Some of his positions are already met, and we think successfully, in the Ninth chapter of the present volume. If the continuance he promises demands an answer, permission for that pur- pose may be asked in the columns of some of our reli- gious newspapers, or of the editors of such monthly or quarterly periodical as may grant the privilege that has been denied where it was due. The book is a protest against what the author regards as a most one-sided error of the times, — the false posi- tion of Physical Science, and its naturalizing effect upon the theology and religion of the day. In the zealous exposition of such an error, it would be no wonder if the work was found to be somewhat one-sided itself. The intelligent reader, however, will apply the corrective which the author could not well employ without swelling the size of the book, or unduly weakening the force of his argument by too much of an apologetic or explanatory tone. The volume is presented to the public with the conviction, that whatever may be thought of the mode of argument, it will be admitted to contain some timely and important truth. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. P„^„, INTRODUCTORY VIEW. Question of the Creative Days — Its Pressing Importance — Science has its Bigotry as well as Theology — Two Classes of Scientific Men — The Keplers and the Galileos — Present Faith in the Bible, how different from the Old — Its true Internal Evidence as set forth by the Old Divines — The Bible Everything or Nothing — Undue Deference to Science — The real Naturalism — False and limited use of the word Science — Natural History — Ex- travagant Boasting — Natural Science, Causes of its Popularity — Easiness of Acquisition — General Smat- tering — Men love to be talked to Scientifically — Quack- ish Reasoning about Law and Nature — Spiritualism — Appeal to Utilities — The Bible Praised, but not Stu- died — Style of Preaching — The Bible not in the Heart of the Age — Literature and Politics — The Bible to be Interpreted, not Reconciled — The true Field of Reve- lation, All that it professes to teach. 1-3- CHAPTER II. Scriptural Interpretation in Connection with Science — Nine General Principles — Application to the Creative Reeord-^The Difficulty of a Solar Day without a Sua as obvious to Moses as to Mr. Lord — If there is any such Difficulty it is Patent on the Face of the Record — It has not come from Science, but from False Inter- pretation — Interpretation, therefore, and not Science, must Remove it — Creation an Order of Appearances — Each Appearance a Morning — Succession, not Dura- tion, the Bad ical Idea, t • . , 62. VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER III. -P"^^' TUB ■WORD DAY, AND TUE JIYSTIC NUMBERS OF PROPHECY. A^aiious Senses of tlae Word Day — Summary of Princi- ples concerned in its Interpretation — Eight Heads of Argument — The Prophetical Day — Analogous to the Creative Day — Numbers as used in Prophecy — Three kinds — Definite Numbers — Round Numbers — Perfect Numbers — The Word Day as applied to the Closing Dispensation of the World — Analogy with the Crea- tive Account — Kedhem, or the Ante-time State 76 CHAPTER IV. Kedhem, or the Ante-time State — Psalm Iv, 19, " He that Inhabiteth Kedhem" — Sadducean Interpreters — Psalm Ixviii, " The Heaven of Heavens of Old" — Spiritual in Distinction from a Cabalistical Sense — Space Sense — Messianic Character of the Psalm — Where is Kedhem"? — The Rationalist — The Twenty- four Hour Interpreter — The Timeless Slate — The Question of the Eternity of Matter — The Absurdity involved in the very Inquiry 120 CHAPTER V. THE FOUR GREAT IDEAS OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT. The Word— The Work— The Rest— The Day— These must be in Harmony with Each Other — The Old Ara- bian View — The Patriarchal View — Theory of Guyot —Of Mr. Lord— Of Pye Smith— The True Scrijitural View is the one that has least Need of Science 142 CHAPTER VI. SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE. Spirit of the Scientific Patronage — Professor Dana's Apo- thegm — The Bible " the Boat, Science the Current" — The Natural in Creation — Claim of Prior Discovery — Claim of Science to have Proved the Supernatural — Science can not find the Supernatural — Must ever as- sume a Law for a Fact — Can not even find a God — An Atheist as good a Scientific Man as a Tbeist — Se- cret Wheels and Cogs in Nature — The Greater Dura- tions — Science can not disprove Development — Can never refute the " Vestiges of Creation" — Bible alone can fclay " The Vestiges." 151 CONTENTS. VII CHAPTER VII. P'^g'- WE KNOW NOTHING OF ORIGIN EXCEPT FBOM A DIVINE REVELATION. The Vestiges of Creation — Who Killed the Monster ? — Individual Generation as Mysterious as the Generic — Revelation itself the Highest Supernatural — Why should we be afraid of the Natural in Creation ? — Ani- malculte — Agassiz's Doctrine of Man — The Primus Homo — Science occupied with What is, and How it is — The Cosmical Movement — Science does not tak-e it into Account — Hypothetical Discussion between the Vesti- gian and the Anti-vestigian — Nature's Gestation long her Births sudden and complete — Doctrine of Types — No Meaning in the Language as used by some Scien- tific Men — The Atheism of "The Vestiges," in what it truly consists 181 CHAPTER VIII. THE SIS DAYS AS FOUND BY SCIENCE. The Writer in the Andover Bibliotheca — His Nebular Theory — The Reviewer finds no Difl&culties — A hearty Faith is not so easily satisfied — The chief interest of the Mosaic Account — 1st. Its Supernatural Character — 2d. Its Hexameral Division — The true Greatness of the Mosaic Account — Greatness of Moses as compar- ed with Aristotle or Bacon — Professor Dana's Seven Points — Of the First Three Geoloo'v knows nothine: — Her Protests or Acceptances of no Value — Rests in Nature — The Scientific Scheme of Creation — As well Sis Hundred Days as Sis — The Reviewer's Boat driven by two Forces — The Word Beginning — Sudden leap from the Birth of the Light to the Growing of the Mosses — Immense Distances from which Light travels — Want of Chronological Harmony — Immense Hiatus in the Second Day — A 3Iodest Note — Spectral Light of Geology — The Rakia or Firmament — Was it the Breaking up of the Nebular Rings ? — Had Moses any fiuch View, either as Fact or Conception ? 215 CHAPTER IX. SCIENTIFIC SIX DAYS AT WAR WITH EXEQESIS. The Word Bara — The Beginning — The Shemitic Mind — Words for Creation— The Hebrew — The New Testa- VIII CONTENTS. ment Terms — The Philosophical Greek— The Arabic '^"St- Words for Creation — Emotional Aim of the Bible — Did Moses think of an Absolute Principium? — Six Arguments : 1st. From the First Verse generally — ■2d. The Words Heaven and Earth ; Do they denote Universality? — 3d. The Earth the Locus of the First Energizing mentioned by Moses — 4th. The Light after ihe Waters — 5th. Heavens Built over the Earth — 6th. The First Verse, if severed from the rest, must be Extra Dies — Parallelism of the Mosaic Account with the First of John — Patristic View of its 3d and -4th Verses 268 CHAPTER X. ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. fjreology claims the Sole Credit of the Idea — What may be fairly Conceded to her — One who is not a Geologist may Reason about Geology — The Geologist himself may be unfitted for Cosmical Questions — A little Sci- ence wakes up Thought in Thoughtful Minds — The Idea, once aroused, is seen everywhere — Antiquity of the Earth as seen in the most Common Phenomena — Nature, in general, Honest and Truthful — Geological Changes referred to in Job xiv — The Ancient Philo- sophy — The World-Problem — The Schoolmen and the Galileos-- The "Students of Nature" — The Epicure- ans the Ancient Scientific Boasters — Natural Theo- logy 301 CHAPTER XI. WHAT IS NATURE? Can there be a True Nature ? — The two Great Ques- tions — How can there be Evil without God? — How can there be a Nature that is not God ? — Can God make a Nature to go by itself? — Laws of Thinking higher than Laws of Nature — Deteriorations in Na- ture — Was there Death before Adam's Fall ? — Nature as well as Spirit left to itself — In what Sense ? — Mo- tion by Impulse — The Axiom, " A Body once set in Motion will forever continue in Motion" — The Mystery of the Rolling Ball — Force — Is it an Entity ? — Science finds Formulas — Philosophy Wonders — Faith Adores — Ideas, as well as Laws, in Nature, t 336 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY VIEW. Question of the Creative Days — lis Pressing ImpoHance — Science has its Bigotry as well as Theology — Two Classes of Scientijic Men — The Keplers and the Galileos — Pre- sent Faith in the Bible, hoio different from the old — Its true Internal Evidence as set forth hy the Old Divines — The Bible everything or nothing — Undue Deference to Science — The real Naturalism — False and limited use of the word Science — Natural History — Extravagant Boast- ing — Natural Science, Causes of its Popularity — Easiness of Acquisition — General Smattering — Men love to be talked to Scientifically — Quackish Reasoning about Law and Nature — Spiritualism — Appeal to Utilities — The Bible Praised but not Studied — Style of Preaching — The Bible not in the heart of the Age — Literature and Politics — The Bible to be Interpreted, not Beconciled — Tlie trite Field of Revelation, all that it professes to teach. The following work, it will be seen, is closely related to another lately published, and entitled " The Six Days ot Creation." It is very natural for an author to dwell on the importance of his subject ; but in this case, certainly no earnestness of language could well be out of place. The question connected with the Mosaic account of the origin of the Earth and Man, has difficulties in itself; it has also been surrounded by others from without that 2' 14 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. are pressing more and more closely for a solution. A settlement of them is demanded, and this demand \ii\\ not admit of mucli delay. The chasm of doubt is opening wider and Avider. It must somehow be closed, and by materials, too, from the Scriptural side. The bridge must have its firmest abutment on that shore of the yawn- ing abyss. A certain class of scientific men in scientific conventions, and a certain class of religionists in anni- versary speeches, are much given to talking of " harmo- nies," but it has been in the main a harmony of one part, or at the utmost with a very slender accompaniment. It has, in other words, been made out almost wholly from the side of science. Now this may satisfy those who make it, for they have assumed the harmony in the be- ginning, honestly assumed it no doubt, whether it be from the strength or the easy pliancy of their faith, and, there- fore, they can not appreciate the troubles of those who have no such scientific piety on the one hand, or profes- sional religionism on the other, to give confidence to so easy an assumption. In other words, this reasoning will never satisfy the silent, yet ever inquiring, common mind. It ought to satisfy no mind ; for when examined closely, it is found to be but a string of empty truisms which men would be ashamed to employ in otlicr departments of rea- soning. ' All truth is consistent with all other truth,' — ' the Bible beuig true can not teach what is false ;' ' twu revelations from God (nature being assumed to be one of them in as proper a sense as the Scriptures) can not contradict each other,' etc., etc. Of how many lectures — and, we may also say, of ho\\' many sermons — do such verbal platitudes as these form the leading staple I It is time that this should cease, and that thinking men should niPOIlTANCE OF THE QUESTION. 15 address themselves earnestly to the difficvilties of the question, ■tt-hether they be intrinsic and real, or have been forced upon it by outward circumstances. Such truisms as the above may do for those who regard the matter as all settled on other grounds ; but, we say again, they will never satisfy the thoughtful common mind. Nothing will do here but an honest interpretation of Scripture, — bold yet careful, impartial but not indiffer- ent, free yet most hearty and sincere. The great ques- tion, the momentous question, involving nothing less than the degree of hearty credence to be given to the very first page in God's written revelation, this must be set- tled, and settled from the Bible side, or there comes in a flood of unbelief in all Scripture too fearful to contem- plate. We say all Scripture ; for there is really no other place after this, where any holding barrier can be erected. At any point lower down, the torrent comes rushing on with the accumulated force of all that has given way above. Creation gone — its place in the Scripture left a blank, or what is worse, a lying myth, who will give credence to the account of the flood in the demands of its historic exactness, or regard the succeed- ing events in any other than their loosest legendary aspect ? The Patriarchs become dim mythological sha- dows ; the God of the Patriarchs a ^scs 'n'ftr^wio?^ a pa- trial deity, to rank hereafter with Baal, or Thor, or Ju- piter. Sinai can never wholly lose its grandeur, but it is the grandeur of a gloomy and terrible myth. Moses vanishes through the "Ivory Gate," and prophets follow him to the land of lying dreams. And so of Ilim of whom Moses and the Prophets wrote. The historical Jesus departs with the rest of the long ghostly proces- 16 liNTRODUOTORY VIEW. sion. All is gone but the babble of the ideal Christ, and how long would that poor shadow linger in the rapidly deepening twilight that must follow the real setting sun. We wake from dreams, so called ; but it is to a reality insupportable. We are suftbcated with its appalling density. It is like a man who starts up from a vision, it may be a fearful one, (for all existence is such,) but only to find himself in a still more fearful horror of great and terrible darkness. Should the Avorld ever come to this, then might we know what light there is in geology, or with Avhat propriety it claims to be called a revelation. But we turn from the picture as one too awful to con- template. Instead of dwelling on such an appalling view, it is sufficient, for our present argument, to present two general statements Avhose substantial truth every serious reader must at once perceive. 1st. There would be no belief in revelation worth the name, one generation after the common rejection of the absolute verity of the Mosaic account. 2d. There is no hearty faith in such account when it depends wholly or mainly upon scientific assumptions, or reconciliations so called, forced upon it from without. The Bible is to be intejyreted, not recon- ciled with anything but itself. The very thought is almost equivalent to a rejection. We are even tempto.l to say that it is actually more insulting than frank, and it may be, sorrowing, unbelief. We cannot overrate the importance of a right faitli in this first chapter of Genesis. The difficulty, we repeat, whether regarded as foreign or intrinsic, was pressing hard, and must be met in some way, not by scientific reconciliations, but by fair and thorough exegesis. To do this, or anything towards it, might seem an ambitious GROUND ARGUMENT. 17 attempt for a layman, but theologians were in a good measure standing aloof. Professional Biblical scholars were occupied with outside questions of style, of Scrip- ture natural history, or the pertinency of certain words and texts to some exciting topics of the day, falUng, in importance, immeasurably below the truthfulness of the creative history. The attempt, therefore, was made — we will not say the first, but the first to any considerable length and with a professed exclusion of outside scien- tific theories that might aifect the fair hermeneutical result. It is not for us to speak of any merits of that work. No one is more sensible than the writer, of its many and serious defects. Still, it might be said, some views of interest were opened ; some new ground was taken, in respect to which the author looked with anxiety to the examination of other Biblical scholars. He feared their adverse decision, not so much for his own, as for the great question's sake. Especially was this anxiety felt in respect to the reasoning about the great time- words that are so strangely used in the ancient Shemitic dialects, and the interpretations given to them. Here was the foundation of all the other argument. Here, it was thought, was found that peculiar feature in the ancient thinking which relieved all the other interpreta- tions from the forced, or the mere possible, aspect. Here, if the view could be sustained, was that idea which the modern theology, and the modern concep- tion of God's kingdom, had lost sight of, and which, if it could be revived and shown to have a true ground in the human thinking, and especially the earliest human thinking, would make to appear natural and easy what otherwise would have only a constrained, and therefore 18 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. never satisfying, accommodation to pressing outside diffi- culties. Could the old idea of divided instead of blank eternities, (past and future,) or, in other ^vords, the doctrine of olams and ceons as taught in the book, be maintained, even so far as to entitle it to some share of serious consideration, then the indefinite creative day could be received with little difficulty as an interpreta- tion not only possible, or speciously probable, but as most truly in harmony with the simplest and earliest con- ceptions of the earliest human minds. We say, then, for the great question's sake ; for if any, whether scien- tific or religious, regard the doctrine of indefinite creative days as most indispensable for their cherished recon- ciliation, we see no other line of argument on which there is any fairer prospect, or indeed any prospect at all, of its being made out. Other views, such as those derived from the merely metaphorical sense of the word day, of which examples enough can be found, may furnish a pos- sibility, a probability, nay, more, a captivating specious- ness ; but the mind does not rest in them, aside from such a conviction in respect to the ancient thought. Whatever its demerits, the very attempt was entitled to respect and respectful criticism. And such it has received. The author would be ungrateful to complain of its reception by an approving press and an approving public. Still more encouraging are the private commu- nications from readers, and that too of no low standing in our scholarly and literary world, professing gratitude for relief from serious and painful difficulty. Of five extended reviews, three have been warmly favorable, two bitterly hostile, agreeing in the spirit of the assault, though disagreeing in almost everything else. It has SCIENCE AND THE EIELE. 19 been the singular fortune of the book to be thus assojlccl at the same time, from two directly opposite quarters, and that, too, ^vith an asperity of feehng beyond what usually arises from any mere literary or scientific antago- nism. Another noteworthy circumstance is, that in two long and labored attacks there should not have been met a single 0)ie of those Biblical interpretations whose strength or weakness constitute the real merit or demerit of the argument. The Editor of the Literary and The- logical Journal is so confident of having slain all the geo- logists, and so unshakably certain, moreover, that day means daij^ and can mean nothing else, except in pro};>hccy, whore it denotes exactly 365 days 5 hours and a half, that he probably thinks any matter of interpretation on the other side unworthy of serious notice. The question is with him too plain for argument. The Silliman Pro- fessor of Mineralogy and Geology in Yale College seems to ignore this whole department for another reason. Doubtless he could have shown himself at home in it had he chosen, but there was no need of it. It might have been of some value in the daj^s of the old ignorance, when the best way of getting at the meaning of the Bible v,-as thought to be the study of the Bible, but now science is the light of the age ; " Science and the Bible" makes a very euphonic heading for an article in a Review, but the harmony itself must be made out from the former. In much of the current thinking of the day, the Bible holds a place very similar to that of the Japanese Mikado, or Spiritual Emperor, who has a court but no soldiers. It is to be held in great historical veneration, but science is the real monarch. To go to Scripture, therefore, to find the evidence of this concordat is superfluous work. 20 IXTROLUCTORY VIEW. It has even been construed into disrespect for tlic higher authority. Of course the Bible must agree ^vith science, that is, whatever certain scientific men saj is science, although other scientific men deny both the science and the theology. " Must not all truth be consistent ?" On the score of such profundities as these, the Professor would seem to resent the Biblical efi"ort as making an unlawful entry into his jealously guarded domain. To have put the two authorities on a par might have been tolerated, thougli in the scientific parallelism science generally comes first ; but that may be for the sake of euphony — " Science and the Bible" being rather more rj-thmical than " The Bible and Science." This, we say, might have been tolerated; but to represent science as vastly below revelation, not only in this thing and that thing, but in whatever the latter professes to teach us, — 'to speak of the changing language of human science as altogether unfitted to convey the eternal verities of God's word — to maintain that its technics, and boasted formu- las, may, in some remote latter day, sound obsolete and childish — to hint, that gravities may yet go the way of vortices and epicycles, that the Newtonian system nttiy, in time, be regarded as but an advance on the Ptolemaic, and the present geology looked upon, in some future age, in very much the same light that we now regard the Aristotelian meteorology — to argue that the j.)erma- nent and the substantial is to be sought in the Scriptures, while science can never get above the transient and the phenomenal without bringing in ideas from other regions that lie beyond its own true domain, — above all, to teach that whenever God utters his voice from '* Ilis own Holy Temple," all science, and all philosophy even, which is SCIENTIFIC BOASTING. 21 a higher thing than science, " should keep silence before Him" — this was resented as an indignity. Science was insulted, forsooth, and greatly wronged, although all that was said against her, or about lier, was said in this relation, and fell far within the truth and spirit of the above statements. In assuming such a championship of science, and such an imaginary wrong. Professor Dana well knew the spirit of the age in which, and for which ho Avrote, as well as the amount of moral courage required. It was an easy task, this writing a eulogy on Hercules. Was not science ridding the world of monsters ? Had it not invented steam engines, and telegraphs, and daguerreo- types ? Had it not, in the language of that Epicurean bard of old, who boasts so much like a modern lecturer, driven superstition from its haunts — that horrid mon- ster — Quse caput a cceli regiouibus obteudebnt Horribili super ailspectu moi-talibus installs ; Humnna ante oculos feJc quom vita jaceret In tcrris, ohprcssa gravi suh rdigiotic. Had it not delivered us from the fear of comets and fall- ing stars, as say all the school books in their enumera- tion of scientific utilities ? Had it not banished witchcraft fi-om the earth, although of the modern spiritualism it hardly knew what to say, — this, new power talking itself so scientifically, and having already drawn some of scien- tific note, both here and abroad, within its magic circle. I)ut its greatest achievement was its patronage of the Scriptures, although here there has been no little divi- sion in its ranks, — not a few, who claim free thought, regarding this as a burden which science should not be )'equired to carry. 22 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. Now we are not much afraid of being mistaken in the truth or spirit of these remarks. There are scientific men of lovehest pictj, of most religious modesty. There are men of religious science, in distinction from a scien- tifiie religionism, — men, Avho, although they revere both names, would rather be called the followers of Kepler than of Galileo. There are writers, late writers, and those too whose works exhibit science of the highest order, whose references to the Bible, and quotations from the Bible, have some heart in them. To mention names might seem invidious.* But such men are among us, and they must know, and feel, that the representation given of the position of science in respect to the Bible is not only correct, but the only one consistent with even the lowest honor that can be conceded to a true revelation — a true voice from the invisible supernatural world. Tliey must feel, too, that the truest honor of science arises to her ii'om her recognizing and modestly taking this position. Such men must know and acknowledge that there has been, and is 3'et, an irreligious spirit manifested by not a few of highest scientific name, whilst, in other quarters, there is an assumption of patronage, which, though less hostile to the Bible, is hardly less odious. They can not think of denying such well-settled facts. With men like these the writer v/ould deeply regret any diflfercnce of opinion — much more would he regret, if, in his own one- sided zeal, perhaps, for deeply-cherished views, he may have uttered a word, or thought, wounding to profes- "There is one we cau not help refeniug to. No oue can read Lieuten- ant M.vuuy 's Physical Geography of the Sea, without feeling that the Bilila lies much nearer to liis heart than any amount of physical knowledge. TWO CLASSES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN. 23 sional pride, or derogatory to the honorable love of hon- orable and cherished pursuits. But there is another scientific spirit to which we make neither concession nor apology. It is not so high nor so philosophical as the other, but it is more general, as it is more superficial in its general outside thinking, while it has accordingly more command of the ear and mind of the age. It is the pretentious, noisy, arrogant science. We say nothing of its merits or demerits in its own field ; but it is thus justly characterized, because it claims to be itself the age, and asserts a superiority over all other departments, and all other forms of thought. Some- times, and often, as every intelligent man knows, it is decidedly infidel, hostilely and contemptuously anti-bib- lical. It seeks no '• reconciliation ;" it cares nothing for " harmonies ;" it rather spurns them both. At other times it graciously accepts the Scriptures as containing a collateral revelation, but one that must first be put in harmony with herself. Science — this kind of science — and whenever the word is used by us in a manner to call in question its arrogant claims, let it be so understood — this science assumes to reveal the higher and the older law, and when she speaks, what have Bible men to do but to pull up " their stakes" and " lengthen their cords," and follow on without venturing even to look into their travelRng directory to see where they are going. There is, for example, Professor Dana's highly eulogized friend Agassiz, whom in one place he would commend to the disparagement of the author of the book. We have all respect for him as a man of highest rank in his own de- partment of science ; but he is preparing for a new move ; or rather, he has already made a new move ; and in 24 , INTRODUCTORY VIEW. prompt correspondence with it, some in the theological •world, yes in the evangelical part of it so called, are over- hauling their creeds and dogmas, and apparently packing up for a start. This question of the unity of the human race, and their descent from one primus homo, diflfers widely from the geological question, important as that may be. The point presented is deeply vital, not only to the historical, but to the central faith. The difficul- ties raised respecting the manner and chronology of cre- ation, may affiict our belief most seriously, yet indirectly. Revelation might live, perhaps, though thus cruelly mu- tilated in the very fore-face. Even if compelled to sur- render chapter after chapter, and book after book, the believing spirit would hold on to the last member that gave any evidence of historic vitality. It would cling to the last plank of the broken vessel. But this latter move of science touches the very core of Christianity ; the assailed fact, or dogma, intertwines itself with truth that can no more be separated from it than the blood from the heart. And yet, even here, it is thought by some — yea, the opinion has been hazarded in the very schools of the Prophets — that we must not be rash in affirming confidently what the Bible docs or does not teach, until we hear what science has to say. Let her make her move, and then it will be time enough to see whether the doctrines of the Fall, of the Primal Covenant, of the Federal Headship, of the Redemption, and even of the ''Incarnate Mystery," (that wondrous thought that has heretofore kept its place in all views of the human ruin and recover}', and which even the freest Christianity has been reluctant wholly to part with,) may not possibly be so revised as to meet the case. The Church is advised THE EELIGIOUS BiaOTRr. 25 to maintain, in the mean while, a philosophic calmness, though science should affirm us to be ten thousand instead of one, or take the unphilosophical, as well as seemingly anti-biblical, ground, that nature and species are mere terms of outward classification — that they are words of quantity grounded on the more or less of an ever unde- finable resemblance, instead of the fact of an historic germ that can only be proved or disproved by revelation, and in which the present many historically meet at a point where they are actually as well as generically one. It is in this way, and from such examples, we account for the feeling that the Bible has little to do with any physi- cal questions — that it has little to do with the origin either of the earth or man, and that, therefore, interpre- tation in respect to them, is so ignored, yea, treated as a positive disrespect to science, should it be maintained — as in such interpretation can not well be avoided— ^ that when God speaks, all human knowledge, and human dis- covery, should take the lower place. It is this spirit which, as we shall attempt to show in its connection, is the real naturalism. But it is in their temper, rather than in their positions, that these two reviews do most especially resemble -each other. It is here that the religious and scientific bigotry can hardly be distinguished. There is, however, a dif- ference. The first is bad enough, but it is, after all, more excusable than the second. The religious bigot thinks, at least, that he has a holy motive. He knows not himself, of course ; but the very ground and reason of his self-deception, make his zeal a higher thing, and a better thing, than the scientific bitterness that knows- no such palliation. He is contending with the infidels,^ 3 26 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. not the well-known enemies of the common Christianity, but those whom h-e chooses to call " infidels in disguise," because they may question in any sense the infallibility of his own interpretations. He is a " defender of the faith," and every notion he has derived from his own traditions is a precious portion of that faith ; and every man is, of course, an infidel who does not subscribe] to it precisely as he expounds it, or who does not even an- athematize errorists as he anathematizes them. He has. therefore, some plea to which the scientific bigotry caii lay no claim. And yet, malevolent as this latter showf^ itself to be, degrading as it is to that science and Htera- ture which boast so much of refining our poor human nature, still is it strangely regarded by the world as the more respectable of the two. Its voice, in the present age at least, has the greater weight, and this is the rea- son why we bestow upon it the greater share of attention. The religious bigot, after all, can not do much ; at least now a days. He is fighting valiantly against the infidels, but the real infidels — and there are still some such — are not at all afraid of him. Indeed, they set great store by this faithful sentinel. Nothing delights them more than to hear his sharp cry ever ringing out, not against the real invaders, but the moat honest and earnest defenders of revelation. Sometimes they will even laud him — we have known citable cases of this very thing — for his boldness, his frankness, his outspeaking, honest zeal. Rejecting, as they do, the whole idea of a super- natural revelation, yet, say they, if there is meaning to it at all, this honest man has got it. The First of Genesis is manifest fable, to be sure, but he clearly has the only sense, and that shows it to be a fable. Nothing can be THE SCIENTIFIC BIGOTRY. 27 plainer, they say, to any man of seiise, than that all this talk about the Bible and the Church is of things in nuhi- hus, and the lauded harmony of " science and religion" all a modern myth ; but then, his nonsense is as good as their nonsense, and a great deal more honest. Anything, in short, to bring the Bible into disrepute, and with mate- rials for this his infallibility most abundantly furnishes them. But the scientific bigotry is more respectable — claims to be so at least — whether deservedly or not. It has, therefore, the more influence with another and wider class, and for a somewhat different reason. There are two causes for this wider influence. One is a diminution of a controlhng and exclusive faith in the Scriptures, — ex- (?lusive, we mean, in all matters of which they profess to treat — the other the disproportionate space in the common mind, occupied by what is now called science. Our first proposition may seem a very bold one. Some would say it is utterly false and unjust. If there is any thing which peculiarly marks the age, they would con- tend, it is the direct contrary of what is imphed in the assertion. First a,ppearances, perhaps, might justify such an indignant protest. It is certainly an age famous for its laudation of the Bible, but still, we venture to say it, with a corresponding diminution of a hving faith in it as the real Word of God, which is indeed to control our ■ethics, our pohtics, our literature, our philosophy, yea, our science too, if between it and that science, or any assumptions of that science, we discover a difference ^Yhich no fair, honest, hearty effort of our minds will onable us to reconcile — a faith that in such a case would not ride over appearances, being little better than no 28 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. faith at all. Yes, we laud the Scriptures ; different classes of men seem to vie with each other in lauding the Scriptures. The Bible ! is it not the rehgion of Protes- tants ? Is it not the bulwark of our liberties ? "We eulogise it on the platform ; we fight for it in our common schools ; we make speeches about it on all occasions. But has it a corresponding influence, or anything like a corresponding influence, on the general mind of the age 'i This is the test. Otherwise our pompous eulogies are the very things to cast suspicion upon the strength and heartiness of the general faith. Take an age when there was no doubt of the power of the Bible and a Bible-taught theology, — when they controlled all movements, and en- tered into every department of thought. Such an age is not distinguished for its eulogies on the Word of God. There is something too hearty in its faith to allow of it, or make it necessary. All the writings of all the Ushers, of all the Hookers, of all the old divines of Holland, Scotland, England, and New-England, do not contain so much laudation of the Bible as one modern sermon, or one modern platfjrm speech. But after all, what is its influence as a vital power entering deeply into the mind of the age ? We say the mind of the age, for there are doubtless individuals, and very many of them, in whose souls the claim of a divine revelation, instead of being relaxed, has only taken a firmer hold. The rise of other powers, and their preponderance in the general thinking, has only driven them more closely and trustingly to tlie Word of God. There arc men to whom it is their one book, their sole authority. There arc those to whom, without the Bible, the universe is shrouded in darkness — to whom, without it, all science, and all philosophy, LAUDATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 29 would give but a spectral light — to ■whom, without it, geology, boasting geology, would be but a lamp in the catacombs, a poor mummy light which we might faintly see, indeed, but could see nothing by it, read nothing by it,' even of the greatest of physical truths, our origin, much less aught of the still deeper mysteries that gather round the questions of destiny and salvation. Such men are not much given to praising the Bible as the founda- tion of our liberties, or the great instrument of civiliza- tion. Their faith is not easy enough for that. They find in it too many difficulties. They see in it those great and terrible truths of salvation which throw into the shade all other estimates of its value as connected with even the highest aspects of life that are still but secularities. Neither do they claim any intellectual merit for their faith, even where they feel that they have as good a right to do so as any who challenge to them- selves, and to their pursuits, a higher and more expan- sive range of thought. They can not, they dare not, disbelieve the Scriptures. The feeling has been sown deep in their infancy ; it has grown with their nurture and their culture ; it has connected itself, perhaps, with some pecuUar experience having more of the Biblical element than is now usual, and thus, in all these ways confirmed itself, not as a blind superstition, but by leading to that hearty study of the Scriptures which furnishes their strongest evidence, and without which the Bible is never truly believed, either by an individual or an age. It becomes their " meditation by day and by night" — " sweeter than honey and the honey comb ;" and thus, whether they have any great science or not, it " maketh them wiser than their enemies that be round about them." 30 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. Yet still wc venture to say it, hovrever rash it may seem in us, there is in much of this religious world, espe- cially as exhibited in its more conventional and secular aspects, a poor diluted faith, a poor shivering faith that can not keep itself warm from the Scriptures, and so it runs to science and everything else. Its want of strength and earnestness is very much in proportion to the noise it makes about the Bible and the so-called " Harmony of Science and Revelation ;" or " the two revelations," as it is fond of styling them. We have no doubt of its honesty, or its purity as far as it goes. This belief is genuine — it has a value in the preservation of the soul's health, and its ultimate salvation. It has a sincere re- gard for the Bible, but it is so immersed in secularity, and secularizing movements of reform — its Christianity is so much of this world, and allies itself with so many collat- eral influences from the world, that it has no time, and if it had time, has not heart enough to arouse, or strength enough to sustain, that whole-souled study of the Scrip- tures, that " meditation therein by day and by night," that 'Consequent devoted love of the Book, which would teach them wondrous things out of it — thus making its bright internal evidence the most immoveable support of their faith. The deep study of the Scriptures is essential to any strong faith in them, and could men be induced heartily to engage in it, it might be recommended as the best of all cures for scepticism, or naturalism, whether of an individual or of an age. But here we are met by a difficulty which gives the proposition the appearance of a paradox. Without such faith there will be no such study. The truth is, that both are, at the same time, cause and effect. They must act and re-act upon each EARNEST STUDY OP THE SCRIPTURES. 31 other. But without settlmg that difficulty, it is enough to present the fact, which few will deny, that the Bible, though generally and honestly believed, and with much interest manifested for its distribution, is not in the heart of the age, at least as it has been in the heart of former ages. It is not so much the one sole authority that it used to be, the one great superseding authority in all matters of which it speaks. It is not so much that the Scriptures have been rejected, as that other things have come into partnership with them, and, we may say, to some degree of superiority over them in the control of the common thinking — even the better and more serious common thinking — of the age. We repeat, then, the paradox — the true remedy for this semi-scepticism which respects the Bible so much — which svyears by the Bible while it serves other gods — whether it be the gods of politics, philanthrophy, or sci- ence, the god of social " ideas," or the " god of forces" — the true remedy for this is that devoted Biblical study of which we have spoken. Superficial reading, or mere formal reading, only breeds difficulties or indifference ; instead of light it only reveals pitfalls and stumbling- blocks. A deeper study produces that evidence of which we read much in the old divines who lived just after the Reformation, but which is now seldom alluded to in modern books either of instruction or devotion. It is not the ex- ternal evidence, commonly so called, or the historical proof of Christianity, valuable and indispensable as that is for all ages. It is not that other kind of evidence more usually named the internal, but which is as truly external as the first, whilst it has less of its conclusive- ness. We mean by this, the supposed conformity of the 32 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. Scriptures to right reason, as it is called, or " the nature of things" —- there being meant by this our own views of what ought to be true in theology, or ethics, or what we conceive to be true in science. This evidence, we say, is, in one sense, as much external to the Scriptures as the historical. In both cases it is a light we bring to the Bible, and not a light we derive from it. Hence, thus viewed, both are equally outward — that is, outward to the Bible. One is an outward historical knowledge, the other an outward knowledge of mind or matter which we call science and philosophy. This second kind of rationalism, though boasting a higher rank, is less con- clusive than the first. The explanation is, that in the one case our reason is called to judge of what lies easily and plainly within its nearest sphere, such as the mean- ing of words, the laws of language, the fair principles of interpretation. In the other, we bring to the clearing of the Scriptures the very darkness they were intended to illuminate, or, if we take the road of science commonly so called, we enter upon a region whence nothing can be proved of the human, or the mundane destiny, because the unknown so immensely, so infinitely, we might almost say, exceeds the known. We may say, too, that in this attempted proof of the Bible by its conformity to what we call right reason and the nature of things, the very first principle of the purest reason is itself subverted. We measure the infinite by the finite. We make our thoughts the test of the Divine thoughts, our ways the test of the Divine ways ; our natural science, or natural theology, as we call it, which is but the discovery of links, we revere as the very canons of that Divine wisdom which is known only in the revelation of hegbmings or ends. THE TRUE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 33 Such a proceeding to prove revelation is, moreover, in the very face of the revelation to be proved. It contra- dicts some of its sublimest utterances. " Your thoughts are'not my thoughts, saith the Lord ;" " neither are your ways" (your ways of thinking and knowing as well as acting) " my ways." " For as the heaven? are high above the earth" (the strongest hyperbole that language can employ) " so high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts." This Scriptural language is evidently employed to denote things not only immensely apart in rank and magnitude, but also incon- ceivably differing in kind. Hence the value of that other internal evidence to which we barely alluded, but of which the old divines are full. The reader will not often meet with it in modern religious or theological vrorks, but he will find it most prominently and most abundantly set forth in such writers as Owen, and Baxter, and Hooker, and Hall. He will meet with it in those men of ponderous learning and child-Uke piety, the old theolo- gians of Holland who lived before Grotius and Grotianism had unspiritualized that noble Church ; and we have no doubt that it might be found in the most religious of the Roman Catholic divines. It is that internal evidence that reveals itself to us by its own light ; the light which the Scriptures themselves^ have kindled in the soul. It is what Hallyburton, in his reply to the rationalism of Locke, calls " the Divine glory beaming and burning in the Scriptures." It is the recognition of the majestic voice of God speaking to us therein, and in every part It is not simply the intellectual assent to the logical con- sistency of its doctrines, however defectively or partially seen; it is not that "beautiful morality" which some 34: INTRODUCTORY 'S^EW. infidels have been so fond of praising ; it is not the lofti- ness of its oratory, or the subhmitj of its poetry, but dis- tinct from all these, and above all these, it is that impress of Divine Autliority which comes from long, and devout, and loving communion -with the sacred volume. It is that " satisfying light," evidencing itself to be true light by the fact that it enables us to see, not only itself, but other things by means of it, making reason more clear by revealing its limitations, and other knowledge more valuable by the discovery of its true yet inferior position. It is what one has called " the Divine majesty beaming in the Word." We would not trust our own lancruawe here, and so we adopt that of the venerable and learned men who so loved the Scriptures, and so lived in the Scriptures, we may say, that their mode of speaking about them sounds mystical, or hyperbolical, to our un~ biblical age. They were not dreamers, nor enthusiasts, nor fanatics, but sound-minded men, noble scholars, logi- cal interpreters, keen analyzers of their own psychologi- cal states. It was not only the Ushers, and the Cud- worths, and the Owens who spake thus — though these might well be compared with the soberest scholars and theologians of our own age, — but the great Bacon, too, talks in the same style — the great Bacon whom so many sciolists so ignorantly worship. In the decline of his political and philosophical greatness it might have been, but it was after his mind had been brought into closest communion with the Scriptures, that he speaks of " seek- ing God in nature, but finding him only in his Word." It was a trait of the universal religious thinking. Tlie writers to whom we have referred speak of it as a reality, a glorious reality, not confined to a few mystical dream- EXCLUSIVE AUTHORITY. 35 ers, but belonging to the common faith of common Chris- tians in that beUeving age. This faith they regarded as supernatural ; but whether supernatural, or having its seat in the natural facul- ties of the human soul, and in the natural exercise thereof, still was it ever the intimate companion of deep and hearty study of the Scriptures. It was only by intense meditation therein, that men's eyes were truly opened to discern the glorious light in the Word and thus to " discover wondrous things out of the Divine Law,'' and in no part more wondrous than in this earliest record of man and the world. To this hearty study of the Scrip- tures must the age return. There must be regained that single, honest, view of the absolute authority of the Bible in all matters of which it professes to treat or even speaks. No other faith is worthy of the name. A revelation, so received as coming from God, must be everything or no- thing. It must be exclusive as v/ell as conclusive. It can allow no concurrent, no collateral, authority. No- thing else that is styled a revelation, whether in nature or in history, can be put on a par with it, or, in any sense^ placed in parallelism with it. Once admitted, as indeed the Divine supernatural voice, nothing else can even ap- proach it, — nothing else that calls itself authority can hold up its face before it on its own field. Among all truths of reason so called, we can conceive of none more rational than this. And to this the Church and the age must return, or give up its loud talk about the Bible — the "Bible and Science" — the Bible and natural theology — the Bible and democracy — the Bible the palladium of our liberties — the foundation of our social, civil and religious rights. It may not be prudent to say it, but it 36 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. is true, notwithstanding, and therefore, we will saj it, that even before the Reformation, among divines of the Roman Church, and in the works of the schoolmen, writ- ten, as we are taught to believe, when the Scriptures lay buried and unknown, there was more of heartj^faith in them than can now be discovered in the teachings of some who are the greatest praisers of the Bible. There is more appearance of devout reverence ; there is a more spontaneous deference as to unquestionable authority; there is more of a loving resort to them as the ultimate decision, after philosophy has had her say, and science has delivered her message, whatever it might have been, for that or any other age of the world. If this living on the Scriptures, as, next to Christ, the soul's truest food, be the best test of faith in the Bible, then Avill an Anselm^ an A Kempis, an Aquinas, yea, perhaps, unknown souls, not a few, from the cloister and the cell, rise up in judg- ment against the Bible eulogizers, and scientific harmo- nizers of the day. It may not be prudent to talk thus, but we are certain that there is truth, important truth, in what we say, and that the age should hear it. We appeal to serious men of all theological parties. Is the Scriptures in the heart of this age, as it has been in the heart of former ages ? Is the evidence of this in the pul- pit, in the press, in the theology, or the literature of the day ? Does the mind, even the religious mind, go spon- taneously to the Written Word ? for this is the true test. In every difficulty does it first think of the Bible ? In all the great questions of the day, as they are called, — the social, political, moral questions — those question? which all depend so much, for their truest solution, on right views of human destiny and its relation to the invi- BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 37 sible worlds, and v'here the Bible must be supposed to give some light, if it give light at all — on all such ques- tions, is it the first thought, what do the Scriptures fairly teach, or do they teach anything, either as precept or principle, to which all other reasoning can and must be made to conform ? We talk much more about the Bible than ever the Puritans, or the Reformers did ; is the com- mon nund, the common religious mind, we mean, more familiar with it than it was in their day' — familiar with it, not in the mere quotation of a few pet texts, which almost any party can get out of it, but in the spirit of the Bible, and its whole bearing upon the analogy of re- vealed truth ? These questions might be carried into the higher departments. How is it with our professed Biblical study ? Does it go into the very marrow of the Scriptures ? We have got rid of some of the crudities of former preachers and interpreters, — we have read Old i\Iortality, and can talk bravely of the extravagance of the Kettle-drummles, and McBriars, and Mucklewraiths, though even this has more heart in it, and therefore, more truth than much that is conceived and written in the opposite style. But if there is an absence of their pecuUar errors, there is also an absence, much to be lamented, of those rich views of divine truth, in its entire Bibhcal harmony, which the old English scholars, and the learned Leyden divines brought out of the ever- suggestive Word of God. Instead of that direct deduc- tion of all high truth from the Bible which is now con- demned as mystical, we have the most elaborate discus- sions about the Bible, and about the books of the Bible, and the natural history of the Bible. Instead of the " analogy of faith" which led men to regard each book 4 38 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. as a part of a most perfect unitj, such as it certainly must be if it is God's Word in any true sense, sye have Lowthian criticisms on the varied human styles of its composers, all very true indeed, but very subordinate to the higher harmony which such a kind of a-iticism has ever a tendency to keep out of view. Such is the spirit of much modern Biblical criticism, rich as it is in its ma- chinery of outward interpretation. It is fastidious of the impurities that belong to the bucket rather than the foun- tain ; and, therefore, instead of drawing copiously and constantly from the deep wells of pure Scriptural thought, it is ever on the outside, at least in regard to essential vital truth. In short, it is ever about the Bible, as though it were a curiosity to be examined, rather than the Book of the Lord given to us as a light shining in a dark place, and to which everything else in the mind of the believer should be so subordinate, that even if he does not deri\T his philosophy and his science from it, as a direct text- book, he is, at least, willing to say, and is forced to say, that he will have and can have no philosophy, and no science, that are in any sense really or seemingly at war with it. We are far from saying that the modern reception of the Scriptures is not sincere and sound as far as it goes. Its greatest fault is, that it is not exclusive, as it ought to be if it would be anything. It takes the Scriptures as authority, as high authority, but not the all-controll- ing authority, on all matters of which they speak. Other Lords have come in and shared dominion with it. In our literature and our science there is a mixture of the "Jews' language" with "the speech of Ashdod." Es- pecially has there been a dimming of that highest evi- BIBLE PRAISED IN ITS SECULAR ASPECTS. 39 clence of which Owen, and Halliburton, and Pascal speak. The Lowthian spirit of interpretation sees it not, because it does not look for it. Along with this obscure percep- tion of the true divine majesty and authority speaking directly in the Word, there is an increasing tendency to laud the Scriptures for those more secular teachings, or in those secular aspects of revealed truth, which are either greatly subordinate, or are forced upon it altogether. Hence there is so much mere talk about the Bible. Politicians magnify the Bible. Are they really going to the Bible, drawing nearer to the Bible, or is the Bible viewed as coming down to them ? Literary men are sentimental about the Bible ; social reformers cant about the Bible. The tendency sometimes manifests itself in an appearance which would be ludicrous were it not pro- fane ; the bully chief of the Empire Club breaks up a meeting of fanatics, as he calls them, because " they abuse the Holy Bible," and the vile makers of vile political plat- forms endorse the act, and the spirit of it, in their cant- ing resolutions about our civil and religious liberties. This is not all hypocrisy ; the lowered position of the Bible has made men dread it less, and so they " respect'''' it more. They seek to harmonize it with everything, and that general ignorance which comes from the want of earnest study, makes this, in most cases, a] very easy and accommodating process. In short, the Bible is a favorite book of the age ; it has a most convenient store- house of texts and mottoes ; it contains the articles of our faith, although we sometimes have to put them in a more philosophical and scientific form. It professes, indeed, to carry with it its own credentials, but as a general truth, men go abroad for its evidences. 40 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. Hence the undue -weiglit attached to scientific and other foreign testimonies to Christianity. Science at the present day, in distinction from philosophy and theology, occupies a disproportioned, and therefore injurious space in the public mind. This is especially true of natural science, and still more so of that department strictly called natural Idstory, and to -which, in other times, as wise as our own in the philosophy of names as definitive of ideas, the term science, would hardly have been con- ceded at all. But whether that be correct or not, it is rather a singular fact in the history of human thinking, that these very branches have come to usurp the name to the exclusion of almost everything else. Let the word science be used, and how many, even among the educated who ought to know better, never think of Language, of Psychology, of Ethics, of Political Science, of Theology highest of all. Philology — it is the " study of words," and what are words compared with shells and minerals ? Even the Pure Mathematics hereby finds a place except as an auxiliary to some of the usurping branches. Che- mistry, too, is thrown in the back ground, while Concho- logy, INIineralogy, Icthyology, come trooping up, paper in hand, and demanding to be recognized not only as very respectable and very useful branches of knowledge, which they certainly are, but as science per se, in its highest and almost exclusive import. These are, indeed, beauti- ful pursuits. "We do not wonder that they are ardently loved by those who have time to devote to them, and who have been drawn to their study by temperament and (.'ircumstances clearly indicating them as the paths of knowledge in which they could best connect their own happiness with the utilities, and not only the utilities, but SCIENTIFIC CONVENTIONS. 41 the refinement of the age. One of the purest men, and clearest intellects, with whom the writer is acquainted, lias devoted himself for many years to a thorough scien- tific hunt after .that mischievous and evasive enemjj the wheat insect. He has traced him through three forms of generation, and discovered some curious facts of develop- ment* that ought to make Professor Dana less confident about his having slain the Vestiges of Creation. There Is, doubtless, in many others engaged in similar pursuits the same earnest amor scientice so ennobling to our hu- manity in whatever form it may show itself, together with the same unwearied search of facts that may subserve the physical good. All honor to them; — but we appeal to such men themselves, or to the more serious and think- ing among them, whether there has not been too much of an arrogant claiming, or at least employment, of the name science as peculiarly, if not exclusively applicable to these and kindred branches. Let any one examine the records of our annual scientific conventions. Three- fourths of their proceedings relate to natural history pro- perly so called. Of the remaining fourth, astronomy has a fair share ; mathematics pure brings out its paper now and then, whilst all else beyond this physical region, is as much ignored as though it had no claim whatever to the dignity of a science, or the consideration of scientific men. And so too of the latter phrase — a man of sci- ence;-— let it be mentioned, and at once some physical ology, or some branch of natural history, suggests itself 'We refer here, not to development from inanimate matter, but to some .:urious facts of wliat may be called double generation — the immediate off- spring so unlike the parents, that they would be regarded as a new species if the fact of origin was unknown. 4* 42 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. to the common mind. It thinks immediately of shells, and mosses, — at the highest of gases, fossils, or tele- scopes. Legal science, political science, ethical science, Biblical science, hermeneutical science ! — the terms in- deed are recognized, but they are regarded as being used by way of accommodation rather than by intrinsic right. Now this utter distortion of names and ideas is a mark of a one-sided, if we may not call it superficial, age. It is the language of a generation, and of a think- ing, immersed in the physical ; and we protest against it. It gives an undue advantage. In an age when men read and talk far more than they think, it clothes certain opinions of a certain class with an authority which does not belong to them. There is a sufficient instance of this in the very example that has called out tliese remarks. Why should the dictum of a geologist be deferred to on a question of the interpretation of Scripture 'i There is no reason for it ; there is every reason against it ; and yet it carries weight, and carries along with it too the timid religionist, because it comes forth under this high- sounding name of science, so unjustly and even absurdly 'usurped for a department of knowledge extremely limited in extent, and very far from being the highest in idea or in aim — in intellectual difficulty, in intellectual rank, or even in utility when judged by the highest and truest standard. In reply to what is here said about the great dispro- portion of such subjects in scientific conventions, it might, perhaps, be alleged that there is a reason for it, without its being attributed to any such usurpation or exclusive- ness. The great majority of the papers read are on nat- ural history, or, at the widest, what is called physical PHYSICAL SCIENCE POPL'LAR*— AYHY. 43 science, because these furnish the topics that are the more directly popular, or acceptable to the common think- ing. There is some truth in such apology — but is it for the glory of this kind of science that it should be so ? Does it form an honorable ground for its extravagant boasting? Physical science, especially in the depart- ments to which we have chiefly alluded, is popular for several reasons. In the first place, it is more easy of acquisition. To be thorough and eminent in any one of these does indeed require a life devoted to it, as to any other pursuit in which decided excellence is the aim. But their general acquisition, to a respectable extent, lies within the power of almost any mind of ordinary in- telligence and ordinary opportunities. We do not at all wish to underrate them, although the immense boasting they have made, or that has been made for them, fairly justifies any attempt to reduce them to their true place in the wide map of human knowledge. Take the one which may be said to have the least science, strictly, of them all — that is, is most built on outward classification instead of inward organic life running up mto that uni- versality of law and idea whose tendency is to connect all knowledge that partakes of it into one catholic thinking. Take Conchology, for example ; even here we concede that to be a good conchologist requires a peculiar habit, a peculiar talent, and a peculiar and patient observation that all do not possess. An enthusiastic devotion to it is very honorable to a man, if it be accompanied by an appropriate modesty ; but it is very far from requiring the highest order of mind, and it becomes very foolish when, on the score of its being so peculiarly and exclusively science, it challenges for its devotees a deference in other 44 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. matters, and in widely different if not altogether higher departments of knowledge. He who makes himself thorough in this department of science, occupies a high position, and ought to occupy a high position, among useful and intelligent and cultivated men ; and yet it is true that almost any one who has any inclination for the study, and time for it from other pursuits, may make himself very respectably scientific here with little effort, and in a very short time. The same is true of Geology, the most vaunting of them all. It calls out the same and no greater faculty of observation, no greater pow- ers of thinking, though connected with more important and interesting results-. It has, however, one peculiar " utility" that the others do not possess. To many minds — we do not fear to say what is so fully borne out by facts — to many minds, it has a charm from the supposed fact of its furnishing a ground of objection — whether true or false — to the credibility of the Scriptures. It is this which gives it a large share of its importance, and none better know the fact than those of its religious, Bible-loving students who most sincerely wish to coun- teract its influence. We are conscious of telling truth here, and therefore shrink not from its assertion. It is the general spirit more than any facts of geological re- search, that is hostile to the Scriptures. It is the gene- ral spirit as manifested in two ways, the bold and sneer- ing opposition of many Geologists abroad, the apparently friendly but hardly less mischievous asssumption of its being a sort of collateral and even higher revelation, that is made by others under orthodox influences in our own land. Good men and Christians, who are, at the same time, very "scientific men," are trying hard to POPULARITY OF GEOLOGY. 45 counteract this ; but tlie dishonorable popularity vrhich the study has derived from its being supposed to minister to this anti-biblical spirit, can never be seriously affected from the scientific side. Geology — serious Geology we mean — can never be relieved from it, until thorough, honest, reliable interpretation takes the place, and the authority, of one-sided scientific " harmonies of nature and revelation." For the reasons we have given, Geology is popular ; it is a favorite science of the day, but it really demands no greater powers of mind for its observations or conclusions than other branches of the same scientific genus. It has a much grander sound, indeed, to talk about boulders and glaciers, and yet these may be actually coarser and less artistic works of nature than ferns and mosses. Geology is diligently engaged in examining the epidermis of the earth, it is making curious discoveries among its dorsal fins, and some are most diligently hunt- ing there for human bones, but it may require no more intellectual power to do this, than to classify plants, or dissect an animal. It deals too, or assumes to deal, with immense times deriving interest from other associations, but having, in themselves, no more intellectual value, and less intellectual interest than the question of the change and periods in the germination of the seed, or the growth of the foetus. The pride of Geology in this aspect, is as absurd as it would be to regard the mere anatomy of the mastodon as a matter of more scientific importance than the careful observation of the insect in its wonderful transitions from the egg to the grub, and from the grub to the winged state. These sciences are easy. They are more easily ac- (juired, and this gives them another advantage. In con- 46 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. sequence of such facility, they are, in the second place, more generally diffused than other and more difficult stu- dies ; or, rather, there is a more common diffusion to a certain extent. There is a more general smattering ; and this contributes more to their popularity than even a dee}> er and more difficult knowledge. They are the popular studies of the day, pursued in our schools and academies to the neglect of the more sohd, and,.in the end, more truly useful branches of knowledge. There is every \vhere a little Physiology, a little Mineralogy, a little Geology, etc. Of course, there is obtained, in general, but a smattering in each ; but this is enough to fill the common mind with a wondrous conceit of science. It is a scientific age, it is often said ; the term being ever used in reference to physical science as the only thing known to be entitled to the name. This gives a great advantage to the common lecturer. Audiences love to be talked to scientifically. It gives them a very scientific opinion of themselves. Each hearer fancies himself a Galileo, a defender of knowledge and progress against bigoted theologians and persecuting priests. The lec- turer, though he may be himself a thoroughly scientific man, and one who truly loves science in its higher aspects, yet adapts himself to this state of things. Instead of the rigid demonstration he would employ, if he really meant or hoped to instruct his audience, he dwells on the lower practical business aspects, or, if he would seem to rise into something higher, it is what ma}' be called the thau- maturgical presentation of science that has the greatest charm for the hearer, and the greatest temptation for the speaker. We mean by this those curious facts which THAUMATURGIC LECTURING. 47 are mainly calculated to astonish* men, though having no more, and often even less connection with fundamen- tal scientific truth than others which the lecturer or the book-maker neglects, because they are less adapted to his purpose of immediate excitement, and hence immediate applause. A rigid exhibition of the mathematical modes of determining the distances of the planets would be dry and wearisome. To most audiences, moreover, notwith- standing the boast of its being a scientific age, it would be unintelligible. But to make a grand display of deci- mals, to talk of millions and bilHons, and distances which the cannon ball could not traverse in a thousand years, and rows of figures reaching round the earth, this gives them a wondrous view of the science, and of the still more wondrous human mind that can make such compu- tations, and entertain such far-reaching ideas. Thorough and patient instruction in the doctrine of transits and parallaxes, with the necessary demonstrations and dia- grams, would drive the wearied audience from their seatsj but let them be told, in thaumaturgic style, of the won- drous swiftness of light, and how a luminous stream two hundred thousand miles long enters the eye every time a man winks, and there is immediately a hail-stone cho- rus of applause. The lecturer has hit the mark. The audience came to be amused, and he has adapted himself to their wishes, and to the degree of science which is just sufficient to call out such a feeling. The man of true 'It is astonishment, uot the pliilosopliic irondcr, which is very difFereut. One belongs to tlie imagination or mere sense-coDception, the other to the idealizing mind. The one has its exciting cause iu merely curious facta presenting an odd or strange picture ; the other is aroused to those mys- teries of nature and prime causality of which the highest science, as well as the humblest facts, is merely suggestive. 48 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. science, we say, often does this. He is compelled to do this or lose the reputation of a popular lecturer. But the quack, too, takes advantage of it. He knows the general tendency to talk about science ; and how fond audiences are of being addressed scientificallj, and how prone they are to take a certain stereotyped, story-tell- ing language of science as rigid science itself. Hence, under a babble about " laAvs," and " natural causes," and " developments," and the " organic and inorganic," etc., almost any kind of foolery passes current. All these adopt the same lingo, whether it is the man who wishes to recommend some quack medicine, or the lec- turer on Biology, or Phrenology, or that miserable con- coction of inane delusion, childish reasoning, and wicked imposture, that goes under the name of modern spiritual- ism. The chief cause of the success of this species of quackery is its continual assumption of a sort of scientific gabble. It is ever talking about laws, and fluids, and forces, and electricity, and magnetism, and there is just enough everywhere of a certain kind and certain depth of science to give it its present pretension and its present popularity. There have been ages of far less natural knowledge, when this thing would have been spumed with contempt. Delusions taking the form of religious superstitions, and claiming connection with the supernat- ural, might awe the soul ; but the days of witchcraft, and of the belief in a satanic influence had too much philosophy, and too much love for the Scriptures, to en- tertain the least respect for such a satanic naturalism or naturalizing spiritualism as this. There is, in the third place, the continual appeal to util- ities, which is another great element in the popularity of SCIENTIFIC UTILITIES. 49 this kind of knowledge. One finds it so much more of a facile task to persuade meii of its immediate practical bearings. This is so easy that even the devoted student of natural science, -who knows that he pursues it from that pure love of theoretical truth which is one of the highest traits of our nature — the man, in fact, who would give his days and nights to his laboratory whether any utilitarian inventions came from it or not — even he is tempted to take what he knows to be the lower motive — the motive by which he is conscious that he himself is least influenced — and hold it forth as the main thing in all his appeals to the public for educational encourage- ment in his favorite pursuit. Hence this becomes so prominent a theme in introductions to text books, and in the common notices of scientific progress. Chemistry is of vast importance in the practical arts. It is a great aid in the manufacturing of paints and soap ; it furnishes us tests whereby to distinguish poisons, and quack medi- cines ; as though these ludicrous impositions that science may multiply, but which it will take something more than science ever to drive from the world, were the only kind of quackeries from which we have now-a-days any thin ^^ to apprehend. So Geology discovers coal mines, and Astronomy is a great aid in navigation, and Navigation is essential to commerce, etc., etc. Thus science, natu- ral science, becomes popular by having ignored and kept out of view its own highest efifect and aim. In like man- ner, Colleges are sometimes praised, not for the minds they have produced, not for having elevated and spiritu- ahzed the tone of thinking in their age or neighborhood, but for the agricultural improvements and mechanical inventions which, in some far-fetched way, arc ascribed 5 50 INTRODLX'IORT VIEW. to their influence. And then there is the everlasting sing-song of the steam engine, the daguerreotype, and the magnetic telegraph, as though the rapid transmis- sion of a thought were of vastly more importance than the quality of the thought transmitted, or the age was to be lauded for the improvement of the one, whatever dete- rioration might take place in the rank and true value of the other. All these causes have given natural science a space in the public mind which is altogether disproportioned to its real worth ; and in the midst of many acknowledged util- ities we are suiFering also serious evils in consequence of it. The cause of true education is hurt. The profound- er, and, in the end, the far more useful studies lie too much out of the common track to be so easily appreci- ated. It is far more difficult to make the public feel their real merits. The higher intelligence sees, or ought to see this, but in this class, too, there are popularity hunters, and instead of sustaining by extra aid those really most useful branches whose utility, however real, lies remote from the fii'st and most obvious thinking, they are for putting all things on the same democratic level, and making the test of value in any spiritual, as well as in any material, thing, the immediate public patronage as coming from the immediate public demand. Outside causes have contributed to the same unfair preponderance. All the circumstances and wants of the age tend to magnify physical knowledge, or "science" so called. Philosophy has completed one of its cycles, and is now occupied more with its past history than with any quickening view, whether now or old, of the universal problem. There is our thin rationalizing theolog;^', all UNDUE DEFERENCE TO SCIENCE. 51 reasoned out of nature, or the nature of things, as it is called, rather than the Scriptures ; there is our utilitarian ethics, our shallow radical politics. " Science," as it is called, is not only more easy, but more really beautiful and AYorthy of loving study than some of these in the aspects in which they are now presented, and we do not wonder that men are rushing after it. Hence, for our age, science, natural science, has acquired a place and a space that do not belong to it ; it demands a deference from all other departments of thought, which is not due either to its dignity, or its true utility. In the language of prophecy,*" it has become the horn having a man's voice speaking great things," and the world, even the religious world, is wondering after it. Here we find the secret of that pitiful attitude which is not unfre<|uently witnessed among religious men — that pitiful attitude that would beg an affidavit of the truth and value of our Christianity from some leading politician, or of that poor faith that exhibits so wondrous a delight at a compliment paid to the Bible in a scientific convention, or reserves its cautious decision on the most important interpretations, and the most important doctrines of the Bible, until sci- ence — this hind of science — has spoken. But we protest against it. The Scripture is to be interpreted from itself, and by this Ave mean, not only its own direct utterances, but all things that by fair herme- neutical laAvs stand connected, historically and psycholo- logieally, with the conceptions of those who were made the medium of such revelation, and with the language which they were directed or permitted to employ as the direct out-birth or growth of such conceptions. In a late admirable sermon before one of our ecclesiastical 52 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. Assemblies, a distinction is made, in this respect, ■\\'hich has the appearance of being not only fair for the Scrip- tures, but philosophically sound. Still, with all our re- spect for the pious and learned author, we can not accede \\holIy to his position. When carefully exam- ined, it seems to us to surrender the main ground of the Bible authority and put it too much under the patronage of science. " Where the subject belongs more properly to revelation," to use his own language, " we are to be governed by the laws of interpretation, and Scripture thus interpreted is paramount. Where it belongs more properly to science then her decision is to be deferred to," It seems fair and rational ; but the very illustra- tions immediately brought forward show, we think, the fallacy of the distinction. The creation of man as one primus homo, the author would regard as belonging to the first class ; the question of creation, or of the indefinite creative period, he concedes to the second. In the one, accordingly, science, whatever she m.ay seem to discover, must yield to exegesis ; in the other, exegesis yields to, or rather, is to be made out by the decisions of science. Hence, he says " the question whether the word day (yom) in the First of Genesis signifies a period of twen- ty-four hours, or a longer period, may be safely left to be determined by the investigations of Geology." We can not admit the ground of the distinction. The at- tempt to make it only gives rise to a still more difficult question than either, — that is, if it is to be settled by our philosophical reason without appealing to Scripture itself. It is this. What questions " belong more properly to revelation" ? Can anything decide this but revelation itself properly interpreted ? Can any one tell us what God THE BIBLE DEFINES ITS OWN PROVINCE. 63 * ought to teach us, or may properly teach us, except God himself? "Who hath been his counsellor" in this re- spect ? The question keeps coming up — What was the Bible intended to teach us ? Just what it does teach us, is the only answer consistent either with reason or a pro- per deference to what we believe to be a divine autho- rity. It alone can define its own province. To concede this to anything outward is to abandon the whole ground. If the interpretation of tom is to be taken from philologi- cal science (including in the term all of history, of archae- ology and of psychology that belongs to it,) and given to Geology, why should not the word ad am, in like man- ner, be surrendered to Physiology, or anything else that may put forth its great pretensions under such a name ? If one is to be given up to Professor Dana, why should not the other, in like manner, be yielded to Professor Agassiz, who maintains, or must maintain, if he pretends to interpret Scripture at all, that the word adam must be taken generally, or generically, to denote humanity* instead of one single man. This he says it must mean to be consistent with certain facts he has discovered, or thinks he has discovered. Now we do not think much of his facts ; but his reasoning would be as good as that of Professor Dana's, and the concession to him equally rational. If, as interpreters, we agree with either, or disagree with both, it can only fairly be upon the ground that such opinion is really consistent with the words and context of Scripture, or that there is something on the face of the language which excludes one interpretation 'And that, too, uot as otic in many, grounded on one-ness of law and idea developed from a once actual unity, but as a many in one class, grounded on resemblance and held together by arbitrary definition. 5* 54 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. of science (if we may call any decision of science an interpretation) and demands the acceptance of the other, either as directly made out, or simply because there are greater hermeneutical difficulties in rejecting it. Thus, for example, we fairly and safely believe in the one pri' mus Jiomo, and in the indefinite jjeiiods, on the same her- meneutical grounds. The word adam mai/ have a gene- ric sense, as the word yom may have either an unmear sured or a twenty-four-hour sense. We believe, how- ever, that ADAM means a single man, because there are insuperable hermeneutical difficulties connected with the other view — difficulties arising from the immediate con- text and from other parts of the Bible. So we believe that YOM in Genesis i, was meant to be indefinite, or at least, could not have been intended for a solar period of twenty-four hours, because such view can not be exegeti- cally reconciled with the account of the first ante-solar days — because it creates a difficulty that must have been as patent to the first writer as any science can now make it, — and because the other interpretation best harmonizes Nwith other parts of the Bible and the soundest ideas we H?an form of the ancient thinking. On such grounds, — all ■iermeneutical in distinction from geological, — we base our decision. If science agrees with it, so much the better for science. The interpreter may admit that some of her discoveries, or her loud talking about them, have aroused him to a more full examination of the matter. But this is all that can be rationally conceded in the case. To make natural science itself the interpreter of Scrip- ture is as great a solecism in language as it is an absur- dity in idea. The highly respected authority we have quoted would certainly not carry it thus far. If he CASE OF GALILEO. 55 means that one of these positions is more important than the other, and that on the less vital question we may concede more to science, we should not differ much from him. But this can not affect the principles or true idea of interpretation. The greater or less importance of the truth, if it is truth, which God has condescended to teach us, can make no difference as to the mode by which it is deduced, or not deduced from the Scriptural language. Whatever can not be made out, and fairly made out, from the Scriptures, is not taught in the Scriptures — is not a doctrine or dogma of the Scriptures We can not well conceive of any proposition more rational or more directly applicable to our present subject. It is further urged that it was " from want of attention to this distinction, there arose the persecution of Galileo," and the controversy in respect to Joshua x, 13. We would most respectfully venture to call in question both these views. There is good reason to believe that the Italian shared the free-thinking spirit, at that time pre- valent, with other savans of his age and nation. He was as fond of controversy as the priests, and provoked it by a display of his science in that very way that would look most like a collision with the Scriptures. It was the scientific narrowness against the hierarchal narrow- ness — with this difference, that the priests, mistaken as they may have been, both in scientific fact and sound interpretation, were contending for truths, and conse- quences as involved therein, with which all the science of Galileo, and of all the savans of his day, or of all suc- ceeding days, bore no comparison, either of value in itself, or of interest to man. That there was some- thing wrong in the spirit of this oft-quoted witness, is 56 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. made evident from the case of Copernicus, who published freely the same views in Astronomy, as also other men of his day, without calling out any persecution, or, in fact, the least opposition from the Church. The error of the enemies of Galileo was an error, not of science, but of interpretation. It was that common fallacy of con- founding language descriptive of a fact, as represented by a phenomenon, with the more or less remote causality of that phenomenon. There are hundreds of passages of Scripture where the same blunder might be made as well as here. That there was a supernatural prolonga- tion of the day is the phenomenal fact. The " sun did not go down" at the usual time, but continued in the heavens. This is all that the language of Scripture is responsible for. The appearance might be identical with the causality, or it might not. There might be a near or a remote connection. There might be in this causality but one wheel, and that the actual motion of the sun around the earth ; — there might be in it wheels so many that even the best modern science has not begun to count them. As long as no difference between the phenome- non and the causality was known, or even suspected, it made no difference as to the interpretation. The ac- tual reality of the miracle was as sure, and as great, on one view as on another ; but to have made the language responsible for any causaUty that might exist, or be sup- posed or suspected to exist, would have been as much a violation of sound hermeneutical principle before the scientific discovery as after. And so all the best minds in the Roman and Protestant Churches at once perceived it. The case has been kept up by a certain class of sci- entific writers, who for some reasons find it too valuable ERROR OF THE ITALIAN PRIESTS. 57 to let drop. For centuries it has given no trouble to any devout man of ordinary intelligence, and yet the stale story is repeated ad nauseam. We can hardly hear a lecture without it ; as though, at this day, men of science were actual martyrs, or professed it at the peril of their lives. In view of the exceeding staleness of the story, and the infidel hostility it often so unmistak- ably manifests, we might almost be led to regard the priestly intolerance as certainly a more respectable, though equally unjustifiable, exhibition of human nature. It may seem that we are dealing in paradoxes, and yet there are good grounds for saying, that the governing principle of the Italian priests was in substance, if not in form, very much like that of some modern men of science. The appearances are different ; the spirit and end are the same. The reasoning, too, possesses some striking points of resemblance. The interpretation of the Bible made by the priests was to them a finality ; just as some now hold in respect to the language of science. The Scriptural language denoted only the phenomenal fact according to the then knowledge, or rather, want of know- ledge, of the causality ; but those " literal interpreters" lield it responsil)le for the ultimate causality itself as irre- vocably determined by that knowledge. Now, just in the same manner, and with the same bigoted spirit, too, talk some of our modern men of science. They have groped their way along to a few more interior hnks of this immense chain ; they have got a few inches beneath the surface of things, and, therefore, they resent the bare suspicion that gravities may yet be found imperfect, as vortices have been, or that the present language of science may ever become obsolete, or be laid aside as grounded 58 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. on conceptions found to be inadequate and therefore de- lusive. For the language of Scripture we need never fear this ; since it is built on those first phenomena that arc the same for all ages, for all ejes, and therefore can never vary ^Yhilst human eyes and minds remain the same.* "We do not^attach much importance to the particular Hebrew verb used Joshua X, 13. It may be said, however, that the word i^ioT or £311, has nothing to do with the idea of motion. It implies neither motion nor stoppage, but simply a remaining uf things as they are, or were, at any one moment of time. Such is the radical idea of the root in the Arabic, although in the Bible the most common thought connected with the word is that of silence, (juietness, or repose. This radical idea appears most ex- pressively, as well as beautifully, in an Arabic formula which has every appearancelof great antiquity. They say , (using this verb,) " the sun stands still in the summit of heaven." Or, as it is better given in the Latin, s^ib- ititit sol in culminc cteli. It is their phrase for what we would call high noon, when the sun seems to be almost motionless, and the hours mova exceedingly slow. The Greeks have the same et3-mological image in their phrase dra&sphv 'fjfJ^ap, which is also applied to the noon, or the time when the sun seems to stand still. The reader will find a very clear ex- planation of this language as given by the scholiast Hcrmias on the PhjB- drus, p. 3-li?, and quoted by lluhnkeuius in his Notes to the Lexicon of Timaeus. The contrast is beautifully presented between the seemingly motionless position of the sun at noon, and the comparative haste with which he rises and sets: at which latter time, especiallj', the rapid length- ening of the shadows furnishes the deepest contrast to their apparent me- rijian immovability. We dwell on this to show how purely phenomenal the word is, and how little it has to do with any matter of fact, or scientific, belief about the cause of the appearance, whether as existing in the earth, or sun, or both. The latter would be the answer of the highest philosophy j for all motion, or change in the relations of two bodies, is ever relative, aj long as we bring in no third thing in respect to wliich one of them may seem to be immovable. In this case the language is not only phenomenal, but, in some sense, sid/jcctire. It is not only the appearance as presented to the sense alone, but that sensation, or rather perception, as nll'ected by other thoughts and other associations of the mind. So might we treat the appearance recorded in Joshua, as a subjective slow moving of time, if all the other aspects of the account did not irresistibly force to the belief of an outward miracle in nature and natural causality. THE OUTLINE CREATIVE IDEAS. 59 The Bible must be interpreted by itself and of itself. We present it as the pervading thought of this introduc- tory excursus on the sjDirit and position of science. It will be the leading idea never lost sight of in all the re- marks that follow. The creative account must be in- terpreted from Scripture alone ; and, when so interpre- ted, it will yield us a satisfactory resting place in certain great out-line ideas independent of science, but which she may fill up, if she will do it modestly and reverently, as she pleases; — six great divine works, having re- spect not to the universe, or universal cosmos, but to our earth — each of these commencing with the going forth of a supernatural Word, and the energising of a super- natural Spirit, — and all followed by an ineffable divine repose which still continues. Or, to state it another way — SIX great divine works in six great divine days, or periods — these periods incommensurable, that is, out- side of any present cosmical measurements that might be used to determine either their brevity or their length — called days, not metaphorically, but because they are true days in their cyclical law — called also, and by the same authority, toledoths, or generations, because they were real hirtlis and growths through which God conducted this world from its chaotic infancy up to the crowning work in the creation of humanity, and the cov- enant made with the primus homo or head of the race. We must have a fair interpretation that maj'- stand, let Geology go where she will ; and no one knows where that may be. She is now getting into no little confusion and speaks uncertainly. The time may possibly come, when she may give up her pleiocene, and eocene, her millions and billions of ages. She may discover or get 60 INTRODUCTORY VIEW. some hint that there have been quicker powers in nature than had been dreamed of, — that there are reserve laws that operated of old, and that may operate again when the new period of travail comes after the long and silent ges- tation — laws and forces that may bring out, in very short times, series and generations that under other influen- ces would seem to require an immensely longer duration. In such case, those in the Church who have had the most to say of " harmonies" might be disposed, perhaps, to retreat with her ; and yet fair interpretation would remain unafiected amid all the changes of the science, or of its rehgious or scientific followers. Such fair interpretion would even then, as now, content itself by saying, — we have no right to set definite bounds either of hours or ages to what God has left indefinite — we have no right to measure what is left incommensurable by any cosmical standards which were themselves uncreated, and could not, therefore, have been measurers of the creative works. Yes, the Bible must interpret itself. We must believe — if we believe at all — that it was meant to teach just what it does teach us. Thus, too, our highest and deepest ground of faith must be in the devoted study of the Book itself. Here must be our anchor. All evidences derived from science, let her be ever so favorably disposed, will fail us, and will fail the age, unless we hear that voice of authority speaking in the Scripture and to which the old divines so frequently refer. We have said that the thought was comparatively rare in modern times. It is, therefore, with no ordinary pleasure that we cite the tes- timony of one of our profoundest thinkers. The same idea is presented in a late Address of M. Guizoi, at a late meeting of the Protestant Bible Society of France. TESTIMONY OF GUIZOT. 61 In distinction from all external testimonies, whether his- torical, philosophical, or scientific, he insists upon this ^' Divine Presence in the Scriptures," as the deep, soul- felt ground of their authority. " The examination of the Scriptures," says this pious statesman, " reveals dif- ficulties, but these are only occasioned by human igno- rance and human infirmity. Above them all appears the Divine character of the Sacred Books, the Divine Breath ^Yhich fills and animates them. The movement may be sometimes obscure, but God is ever there. In every part is he to be seen, heard, felt. Through all diffi- culties, and through all obscurities, there is the constant view of God's presence, the constant sound of his voice." He makes no distinction between the New Testament and the Old. The Divine Presence is everywhere — no less majestic in some of the oldest than in the later por- tions of the same inseparable revelation. This noble tes- timony is no mere rationalizing, either after the manner of Locke or that of Cousin. Each would be equally external here. The idea of M. Guizot is the same with that of Owen and Hallyburton, and presented in nearly the same style of language. In his political retirement he has been a devout student of the Scrip- tures. Here is the ground of his faith. The same faith can only become general when the age gets tired of talk- ing about " nature as a divine revelation," and in its ex- haustion and its weariness sits down to the Bible to learn Iww little toe knoiv — how little all things else can teach us of the human origin, the human destiny, the true hu- man history — in short, those higher truths of nature as well as of morals, aside from which philosophy is as sounding brass, and science but a tinkling cymbal. 6 62 SCRIPTURAL INTERPRETATION.. CHAPTER IL Scriptural Interpretation in Connection with Science — Nine General Principles — Application to the Creative Record — The Difficulty of a Solar Day without a Sun as obvious to Moses as to Mr. Lord — If there is any. such Difficulty it is Patent on the Face of the Record — It has not come from Science, but from False Interpretation — Interpreta' tion, therefore, and not Science, must Remove it — crea- tion an OKDER OF APPEARANCES — Each Appearance a Morning — Succession, not Duration, the Radical Idea. The argument for the creative days has been already so fully treated that we would not weary our readers with even the appearance of repetition in respect to any mat- ters of detail, or particular interpretation. There is, however, a synoptical view of the whole ground, that pre- sents itself under somewhat new aspects, and which we would desire to give in a more condensed, and as we think, more convincing form. The interpretation of the Bible must, of course, require more care than that of any other book. The principles of such interpretation must be high and broad just in proportion as we regard the author of the Scripture as divine. Yet still they lie within the fair range of the human intelligence ; they must be the rules of reason and common sense properly elevated by a feeling of the sacred work in whicli the mind is engaged. We will RULES OF INTERPRETATION. 68 ■proceed to state a few of those we cannot help deeming the most important. 1st. The record should be interpreted from itself. In doing this, single words should be defined by their use in other parts of the Bible, and especially as they lie in nearest connection with the passage explained. 2d. The difficulties acknowledged should be such as exist in the record itself — on the face of it. They must have been difficulties obvious to the writer and the men of his day for whom he wrote, and, therefore, inherent in the very nature of the descriptive narration. It follows from this, of course, that the solutions must be such as are furnished by the record ; in other words, they must be such as might have been accepted by the writer and the men of his day. 3d. Whether the language is extraordinary or not, must be determined from the extraordinary nature of the facts recorded, and the known difficulty of setting them forth in any other way. This will not change the radi- cal conception* of a term ; otherwise the language be- comes entirely arbitrary and cabalistical ; but it deter- mines whether it is to be taken in a limited or an enlarged sense, and whether we have any right, a priori, to expect any such expansion of the ^YOrd and the thought. 4th. If the idea of the ineffable and the anomalous is forced upon us in some parts, we may lawfully carry it 'As tliis term is frequently used by us, and is greatly liable to be mis- understood, we will define it, once for all, as that image which is most pro- minent, and most permanent, in the pictorial representation the mind is (compelled to make of the idea, or thing thought. Thus, in the word and idea day, period, *£^toOoj, revolution, cyclity, ever remain, though other features, such as any particular duration, or modes of marking it, may con- leeptually vary to any extent. 64 EULES OF INTERPRETATION. into others in close connection ^vitli it. For example — if, in the creative account, we are compelled to admit that the Word, the Spirit, the "Work, the Rest, are extraor- dinary or ineflfahle ideas, not to be measured by ordinary conceptions, -we carry out the spirit of the interpretation when we apply the same rule of conceiving to the times. If God's u'ork is not like our work, if his rest is not like our rest, then his dai/ of working and his day of resting are not like our day. They must be in harmony with the other ideas, unless instantancousness or suddenness is meant to be a chief feature of the account ; of which there is no evidence, or rather there is the evidence of the contrary, on the face of the Mosaic narrative. We can not imagine anything more fair or rational than this. 6th. The individual or peculiar conception of the writer is not to be disregarded. Otherwise we make him a mere outward amanuensis ; we have nothing to fix the idea or ultimate fact which his conception represents ; we have nothing to determine it to one thing more than another ; and thus, under pretence of magnifying revela- tion, v/e take from it all possibility of any definite inter- pretation that shall be catholic for all sane minds, 6th. The conception of the writer once ascertained is authority for the fact he would narrate, or the thincf he would describe, as separate from all other facts or things ; but it is not authority for the science of that fact or thing. Thus the language of Moses, in the account of the second day, shows that there lay in his mind the phenomena of the sky or atmosphere. He meant to narrate the mak- ing of this in the order of the terrestrial creation. The fact binds us, however erroneous may have been the at- tending conception. When we extend the language here SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION. 65 to the nebular rings of science (whether real or imagin- ary) we travel out of the fact, as well as the conception. The consequence is that instead of a catholic interpreta- tion, we have one that conies and goes with the varying mind, and varying imagination, and varying science of every age and of every special interpreter. Hence fol- lows rule 7th. All science must be excluded, as well as all de- ductions from any science, which we are sure was un- known to the writer. Otherwise God did not make use of the mind of the writer, or the linguistic conceptions of the writer, but only his articulating organs or letter-trac- ing hand. Hence it follows, that the Bible contains no discoveries in science, properly so called, nor any revela- tion of facts which science is able to discover, but only of those great physical truths of origin which, in their very nature. He beyond the field of all science — in them- selves unknown alike to all — and which may be as easily announced to the common as to the most scientific mind.* Hence, * We have elsewhere remarked upon this as drawing a distinctive line lietween the Bible and everything else agsuming to be a revelation. It wholly avoids committing itself to any scientific or philosophical specala- tion, or to the language peculiar to such speculation. This is not from cau- tion, but because the Bible thoughts are, iu themselves, essentially above any theories or discoveries in science. In the sacred books of the eastern religions, the tendency to philosophise is plainly discernible. Tliey con- tain pantheistic ideas which are evidently ff/er thoughts of philosophising minds, such as the Egyptian priests or Indian Brahmins, striving to escape from common notions, and seeking to employ a vehicle somewhat different 'Vom the common speech. Extravagant and mytliical as they are, they betray their human origin by their very attempts to got above humanity. Although there is no pantlieism in the Koran, yet no one can study it care- *nlly without seeing that IMohammed, ever and anon, has some crude sci- entific notion that warps his language. He talks of tlie earth, not pheno- 'aenally,as the Bible does, bat in such a way as toeive some of his extrav- 6* Q6 WE CAN NOT MEND MOSES BY SCIENCE. 8th. That interpretation labors the most, "which, iu clearing up supposed difficulties in language, or narra- tion, has to seek the most aid from the inferences of a science now known, but then unknown. Thus, Mr. Lord's theory is false, because he can not make a solar day of the first period, or give any consistent work to the fourth period, without bringing in rotating hemispheres, and varying inclinations of ecliptic axes, that, whether true or false scientifically, were utterly unknown to Moses either as facts or conceptions, and could, therefore, have been of no aid to him in solving a difficulty which, if it exists at all, lies now, and must have lain then, upon the face of the account. ogant Arabian traditions respecting the earth's form and place tlie appear- ance of cherished scientific hypothesis which he would put forth for its own sake. Sometimes, too, he gets hold of a psj'chological conceit, the display of which evidently forms a prominent design in the passage where it a;j- pears. Thus, the dependence of the time-conception on the conscious suc- cession of thought had not escaped the musings of these sons of the desert. It is alluded to in Oriental tale.«, snch as the striking story of the Magical Water to which Addison alludes in the Spectator. Now Mohammed evi- dently has this in view in his a;count of the Miraculous Sleepers in Sura XVIIIth of the Koran, entitled The Cave. On waking from their long 'Unconscious state, they were asked for their estimate of the time that had elapsed ; and Mohammed says that it was for the very purpose of testing them in this respect. It is evident that the philosophical interest, and tl.o philosophical notion crude as it is in his mind, are predominant. IIow very different our own Holy Scripture. Time is nothing to the un thinking it is all-present, without length or shortness, to the All-2'hinking. And this idea is given us in the Bible, but not as a psychological truth or as having a philosophicnl value. All is subservient to a higher purpose, the ineflable glory of God. " A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday, when it is past, and as a watch in the night." Anything which should hava looked like the set language of any philosoj)hy, with any design, however faintly appearing, of making this philosophic interest predominant, would have impaired the thought, or rather the emotion of the thought, which is •the vital thing; and so there is a resort to the impassioned poetical speech of the higher spiritual region. CREATION AN ORDER OR SUCCESSION. 67 9th. Therefore — The onlj office of science in respect to Biblical interpretation is to stimulate enquiry, and then chiefly as to the fact whether some plain statement of the record may not have been disguised or obscured by having had forced upon it changed conceptions aris- ing from modern scientific discoveries. When it has thus aroused the mind to examine whether certain modern prejudices in regard to Bible language may not be false, it should never be allowed to force upon the Scriptures any mere possible interpretation to make the sense ac- cord with any real or supposed state of scientific facts. Let these rules be kept strictly in mind and we have a guide to a trust-worthy interpretation of the First of (xenesis, carrying us safely between the ever-shifting de- mands of science, and the insane bigotry that would shut us up to one of the most narrow of modern conceptions. We get, as one might a priori expect, the extraordinary, the boundless, the sublime, without committing ourselves to nebulae, or the uncertainties of ever-lenarthenino; tele- scopes, on the one hand, or the narrowest anthropomor- phism on the other. The whole of the creative narrative in Genesis is sub- limely pictorial ; since in this way alone could it be sub- limely truthful. Any other method of bringing it down to us Avould have involved more error and less reality. But as we have it, nothing could be more splendid for the imagination, and, at the same time, more satisfying to that philosophic intellect which regards all nature as but appearances of things unseen, and all science as but an arranging and classifying' aid in the study of such appearances — following, indeed, its conclusions to a bo THE FIRST MORNING. great distance, yet never really penetrating into that in- visible world which lies back of them all. The Mosaic Creation was an order and succession of appearances. " In the beginning God made the Heavens and the Earth." What appearances are here intended ? What beginning ? What Heavens ? What Earth ? The language following explains this brief language of the Title or Cap- tion. The writer, in what is said afterwards, commences with the Earth, although in the title itself it has the se- cond place. The reason of this is plain. In the caption, where chronological order is unnecessary, or postponed to the order of ideas, the most striking object in the pic- ture, or conception, is put first. On the other hand, in the narration itself, the time series rules. The creation of the earth is first sot forth because it actually is first in time, — the heaven is built upon it, that is, the sky or atmospherical heavens, which is all that Moses had in mind, or was inspired to have in mind. This creation of the earth consists primarily in the change wrought upon that dark state where creation, the Mosaic creation, be- gins. It is brought forth into light and visibility. It is made to appear. The Spirit goes forth brooding on the waters, and this was the beginning recorded by Moses. There is a much more ancient beginning mentioned, John i, 1. That was from eternity. There may have been, in time, many other inceptive epochs in the great spiritual and material works of God. But this begin- ning, of which Moses informs us, was in. the evening. With the Spirit comes the Word, and, straitway, there is an appearance. Light appears, and this was the morning. Those mighty beings called " Morning Stars," EACH APPEARANCE A MORNING. 69 the jet unfallen Luciferi, " sing aloud, and the sons of God shout for joy." This was the morning. How can we think of a common morning here, or keep out those ideas of the extraordinary, of the ineffable, which, if once admitted, must give character to the whole subsequent account. God called this morning day. It is his own definition of the term. He does not define it by subse- quent ideas, but by phenomena already mentioned. In thus naming there is no reference to duration, or to any measurement of times, but to division and contrast. It was the morning as compared with the old night of chaos, the new appearayice as compared with the old invisibility. It could not have been a solar day ; for as yet no sun, no moonh^di appeared m the heavens, although there was, somehow, a glorious light upon this infant world. AVhether existing or not, these sky lamps were 3"et among the things unseen. Even the heavens, in which they were to have their optical manifestation, had not yet ap- peared. There was no sky, no rakia, or firmament, above. This certainly is safe interpretation. We cling close to Moses here. There was no visible sun to mea- sure time, but still there was a day, a period character- ized by most remarkable powers and manifestations. There was the Brooding Spirit, the Commanding Word ; there was the terrific darkness on the waters, and the creative light that shone, not /row a sun, but out of the darkness Qx cTxoVous) as Paul says, in his significant com- parison, 2 Cor. iv, 6 ; and thus " there was an evening, and there was a morning, one day." Who shall think of twenty-four hours here ? We repeat it — because the more we meditate upon this strange language, the more 70 SUN AND MOON HAD NOT YET APPEAKED. strange it seems that any one should have ever had such a narrow conception whether in ancient or modern times. Again goes forth the Word. The Firmament appears — the expanse above with its sailing waters — the old glorious, and yet still glorious sky. " And God called it Heavens." He has interpreted the language for him- self. It is the same heavens mentioned in the first brief titular verse. Here we have a more particular account of its creation, or building, (x-riVig) in the work of the second day. This was the making of the heavens. Were they optical in some way ? Were they lit up by an aurora, such as we have seen revealing the vaulted sky in a moonless night ? We know not. Imagination may be soberly indulged, but all scientific hypotheses, as such, are worthless and contemptible. Was it so named in reference to the after appearance, when it reflected the light of the celestial lamps ? Such a view may be indulg- ed ; but it is all conjecture. We cling close to Moses when we say there was a sky, a heavens, although no sun, no moon, no stars had as yet appeared therein. These were as yet invisible, and, in this sense, as non- existent to our earth as the satellites of Jupiter before the days of Galileo, or many of the nebular clouds before the making of Lord Rosse's telescope. But there was now a sky ; — and here comes the same language, may we not say the same self-interpreting language, telling us, in unmistakable terms, what these strange mornings and evenings really are. Let the reader mark the con- stant order. There is a division, and then an appear- ance. As first the waters appeared when the light shone on them, or out of them, so now a sky appears, although no sun nor moon as yet appear in it. What SUCCESSION OP MORNINGS. 71 prevented their being seen we know not. We have only to interpret, and to bring our imaginations into harmony with such interpretation ; but Moses says that they were not appointed to their office, until the fourth day. Until this time — to use the paraphrase of the Son of Sirac — " they did not stand in their watches, giving light in the high places of the Lord." But here is a new division and a new appearance, and immediately is it said, there is a new morning, and a second day. What can be plainer, if a man will but throw away science, all narrow modern conceptions, and bring himself into the power and spirit of the language ? Each appearance is a mo7'n- ing, so named from the fact of appearance, without any reference to duration or any present divisions of time. The language interprets itself. Each appearance is a morning. The appearance of the light was the first morning. The appearance of the sky was the second morning. The appearance of the earth rising out of the waters was the third morning. The appearance of the heavenly bodies, sun, moon and stars, in the sky or firm- ament where they had not appeared before, — this was the fourth most glorious morning. Each has its corre- sponding divisions so arranged in consecutive and ascend- ing order as to make the conclusion irresistible, to a sober thinking man, that such first naming of .the day, night, and morning is the clue, and was meant to be the clue, to all the rest. Divisions — contrasts — and contrasted successions, are the prominent ideas. Duration comes in not at all, unless we force it upon Moses. They were un- measured days. AVe say this on the soberest principle, because there was no sun to measure them, and because we are expressly told when solar-measured days began, 72 OBJECTION CONSIDERED. as if to mark the difference in a waj that could not be mistaken. These divisions, moreover, vrcre superna- tural. God made them, as Augustine sajs, to distin- guish them from the natural or the sun-made intervals of time which now exist. The difficulty of a solar day without a sun must have been as obvious to Moses (had such been his view) as to us. It is not at all a difficulty made by science. The fact, therefore, that the writer does not attempt to solve it, or explain it, not even recognizing it, shows that he could not have regarded them as solar or common days. He had good reason to think that his readers would be so impressed with the feeling of the marvellous, the extraordinary, pervading the whole style and struc- ture of the narration, that they would not need an ex- planation. And here we may refer to our third rule, which those who can only see real or apparent salient points, might be ready to cite against us. ' The language must be defined by that Avhich lies nearest to it, unless there is something in the face of the account that positively for- bids.' We applied it to the word heavens, when we said it must have the same meaning in the third verse as in the first. The objection has been taken — why should not the word day have .the same meaning in the second verse, as when used below of undoubted solar days ? We might reply, in the first place, that it has the same meaning if, when we speak of a word's meaning, we look only to the essential idea. The nine-hour day of Jupiter, the twenty-four hour day of the earth, the ^six months' day of the pole, the millenial day of some of the immense astronomical cycles, or, in fact, any temporal THE ATMOSPHERICAL HEAVEN. 73 period of a cyclical self-measuring character — all these are alike days in the essential idea, and the application of the term to one of them is no more metaphorical or secondary than it is to another. But if such answer is not satisfactory, we have one that is conclusive ; and that is, that aside from any difficulties of science, the very record on the fair face of it forbids the inference from which the objection is supposed to derive its force. In the use of the word heaven no intimation is given of a diHerent meaning, or we may rather say, a more or less extended application of the same idea.* The heaven made and mentioned in the third verse is the heaven mentioned in the second — the same in phenomenal con- ception, the same, we think, in supposed extent. But the day mentioned in the first and third verse, though truly, and not merely metaphorically, a day, or self-measuring period of time, was not, in extent at least, and other diur- nal incidents, the day mentioned in a part of the fourth verse where the dividing office of the sun is first set forth. For this transition, there are certain irresistible eviden- ces lying on the very face of the account. We repeat them because it is strange they should have been so over- ' The word lioavens presents, iu other aspects, a complete parallel. It carries the same essential idea, whether we apply it to the atmospherical heavens or the astronomical, aUhough one is inconceivably more remote than the other, and iu i' self may present any number of gradations of the same conception. We find this latter, or astronomical sense, coming into the subsequent Hebrew writings, where they speak of the heaven above the heavens, 'or heaven of heavens (as though we should say day of days) ;. but wh.ther in the nearer or the larger view, it was the same radical con- ception, satisfied by the same term, and allowing of an immediate transi tion from one to the other, without surprize or any seeming need of ex- planation. Just so, in this very record, we have an undoubted transitioii. in the use of the word day in the beginning of Chapter ii, where it is ap- plied t: all the creative generations taken as one cvcle. 74 GOD-DITIDED — SUN-DIVIDED DATS. looked in modern times, although they arrested the atten- tion of older commentators. These latter mentioned days are expressly described as sun-divided — the first Tf ere G-od-divided. The one class lay within the natural ongoings of a system set in order, the other belonged to the supernatural originations. The one was connected with and measured by cosmical relations from without, the other had its measurement only from the work or law of working within ; the one class were solar days keep- ing times for the inhabitants that should be on the earth, or for the internal economical arrangements of the earth itself ; the other were ceonic or olamic days measuring the earth's relations to the universal ongoings of time, or the great worlds or ages before and after. The proof of our assertion is, that there was no sun in the sky to divide them — the very manifestation of the sun is one of their works. It being certain, therefore, that they were not common or solar days in the more important idea (import- ant we mean for a solar day) of being measured by the sun, we have no warrant at all for forcing in the narrow aad far less essential idea of that exact duration which such a mode of measurement now gives, and on which such duration is entirely dependent. But this we have else- where discussed at length, and to it the reader is refer- red. It is an argument that Mr. Lord has made no attempt at answering, although it was put directly in his way. Why should the exact duration be insisted on when other and more essential elements of the idea of a common or solar day are necessarily excluded ? The question is not answered. "We do not think it can be answered. But to resume our sketch. In the same manner might we go through the other great days. They present a THE SABBATH. 75 continual succession of appearances or mornings. We had spoken of the glorious fourth day, when the Meorim or Great Lights (lighters, luminaries) are hung out in the heavens. Again goes forth the Omnific Word. There is a new appearance, a new life ; — and this is the fifth morning. Again — an appearance still more remarkable — a higher life, and lo ! a sixth new morning. And here the hitherto uninterrupted mention of the mornings and evenings ceases. The calendar closes, or rather this re- markable feature of it, before the creative history is fully completed. A seventh great day is mentioned, but not a seventh morning. It is the beginning of God's ineffa- ble repose, whose glorious morn is not yet fully ushered in. Nature yet sleeps. It is the Sabbath eve of the world. What its full morning will be, can only be learnt, as far as it can be learned at all, from the prophetic Scriptures which are but the complement of the creative histori/. Science will never discover or define it. There is no forced interpretation here ; that is, it is not made by pressure from without. Everything we have said is in harmony with the spirit of the record and the grand ideas it most naturally suggests. Everything comes into place and proportion, if we will only take the right stand point — if we will only divest ourselves alike of our modern science, and our modern bigotry, whilst we interpret the first supernatural voice of God to our world, in a manner consistent with its enchanting simpli- city, and on a scale commensurate with its ineffable grandeur. 76 THE WOr.D DAT. CHAPTER III. THE WORD DAY, AND THE MYSTIC NUMBERS OF PROPHECY. Various Senses of the lVo7-d Day — Summary of Principles concerned in its Interpretation — Eight Heads of Argument — The Prophetical Day — Analogous to the Creative Day — Numbers as used in Prophecy — Three hinds — Definite Numbers Round Numbers Perfect Numbers — The Word Day as applied to the Closing Dispensation of the World — Analogy with the Creative Account — Kedhem, or the Ante-time State. Next to the general principles of interpretation :voiild come the more particular arguments applicable to ■words of time, and especially the leading word day. In re- spect to this ^Yhole class of terms, there is an important and interesting enquiry. Have we good reason for thinking that there is a wide difference between the most ancient and the most modern mode of conception connected with them ? Hence the great question which is the hinge of the whole discussion, and which we would state clearlj^, yet in a manner wholly independent of sci- ence, or of any scientific deductions. Was the creative day just twenty-four hours in length, or Avas it indefinitely longer, and yet a real day, not metaphorically, but strictly and truly a day, in its essential, cyclical, self-measuring idea, though undefined in the merely incidental feature of its duration, whether relatively long or short — that is. METAPHORICAL SENSE. 77 in comparison "with any times out of itself. Whether such a view would satisfy any real or fancied difficulties of science, was not the enquiry. It was hoped it might do something towards such a result. Scientific men dif- fer about it. Some of highest note think it would furnish a fair ground for a harmony ; others would still reject the idea of reconcihation on this or any other ground. It would be absurd in the writer to say he felt no interest in the fact of such agreement ; but he certainly can say that he would not allow it to affect the principles or me- thod of the Biblical enquiry. What is the fair interpre- tation of the word day, as it stands in a certain very an- cient Record dealing in very extraordinary ideas, and expressed in very remarkable language ? This enquiry pervades the book which has been charged with natural- ism; everything is subservient to such an issue. All seemingly divergent discussions grow out of it, return to it, and terminate in it. The arguments, or heads of ar- guments, in support of it, may be thus briefly re-stated, and presented in one view to the reader. There is, I. The metaphorical sense. This, although the first, does in fact furnish the least reliable argument. It has been the one usually and mainly employed in favor of the general idea of long periods, and yet it is one on which alone we would not dare to rest the great question. It gives a possible interpretation, barely reaching to a probability^ perhaps, but nothing beyond it. We want something more than metaphors for a foundation here. We make the distinction because this metaphorical sense has been confounded with something widely different and entitled to far more consideration. This is, 78 CYCLICAL SENSE. II. The cyclical idea, or the evidence for the cyclical meaning of the -word day. A metaphor, as the etymo- logy implies, is a change, a transfer of a word from one department of ideas, and that its native department, to another. The essential notion is exchanged for a resem- blance or analogy more or less fanciful or real. In the essential idea of the word day, the chronological, or the thought of an absolute time complete in itself, yet stand- ing in some relation to other absolute time, or times, is an inseparable element. The metaphorical use, on the other hand, transfers the word to the expression of a mere state of being having strictly nothing chronological, that is, no real connection with absolute time or any like recurring periods before and after. Thus the " day of joy," the " day of adversity," the " day of prosperity," etc. These are all metaphorical. They denote no real time — they are subjective mainly, and belong not to the absolute chronology of the earth, or the universe. Now take another class of expressions — the " days of crea- tion," the " day when God made the heavens and the earth," including all the subdivisions (Gen. ii), j^the "*' days of prophecy," the " latter day," the " day of Christ's reign," the " last day,"[ the " day of Judg- ment," the '^M-Efa aiwvos of St. Peter, (2 Pet. iii, 18) — these, it must be felt at once, have a very different cha- racter. They are chronological, — completed by an inner •cyclical law of their own, or by the divine supernatural divisions, yet connected in the great chronology with similar periods going before and following after them. To a superficial view, this may seem a metaphorical ■uense, but it is widely and essentially diverse. WORDS OF GENERATION, 79 III. The mention of the morning and evening, and the peculiar order in ^Yhich they are repeated as indica- tive of something remarkable in the day requiring such emphatic repetition, and as explanatory of the name from the fact of two such contrasted states of one period — whatever those states might be. IV. The absence of the sun until the 4th period, and the consequent impossibility and unimaginability of those more common characteristics that mark the common solar day. V. The employment of words of generation, or terms carrying in their roots the ideas of growth and birth, that is of nature — like the Hebrew irnVin — and the using these for the ages, growths, successions, or daiiB of the earth. VI. The remarkable language that is held respecting the earth's first productions in the third and fiftth days, — language implying growths, natural causalities, (though divinely quickened,) and hence driving us to the idea of successions, and consequent durations exceeding one revolution of the sun. VII. Argument from the Sabbath — the divine Sab- bath as a continued and present repose from creation. VIII. The ground of the whole discussion as sought in the old idea of the olams or time- worlds, or ages, so strangely used in both the old and later Scriptures for the very ivorlds themselves. Such is the outline of the argument and its pervading aim. It may be said of it here that all that looks like naturaUsm (and the careful reader must see that it is only in appearance or from a perversion of language) grows out of closely following the record, in the remark- 80 ARCHEOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY. able language applied to the vegetable and animal growths — "Let the earth bring forth — Let the waters bring forth." If it is naturalism at all, it is the bold natural- ism of Scripture, such as a poetical myth-maker, or a sentimental religionist, or even a science that takes spe- cial pains to be pious, would never have ventured upon. If it is naturalism at all, it is a naturalism grounded on close interpretation of the only record, and ready to be abandoned at once whenever that interpretation is shown exegetically to be false. We do not wish to be wiser than what is written, or, through fear of an odious name, to shun the acknowledgment of what seems to be really revealed as God's chosen manner of working. The hypo- thetical reasonings, which have been so unfairly distorted, and even called " the prominent positions" of the writer, every candid reader must see are simply statements (with answers to them) of objections that might be made on other points, if such were the true interpretations in those that are directly treated. This argument in its broad outline — we say it freely and fearlessly — has not been met. The book has been the subject of two hostile reviews, one assuming the spe- cial guardianship of the Bible, the other the no less zeal- ous championship of science. Of both, however, it may be truly said that they have not affected, and hardly touched, a point on which the true merit or demerit of the work might be said to depend. The editor of the Literary and Theological Journal keeps up a standing cry of infidehty, danger to the Scriptures, undermining the faith, Platonism, etc. He sees a total wreck of all belief in revelation, if this twenty-four hour idea is in the least called in question. How the faith and integrity of s DAY FOR A YEAR. 81 Scripture Is so vitally connected with this particular in- terpretation he does not pretend to saj. Why there might not be a long day in creation as well as in pro- phecy, in the archaeology, as well as in the eschatology of Scripture, is nowhere shown, or why the large scale of the word and the idea is not as rational and as natural in the one case as in the other. The interpretations are not even examined to any extent worth noticing. Words, idioms, texts, in the analysis of which great pains have been taken, whether to any purpose or not, have not even been noticed. The startling difficulties which on the twenty-four hypothesis he on the very face of the account, are hardly alluded to as difficulties at all ; ex- cept it be to bring in a great number of purely gratuitous scientific guesses — the strongest evidence that this easy literal theory, as it styles itself, is, of all others, the most difficult and unsound. In addition to this general outline view of the word day, in its varied, hermeneutical uses, there may be pro- perly presented here a few remarks on Mr. Lord's em- ployment of the same word, and his inconsistency in so freely applying to prophecy what he denies in any sense to creation. This belonged more strictly to the second division of our summary, or that grounded on the dis- tinction between the metaphorical and cyclical meaning. As it would, however, have interrupted the order of out- line, we have reserved it for this part of the chapter. The fact to which attention is specially called is, that, Mr. Lord, and others of the same school, are compelled to bring in the aid of this cyclical idea in the interpreta- tion of the prophetical Scriptures. What he will not 82 DAY OF JUDGMENT. listen to for a moment when predicated of the beginning, or first times of the earth, he takes for his fundamental thought in all that relates to the closing dajs of the mundane history^ — or, to speak a little more pointedly and pertinently, — what he regards as most infidel and dangerous in archaeology, is most Biblical, most evan- gelical, and most pious, in eschatology. He never thinks of limiting the Day of Judgment as revealed in Mathew and Revelations (if both passages mean the same) to a period of twenty-four hours ; in fact his reasoning is alto- gether inconsistent Avith any such idea ; and yet it is most emphatically called in the Gospels the Last Day — or the Latter Day. So also of the day of prophecy in general. He is compelled to regard this as something different from the common solar diurnal measurement. The style of speech, the hue of thought, the elevation of idea, the accompanying emotion, which are all connected with the glowing, aweing, mystical and mysterious language of prophecy, will not permit. He is forced to take up his position in a wider and freer space. We are in the midst of the extraordinary, and ordinary words naturally and easily take on extraordinary meanings — that is, meanings not radically different, but on a larger scale. We have that feeling of vastness which so much more freely arises in the contemplation of the unknown, un- measured future, or the remote unmeasured past, than in the survey of the well mapped historic present, as wo may style the region that lies divided and subdivided in the current astronomical chronology. This is the real ground for expanding, both in emotion and idea, the timo words of prophecy. Mr. Lord feels it like other com- mentators, but when hunting for reasons in favor of such ALIQUOT PARTS. 83 a mode of interpretation, he returns right back to his old narrowness. He would sustain this extra-t\Yenty-four hour view of the word day from a few passages of Scrip- ture which have with it merely an incidental association of thought, such as Ezek. iv, 4, 6, Daniel viii, 14 ; but these when examined are found to be far from sufficient in themselves to furnish a trusty ground for so important a principle of interpretation. Mr. Lord is not content with it. His next thought is a glimpse of the truth in the innate cyclical or periodical idea of the word day. The essence of it is revolution. But the year also is revolution. Therefore a day may stand for a year. We will give his own language (Lord on the Apocalypse, p. 252) : " A day during which the earth revolves upon its axis has a resemblance which fits it to be a symbol of the period of its revolution round the sun." Although there seems to have been chiefly in his mind the mere outward resemblance, yet still he recognizes, although very inadequately, the cyclical idea. Instead, however, of making dat/, thus viewed, the representative of cyclical period in general, he treats it as the arbitrary symbol of • another period, simply because that second period is a multiple, or pretty nearly a multiple, of the first. It is just as though, in space, he should make a circle of one foot radius, the symbol of one that had a rod or a mile radius. " In like manner," he continues, " a month, during which the moon re- volves upon its axis, has a resemblance wliich fits it to be a symbol of the period ot its revolution round the sun. The forty-two months are there- fore by the same law (the law of mere quantitative resemblance !) twelve hundred and sixty years, and solar years doubtless ; as, though the monthly division was drawn from the revolution, yet it was reckoned of thirty as well as of twenty-nine days, and the year itself was determined by the revolution of the earth round the sun." But the greatest difficulty found by Mr. Lord, — as 84 FRACTIONS AND INCOMMENSURABLES. appears from his effort to remove it, — arises from the fact that the solar day cycle, in its absolute duration, is not any aliquot part of the annus, and therefore, on the prmciple of divisibility alone, can no more symbolize it than the side can symbolize the diameter of the square. The two quantities (viewed simply as quantities, or aside from their common cyclical idea) are incommensurable ; — in other words, no number of our present days, car- ried to any conceivable height short of infinite, can ever make any exact number of our present years. Extend the ratio ever so far and there are fractions still. The year we know is not 3G5 days, but 365 days, 5 hours, 54 minutes, so many seconds, so many thirds, etc., etc., etc. Here, therefore, he is compelled to break his own symbolic law (which he has a perfect right to do since it is a law of his own making,) or introduce a looseness that renders it worthless. But let us hear his own state- ment of the difficulty : "It may be thought au obstacle to this construction that, as the poiiod of a lunar revolution is not thirty days, fortj- two lunar months are not equal to twelve hundred and sixty days. 15ut neither are twelve hundred and sixty days equal to the number in three and a half years, nor the number in forty-two months, of thirty days each, equal to the number in three j'ears and a half; the astronomical year consisting of o65 days and a frac- tion in place of 3G0, at which it was reckoned by the Jews and other east- em nations, yet three hundred and sixty days were taken as the period of revolution of the seasons, or the year, although they were known not to be the true period, and thirty days were taken also as the period of a lunar revolution, or a month, although they were, in like manner, known not to be the true period." Now what a calculation is this ? Especially when we bear in mind, that it is a leading idea of this writer, that these numbers were given to enable us to fix satisfacto- rily the prophetic times and seasons as they actually oc- cur in history, (whether of the past, the present, or the future,) to determine accurately their beginnings, contin- uance, and ending. This he regards as an important and FRACTIONAL ESTIMATES. 8& chief design of the prophetical writings. It is a maxim of law, de 7mnimis non curat lex ; but this will not do in prophecy, if the fixing of times is its chief, or one of its chief objects. But it is not a question de minimis. The throwing away five days and a half in each year would make quite a diSerence in the beginning and end- ing of any period he might choose to estimate. It would leave these important dates — important if it is the design of prophecy to have them fixed — a generation or two in utter uncertainty. In a millenium of 365,000 years, which is Mr. Lord's computation, it would make a dif- ference of 5,000 years. If we take into the estimate merely the fraction of a day, 5 hours, 54 minutes, etc., then, instead of 305,000, it would be 365,296 years, with odd months, days and hours still remaining. There is the same difficulty, only arithmetically more perplex- ing, attending the computation of months as intermediate between the day symbol and the year. Mr. Lord is compelled to throw oflf all the fractions, and this on nO' other authority than his own artificial law. How does he know but that there may be mysteries in these frac- tions, or that they may not symbolize occult times, and occult events, which may have an important bearino- on. the great result. They may represent secret nooks or niches in history, either of the past or future, that, instead of deserving to be thrown away, in this manner, may de- mand his deepest symbolical research. If he has a right to reject these, another commentator has a right to take them into the account, and rectify his computation ac- cordingly. Such consequences would seem to come di- rectly from the rule or principle adopted, of makino- one measure of time or space a symbol of another, not from 8 86 PROPHECY NOT DEPENDENT ON OUR CALENDAR. the general cyclical idea, but chiefly on the ground that in arbitrary quantity one is a multiple, or nearly a multiple^ of another. We would treat this subject with all reve- rence. Every interpretation of Scripture brought out by any serious mind is entitled to our respect. But we can not help distrusting a method which would thus make important periods, or rather important ideas, in prophecy tiius to depend on the varying calculations coming from adopting this or that canon by which scientific or unsci- entific ages and nations have regulated their ever ill-re- gulated calendar. If the day may symbolically repre- sent a little less or a little more than the year's revolution, (to say nothing of the fact that both the daily and the yearly revolution may in some remote periods be astro- nomically very different from what they now are,) then it may represent Avhatever the fancy of the interpreter may connect with such arbitrary measurements.* In- stead of treating the prophetic arithmetic in this conven- ** It need only to be remarked tliat this is said wholly of the actual ftil- filment. Such fulfilment will, of course, be exactly true on some principlft in nature, or in numbers, or in natural anil historical causes, that will al- low of no uncertainty. But in the manner of representing it, whether symbolically, or by any other kind of langunge, words, and the attending conceptions partake of all the imperfections belonging to everj' kind of hu- man media. The sacred writer may use 30 days for a month, and 360 days for a year, — wo think he does so, — but it is not easy to bring ourselves to lielieve, that if the millcnial aeon is to be exactly 36.5,000 years, it will not be that number of years in their natural, perfect estimate, but, in fact, 364, • 704 such years, in order to correspond to an imperfect mode of reckoning employed so far oft" in the infancy of our world. In other words, the pro- jihclic fulfilment ran not share the imperfection of the symbol (for that imperfection is a changiuf^ quantily) and, therefore, on this principle, the interpreter is bound to apply bis science to verify the residt. ^Vc say, on t.his principk', for the very fact that such scientific estimates must be applied, shows that the multiple principle itself.ne thus employed, must be fundamentally wrong. THE MILLERITES. ' 87 ient fashion, the safest, although perhaps not the easiest, way, would be to keep in the fractions. Some of the Millerite calculations had to be altered and re-altered on this principle. At times the error was supposed to arise from the fractions being put on, and again from their being left off. Peace to those deluded men. We would not join even the religious world in scoffing at them. There is something more sublime in their error than in many of the world's most lauded truths. They had a great principle of faith to which we who so often repeat in our creeds that '- Christ shall come to judge the quick and the dead at the last day," have become too indifferent, if we may not say too sceptical. But they erred as to times. They carried out too faithfully that same idea of multiples to which Mr. Lord tries in vain to adhere, and in Avhich attempt, both he and they go contrary to the Scriptural declaration that it is not for men " to know the times and seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." It is not on the ground of equal quantitative ratios, exact fractions, or aliquot parts, but as representative directly, and not metaphorically, of the cyclical idea, that the word day seems to be used in the language both of creation and prophecy. In both cases great outlines, orders, successions, contrasts, and rela- tive proportions of events, are shadowed forth, rather than exact durations, whether of hours or of years, or any current dates in the anno domini astronomical calen- dar, whether regulated by the Csesar, the Parliament, or the Pope. Mr. Lord starts with something of this cyclical idea, but spoils it in carrying it out. A little thought would ehow us that the day in prophecy is not to be bound down 00 TOPOGRAPHY OF THE NEW JERUSALEM. by any such nice calculations, any more than terms of space used in a precisely similar manner. A furlong in the Holy City might just as well be made a symbol of a mile, or of a league, or of a geographical degree, and "with even more ease, for these measures are exact mul- tiples and divisors of each other. We might just as well attempt, in this Avay, to give the dimensions of the New Jerusalem as its chronology, — its territorial extent in space, as well as the months and years and millenia of •God's kingdom in time. The Apostolical Seer has pre- sented to us a glorious picture of the Civitas Dei — its twelve pearly gates, its harmonious geometrical dimen- sions, its river of water of life, its trees and fruits, ita " gardens and its pleasant walks," Its bulwarks of salvation strong, And streets of shining gold. Now, in utter contempt of all this spiritual beauty, one might as well attempt to bring it into feet and barley- corns, or to determine its latitude and longitude on the celestial sphere, as apply any analogous computation of •current years or centuries to the ages that precede it, or that measure its continuance. There are in Scripture two very distinguishable me- thods of employing members in their relations to time and space. Both of them are found in the prophetical writ- ings. These are, 1st, definite numbers, or those that appear to he such, and, 2d, what may be called full and perfect numbers, or, as we sometimes style them, round numbers. The first class would seem to be used for no other purpose than the mere designation of quantity, or to mark definitely some actual number, extent, or magni- SCRIPTURAL NUMBERS. 89 tiude, in that of which they are predicated. In the use of the second, precise quantity, if it be meant at all, is more easily seen to be a subordinate idea. The struc- ture or peculiar law of such numbers shows that some other thought connected with them is predominant. This may be fullness, roundness in the sense of harmoni- ous complement of parts, or, if it be quantity at all, it is quantity in its more general and comparative aspects of greatness or brevity rather than precise numerical ex- tent. Such numbers as the 1260 days of Revelations, and the 1260 and 1290 of Daniel, would seem to have their pla^e in the first class. As belonging to the second, there would easily suggest themselves " the twice ten thousand chariots of God," in the Lxvirith Psalm ; the " ten thousand times ten thousand" of the celestial ar- mies mentioned by Daniel ; some of the estimates in Eze- kiel's Vision, such as the successive thousand cubits of the mysterious river that came forth from the temple, the 144,000 whom John saw standing on Mount Zion, the cubical dimensions of the New Jerusalem, the numbers 3, 7 and 12, as variously used in the Bible, and especi- ally the 1,000 years or millenium of the Apocalypse. It is the first kind of numbers as used by Daniel and John, or as they seem to be iised by them, that has foimed the favorite study of a certain class of commentators. The great yet ever unsuccessful effort has been to get the 1260 days into current anno domini years, with a fixed beginning and end corresponding to some known events in history. This has been on the principle of a day for a year regarded as sanctioned by such passages as Ezekiel iv, 4-6 ; or on the more satisfactory ground, which Mr. Lord partly assumes, of the common cycUcal r 90 " THE TIME, TIMES, AND A HALF." idea, wliereby one may be taken as the representative of the other. It is, however, a very fair question, whether these numbers are really intended for definite represen- tatives, or do not, in fact, and notwithstanding their ap- pearance of precision, belong to the second class. That they can be reduced to it, we think can be made to appear from the following considerations. The careful reader can not overlook the fact that, in both the prophetic parts of the Bible referred to, these apparently so definite num* bers occur in unmistakable connection with another ex- pression of the opposite character, but evidently intended to denote the same time, times, or periods, whatever they may be. Ever accompanying the 1260 days, both in Daniel and John, are the " time, times, and the dividing of a time" of the one, and the " time, times, and half a time," of the other* — or, if we employ the dual, as it is •clearly implied in the plural form of the Hebrew word, it would be, " a time, two times, a dividing of a time." Now the one of these, or the 1260 days, has a strong ap- pearance of arithmetical precision; the principal feature • of the other is its mystic indefiniteness, — and yet there -can be no doubt that they refer to the same periods, and Include the same class of events. The question, there- fore, fairly arises — w^hich of these presents the funda- mental conception, and is therefore to control in the in- terpretation of the other. We have no hesitation in an- swering, the latter. The indefinite is the ground, and the apparently definite is derived from it. Aside from "Daniel, xii, 7, vii, 25, Apoc. xii, 14. " And he swarc by Him who liveth for ever that in a time, times, and division of a time, and~when there shall be finished the scattering of the Holy People, all these things shall be completed." Vulgate — in ie mpus, tcmpora, et dittiidiam temporlB.— LXX— xajfov, xai^ous, rjfiKfv xai^ou. WHICH IS THE GROUND CONCEPTION? 91 such a view being more in accordance ^yith the general style of prophecy, which is emphatic in respect to courses of events and ideas, whilst it; is designedly enigmatical in respect to precise times and seasons, being truly a revelation of the one whilst it is in general an obvelation of the other — aside from this, we say, there is a stronger reason, and one which seems to us to be conclusive. Un- less we regard the " time, times, and dividing of time," as the fundamental conception, v/c can find no signifi- cance in these larger divisions. That is, on the other view, the three times and a half time, do not denote three prophetical periods, each having a character of its own which makes it stand by itself, and a fourth such period or division uncompleted ; but this extraordinary language is merely a vague expression for another representing a continuous period in which there is no other division but the current times (be it days or years) of the almanack. It is true, the number 1260 may be broken up in this same ratio, and for 1 + 2 + i, may give us 360 + (2 X 360) + 180, or 12 + (2 x 12) + 6 ; but the very doing so implies that the simple ratio is the fundamental con- ception on which the others have been constructed. At least, it must have been so to the mind that first enter- tained and uttered it. After the numbers have been given to us, we can proceed either way, from the divisors to the multiples, or from the multiples to the divisors. If the 1260 is the ground conception, then there is no sig- nificance in the three divisions and a half. They belong merely to the composition of the number, and do not outwardly represent a corresponding triad of times, defi- nite or indefinite, in either the outward or spiritual his- tory of the world or the Church. If so, they are utterly 92 MODE OP INSPIRATION. unmeaning as far as their trinal and dimiclial ratio is con* corned. But it is not easy or natural thus to regard it. The " time, two times, and dividing of a time," must have a significance, not only in its total amount, which is all that some interpreters ever look for, but in its great divisions whether those divisions denote any defi- nite number of current years or not. Thus, if we have made our meaning clear, the 1260 is derived from the 3|, but it is difiicult to see how, on any rational ground, the conceptual process could be re- versed, or the 3| derived from the 1260, unless the former had been someway in mind in the construction of the latter number. Any other view makes the mind of the medium a purely arbitrary receptacle, with a blank numerical conception instead of any idea, thought, or view, out of which the conception arises, and to which it has a rational correspondence. That is not the doc- trine of plenary inspiration. It would not even be ver- bal, but purely cabalistical. We firmly believe, not only in the plenary^ as the term is commonly used, but also in the verbal inspiration of Scripture. That is, the language as well as the thought is strictly designed by the Divine Wisdom. The super- natural impulse, though distinct and special in itself, and having a special purpose, yet works in perfect harmony -with the laws that connect utterance, conception, and emotion. And yet there is a reason for every metaphor, for every mode of speech, for every peculiarity of style, that grows out of the individual mode of feeling and con- ceiving. Such metaphors and peculiar modes of speech, therefore, instead of being overlooked as no part of the true word, or treated as mere matters of rhetorical criti- now DOES GOD EMPLOY HUMAN LANGUAGE? 93 cism, may oftentimes require the deepest study as mani- festing the divine no less in the manner of utterance than in the matter. Yet still, these conceptions have their truo and orderly gro^Yth in the human soul, and after tho laws of the human soul. If God employs true human language, he employs also the human images that lie at the foundation of such language, — nay, more, the feel- ings, whether naturally existing, or supernaturally arous- ed, that give hirth to such images and conceptions. The dignity of revelation is no more impaired by the one sup- position than by the other. The opposite view seems to take high ground, and to honor the Bible by depressing the mental condition of the medium. It gives, however, the lowest and loosest results ; for by denying any fixed and fundamental conception having a natural, and there- fore, determinable place in the mind of the sacred writer, it becomes the cause of all looseness and arbitrariness in the conception of the interpreter. But how account for the 1260 ? It may be regarded, without much difficulty, as nothing more than a varied expression to give it more of that enigmatical aspect which •is a designed feature of the Scriptural hidha,* or oracle. *Weus3 tliis term, tlT^h, because of it.s peculiar significance in tho Bible. It is not that mere matter of amuserncut we call the litliUe, but something as significant, that is in its own way, as any other fjrm of speech. It is used for as definite a purpose as the parable or the simile. It dis- tinctly announces two things — an important truth, event, or idea, and, at the same tini", that there is something about it which we can not know, and should not, therefore, be tempted to enquire into. The enigmatical language, or the compUcation (as the Hebrew word primarily imports) • performs its office, therefore, as clearly as any other mode of speech wht.n it is thus understood — ;just as Daniel understood it rightly, when he said. " I /icard, hut I understood not." It was the impression, we may think, the vision was intended to leave upon his mind in respect to tliis matter of cur- rent days or current solar years. It may, indeed seem a parados, but tho 94 THE AWE OP THE UNKNOWN. Paradoxical as it may seem, there may be, sometimes, a profound revelation in the incomprehensible. There may be something higher than knowledge in the awe of the unknown. It is not the feeling of blank ignorance, — for that has no understanding, or comprehension what- ever, — but rather the knowledge that knows itself, and the limits that separate it from a higher and more divine intelligence. This may be all nonsense to the Editor of the Theological Review and the Silliman Professor of Mineralogy in Yale College ; but, without having the fear of either before our eyes, we must still talk Platon- ism. There is a hidha, or deep speculation of Socrates about knowing what we do not know, and the curious mystery of such knowledge. We would commend its care- ful consideration to both of these authorities. It might wholesomely temper the infallible dogmatism of the one, and reveal a field of thought somewhat higher than had ever been suggested by the " exact science" of the other. But to return to the consideration of the prophetic num- bers. We may not understand the precise reason of the use of the 1260 — and we are perfectly willing to confess Propliet's exclamation sliows that he coraprelicaded well the method cm- ployed to teach hira impressively that he could not comprehend. Then, language is employed to conceal, some one may say. It is even so — "It is the glory of God (sometimes) to conceal a matter,"— even while reveal ing something most impressive in relation to it. Twelve hundred and sixty literal solar days, as one class of commentators interpret it, or 1200 cun-cnt anno domiiii years, as another class regard it, have, neither of them anything very occult. The first is plain enough, and the second is only, in addition, the guessing at a multiple. Daniel could have entertained either view as easily as Mr. Lokd. Certainly this " man helovcd," so "favored with the visions of the Most High," mast have been in a psychological state as favorable for their interpretation (at least so far as judging of num- bers is concerned) as the Editor of the Theological Journal. TIMES UNEQUAL IN DURATION — EQUAL IN VALUE. 95 our sense of difBcultj on this point — yet still no less evi- dent are the reasons and the reasoning by which it is shown that the indefinite expression of times is here the funda- mental one. It furnishes the ratio, and that gives us the law of the idea. It is a ratio, order, division of period and event, and not precise sun-measured duration. If this be so, then there follows a most important inference. The more simple ratio, designating the larger period, or the " time, times and a half," gives character and dimen- sion to the day, instead of being determined by it, and that, too, both in the representative conception, and as that conception is carried out on the scale of the actual prophetic fulfilment of the common ratio. The larger designation — the " time, times," etc., — having nothing higher of which it can be predicated as a measure or di- visor, is, of course, indefinite. It would not even follow that one of these mysterious times is the same, in precise duration, with another.* God's physical movements, es- * They may be unequal in duration as measured by solar years, but equal in historical and spiritual value. This is exemplified on the lower scale of the world's most secular history. Some periods are vcrj' brief as reckoned by the almanack, yet^ contain more of eventful life, — the world, or a nation, has done more in them, thought more in them, lived more in them, than during ages of much greater extent in current years. It is true of the- physical world. One period of less cosmical time does vastly more than one of greater duration, There is a cycle o( birth, as well as of gestation^ of quick working, as well as of repose. It is true of the individual man. He does more, he lives more, sometimes, in a month than in a year. Above all, would it hold of what may be called the spiritual history of oar world. The few years of Christ's ministry, the succeeding period recorded in the Acts of the Apostles — in what ratio with these could we place the forgot- ten centuries that followed the Trojan war, or the stagnant centuries of mediaaval Europe, or the dull, dreamy Egyptian and Assyrian dynasties, out of whose ruins modern research is striving to extract history, with so much pi-omise and so little su(?cess, — the whole of it only serving to show how indispensable the clear though scantj^ light the Bible throws back upon thosj Godforsaken ages, and how little their "sphynxes"or their 9t> ARE THE DIVINE TIMES ASTRONOMICAL? peciallj in a regulated course of nature, may be sup- posed to have a connection with astronomical or physical measures of time. Even this view, however, would have to be greatly modified when it is applied to those crea- tive and generative acts which are concerned with the origination of nature^ and the very adjustments of the measures by which time is afterward regulated. But in the moral, or great historical movements of God's king- dom, we have no warrant from without, and, we think, none from the Scriptures, for applying it at all. At the first serious impression, the mind starts back from the thought that the timeless One regulates his great periods by our almanacks, or by our single planet's astronomical measures of time, whether seemingly arbitrary or seem- ingly natural, whether reckoned by the clocks we keep in our parlours, or those that keep time for us in our sky ; — for in this connection of thought one of these is as natural as the other. We would indulge here in no mere metaphysical conceit. God's purposes and work- ings in the universe — the moral and providential as well as the physical — have durations, indeed, and those durar tions, could we measure them, might be found to be cer- tain numbers and fractions of numbers — be they more or less — of our solar years and centuries. But to sup- pose the divine movements adjusted to these as our move- ments are — that is, to imagine these great epochs as "winged balls," could tell us if tliis light were lost. Is it uot most rational to suppose that the prophetic times are to be measured by this epochal value, as we may call it, in distinction from astronomical estimates, which in respect to the real historical action, may be altogether outward and arbitary ? It is in the highest sense the real value, and, therefore, in the highest ai)d truest sense may we suppose it employed in the divine pro- phetical estimate, and to furnish the true hermeneutical principle in our attempted estimates, of prophetical equalities and proportion. PROPHETICAL TIMES NOT COSMICAL. 97 being made exactly equal to each other through measures taken from our sun, our moon, our clocks, or exact mul- tiples or divisors of these, so that instead of having a law in themselves determining their own durations, (as even the lower physical cycles have) their time of day and night is to be found by observations wholly outward — this is the thing hard to be believed. It is possible ; and if the Bible has revealed it, we must, of course, bring our very falUble reasonings in submission to it. But it does not seem natural, it does not seem rational, it looks like a violation of all analogy ; we do not see the evidence of it in the Scriptures, either as respects creation or the great epochs of prophecy, although there may be some- thing of these solar measurements in the lesser predic- tions that have special reference to the merely earthly history of the Jewish nation. We say, then, it would not follow that one of these mysterious times was exactly equal to another, although each might be represented as a great year, and a propor- tionate number taken from it to be divided in a manner corresponding to the divisions of our annual cycle. The prophecy, then, would denote three great indefinite peri- ods, and the part of a fourth. If so, it is the multiple that gives character to the divisions, and not the divisions first reduced to a definite annual or astronomical dura- tion, in current days or years, and then carried back to determine the multiple ; just as though in the physical world, we should determine the day by the hour, instead of regarding the hour as the twenty-fourth part of the day cycle, whatever the length of that might be. It may be said that in this way we get nothing definite in respect to the actual physical length of the predicted- 9 98 THE SCRIPTURAL HIDHA. times in current calendar years ; and to this it may be answered again, that such would seem to be the very intent of the Scriptural hidlia, namely, to conceal the precise cosmical time from us— to put us in the very position of the prophet himself, that we might heai' and heed, yet understand not, — that is, hear (receive into the mind, which is a secondary sense of the word in most languages) the clear epitomal outline of events, yet un- derstand not the definite solar times it might incidentally embrace. It may have been to take away the mind from that search after current years, to which some com- mentators are so prone, and to substitute for this vain pursuit the higher study of cycles or periodical courses of events, ■whether regarded as existing in the more out- ward and secular, or in the more inward spiritual history of the Church ; — we say the Church, for the serious stu- dent of the Bible must sec that its great historical idea is, the world for the Church, and not the Church for the world, which is the favorite notion of our modern secu- larized Christianity. Commentators have followed the other method to exhaustion. They have tried every means of squaring these mysterious times to anno domini years ; they have put on the fractions and taken them oflF; they have changed their termini, but all in vain. We would speak cautiously and reverently here. It may be the true way on which light at length may shine. We would be very far from making ill success in the application the test of falsity in respect to any method of interpretation. But this continued variance ought at least to lead serious students of Scripture to look about for some other path, and to seek the solution of the great times by means of some other kind of cycles than the astronomical. It might, perhaps, be discover- PROPHECY HAS ITS OWN CHRONOLOGY. 99 ed, that prophecy, like creation, has its own chronology — that is, one which instead of being measured by sub- divisions from without, or in an outwardly fixed course of nature, has its own self-measuring days, and times, and seasons, with which the others may be in some kind of analogy, or may not. What would seem to aid such a view, is the use in Daniel (the fountain of this kind of language) of the Hebrew word ■jy'iw, which when applied to time ever denotes a period whose duration is limited by its own law as constituted and appointed. It is a set time, fixed by agreement, whether of human constitution, or determined in the counsels or covenants of God, and measured by the event or appointed work which is trans- acted in it. This is the Hebrew word employed Daniel xii, 7 — "an appointed time, two appointed times, a divi- sion of an appointed time," fixing upon the mind the most vivid impression that the trinal and semi-trinal division is of the very essence of the idea, and not to be overlooked in the estimate of another number, whether regarded as of days or years, that, when alone considered, efiaces that division.* The 2;reater mo'^-adldm are not to be lost o * The absurdity of Mr. Lord's treatment of tliis mystical number is most striking. The two witnesses of the Revelations, it is expressly said, are to prophecy iu sackoloth this very period of 1260 days, equivalent to the "tiiiie, times, and a half." It is bis theory, however, for reasons it would be too long to state, that these two witnesses ai-e two literal men. It is out of the question, therefore, that the number can mean years in respect to them. To suit such an exigency, it must, in their case, be re- duced to literal days. In other words, it means either one or the other, .just as these accommodating laws of symbolization may require. There is something, too, especially curious in the reasoning by which these two witnesses arc proved to be real men, or "si/mhols of themselves." If the reader has any curiosity on the subject, we refer him to it (oh. xxvi) as one of the most singular specimens of logical circularity that the necessi- ties of a theory ever brought out. 100 CONNECTION WITH THE SACRED NUMBER SEVEN. in this way. The prime ratio is not thus to be absorbed in the secondary representation. The Chaldaic word, Daniel vii, 25, has the same import. So also the Greek xai^o's suggests the idea of a constituted, yet self-deter- mining season, rather than any outward measure whether of celestial or terrestrial horometers. There is another view of the " time, two times, and a dividing of a time," which gives it a more direct connec- tion with our general subject, the Creative Days. The thoughtful reader can not fail to see that this strange •expression represents exactly one-half of the number •seven*, — the sacred number, the mystic number, which from the earliest period was held in religious awe as re- presenting something of peculiar interest in the constitu- tion and chronology of our world. Along with this may have been connected the thought of some curious inhe- rent property vfhich it possessed as a number, or in the relation of its numerical parts. In fact, both ideas were united ; for this looking upon the world, its times and constitution, as represented in the mystic properties of numbers, is old beyond all historical date. It was a musing of the ancient mind, both oriental and occidental, long before the days of Pythagoras. In this sense of its •extreme antiquity it v^-as certainly an a lyriori, if we may mot rather say, an a primo idea, that God made the world by weight and measure, that is, by number. It * It comes, tuo, just in that order of division, from which the mathemati- •cal mystery of this number is derived. It is not 3J, without any coiislitu- tion or distinction of parts, but 1 + 2 + J. The seven series is 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 1, or rather, (1 + 2) + 1 + (2 + 1). Daniel's number is Just one-half of it, and in the same order. Wc siinj)ly cr.ll attention to the fact. The reader may judge, for himself, of its mean- ing and vauie. " GOD MADE THE WORLD 15Y NUMBER." 101 did not wait for the slow, groping discoveries of modern Chemistry. The early mind reached out and seized the truth ; whether the soul recognized it as one of its own native thoughts which it saw, or thought it saw, imaged in outside things, or whether God had given it by reve- lation and tradition, we may not be able to tell very olearly ; but it had it in some way beyond all doubt. God made the world by number ; and so the world was, in some sense, a number, a ratio, a harmony, a kosmos. The idea is everywhere in language. And then there very early followed, or rather accompanied it, the thought that the mystic birth numbers that entered into the very constitution of things might, perhaps, be somehow sha- dowed forth in the world's higher chronology. We have been charged with dreaming, as well as Platonism, but we beg the sober-minded reader not to be impatient here. We do not intend to discuss the truth of this idea, or to endorse its affirmance or denial. Sufficient for our argument, and for the use we make of the thought, is the historical fact of its very early and deeply grounded existence. Of the sacredness of this number seven, es- pecially, we find traces everywhere. When men had little outward physical science to trouble them with its details, they mused much on their own ideas. Especi- ally was the thinking mind — and they thought then as much as they do now, perhaps more — drawn to that strange class of existences that seem to belong alike to the objective and subjective world — the world within us, and the world without us. Numbers exist in nature ; they have a still more real existence in the soul (not as mere umbrae or conceptual images, the way in which any outward thing may be said to be in the mind,') but 9* 102 NUMBERS IN NATURE — NUMBERS IN THE SOUL. as a part of its own most interior furniture* without which it could not be a rational soul, but only a sensitive life. Numbers, then, as existing in nature, it was thought, must represent something like those properties which the mind saw in numbers when it contemplated them among its own ideas. If this was not seen directly by the sense (as in that infant stage of scientific discovery could not be the case) then it must be thought as assumed by the mind. For somehow there must be an agreement, or else God did not make the world by measure and weight, that is, by number ; — in other words, it did not come from mind at all.f Hence the tendency of the earliest philosophy to find out nature by tlie mind's own ideas — to think out the world-problem, its figurative forms in space, its great births or changes in time. It was the " a priori tendency" which Professor Dana so flippantly condemns, but understandeth not. J It was the view of * Belonging to mind, in fact, just as truly and as inseparably, as figura- tive forms belong to rnatlrr, and forms of motion to any idea we can have t We are tempted to dwell on this theme, but it would interrupt our general plan, as far as our rambling book can be said to have one. We would, however, barely suggest to the men who cry out Platonism, and see so much danger and heresy in the word, that it might be worth their while to examine the Platonic mode of theologizing, or proving that the world came from mind. It found this evidence in the ideas ; the modern discovers it in the utilitiei^, or contrivances for happiness, or irdl feeling as the very essence of well bcinf^. The latter method can never fully an- swer the Atheist's objection, that the use may have grown out of the construction as an ejfect rather than a cause. But aside from this, we have no hesitation in affirming, and in maintaining, whenever necessary, that the Platonic mode is not only more sublimely truthful, but more pious, more reverent, more in harmony with the Scriptures, than the one now iso popular both with scientific men and theologians. t The consummation and most perfect result of this tendency may be found in that splendid effort of genius and philosophj% the Timseus of Plato. It ia an attempt to get at the elementary /orms and elementary motions of ANCIENT A PRIORI TENDENCY. 103 wliicli some of our professed Baconians, misunderstand- ing Bacon as ^Ye^ as Plato, show a sort of dreamy half- compreliension in their sneering lectures, their ignorant gibes at the old philosophers, their stale, stupid jests about the schoolmen, whilst they have no wonder for the strangest psychological fact presented in the history of philosophy and the world — the strangest, we mean, on their theory — that metaphysics should have been so much older than physics — the supernatural before the natural — the contemplation of " the things unseen" so much earher than that study of the " things seen" and tangible that is so predominant a feature of our later times. There was an error doubtless, a great and baf- fling error in this one-sided a priori tendency, but there Avas also in it a great truth, the loss of which can never be compensated by any amount of mere physical know- ledge that rejects or holds it hght. The reader will have patience with our rambling. This is a tempting theme, but we must come back to the early ideas of mystic number. There was a supposed mystery in the number 7, arising from its numerical com- position. As three presented duality and unity, forming trinity, so 7 was a dual trinity connected by unity. One all matter as derived from the necessary niatbematical ideas, and the ne- cessary dynamical laws. Plato regarded the world rather as an idea, or system of ideas, than as a power, althoagh he fully recognized the latter aspect. Hence the Timoeus is predominantly mathematical, that is — in the ancient sense of the word — geometrical ; for it is the application of the term growing out of the modem analytical mathematics, that has extended it Dver both departments, as they are embraced in that second Timajus, the Mechanique Celeste of La Place. Of course, Plato's Timajus is a failure when judged by our college text books on Natural Philosophy, and yet we fearlessly hazard the declaration, as one we are prepared to prove, that it contains ti'ixths, physical truths, of the highest import, that are unrecog- nized and unvalued in our scientific conventions. 104 SEVEN AGES OF THE WORLD. half of this corresponded to the mysterious '■'• time, two times and a half. So it certainly is numerically ; how far the idea was an element in the Prophet's vision, the reader may judge for himself. We would be content with the unquestionable fact of a sacred estimate being early entertained of this number and of such modes of dividing it. Connected with this was the idea of its being the creative 7iuviher, which must have come from some early and wide tradition of the great creative times, and also the doctrine of the seven ages corresponding to them and which would complete the historical period of our own world or olam. This is to be found in early heathen writers ;* Augustine speaks of it as a wide-spread belief; it was maintained by the Rabinnical writers as among the sacred thoughts that had come down from their forefathers, and we confidently say, that aside from the inferences that might be drawn from the passages on which we are now commenting, there arc discernible tra- ces of it in the Scriptures. The " thousand years as one day" — the thousand years of the New Jerusalem, as well as these " time, times and half time" of Daniel and John, " The germ of this idea, we may soberly believe, exists iu the Hesiodian ages, three of which had passed awny, and the fourtli was just gone, when the poet came upon the stage of time. Compare with this also Virgil's Sybilline traditions, as referred to in the Fourth Eclogue, 5: Ultimo Cumaii veiiit jam carminia astas, Maguus nb Integro stcclormn nnecitur ordo. And afterwards (12) where he speaks of the magni menscs,'or great months. There is a similar relerence iu the Vlth Book of thcffiueid, where jEneas is shown the souls that are to be born in the great latter 10 110 Daniel's seventy weeks. ist's " twice ten thousand chariots of God," the form of the expression would strongly seem to have been adopted for the very purpose of cautioning the reader against any such definite conclusion. Daniel's seventy weeks has an obvious solution with- out any arbitrary substitution of a year of 3 GO days for one day. It is not 490 days, but 70 weeks, and the week of years, or seven years, was a well-known measure- ment of the Jewish chronology. The institution of the Sabbatical year made this hebdomad as natural and cur- rent a measure of actual time as the week of days, and the Hebrew V^'^, which simply means a seve^i or hebdo- mad, was as applicable to one period as the other.* It •was seventy times seven, and taken as actual weeks of years would reach generally (though without an absolute determinable precision) to the age of Christ, as it has generally been taken in ancient as well as modern times. There is, however, good reason for believing that hke * There was another still greater hebdomad consisting of seven times Beven, or forty-nine years, to which was added the fiftieth as a jubilee. It is particularly set forth, Lev. xxv, 8 : " And thou shalt number seven Sab- baths of years unto thee ; seven times seven years, and the space of the se- ven Sabbaths of years shall be unto i\\Qe forty and nine years ; and ye shall hallow the fiftieth year ; it shall be a jubilee unto you." Wiiat means this widening, ascending series — seven days, seven years, seven sevens of years 1 It had a connection with the Jewish earthly economy, we know ; but has it not also a higher sense ? May we not soberly regard it as giving ■UB a hint of a higher chronology, with its greater Sabbaths and greater jubilee ? Even as the Apostle soberly interprets the " ark and the taber nacle" as significant of " things in the heavens" ? In connection with such a view it is easy and natural for us to believe that the thought entered into the prophetical visions and lay at the foundation of their mystic numbers. It should be remarked, however, that if we regard the Prophet here as aetting forth a definite historical time, it would he Jive hundred years, in- stead of four hundred and ninety ; since the great hebdomad with its jubilee amounted to f fly years, and there is no reason why it should not be reck oned in what purports to be exact historical chronology. TWO MODES OF INTERPRETING PROPHECY. Ill the other numbers of that majestic book of Daniel, it passes over, in a higher sense, into the chronology of the Christian a)C>v, and may reach to the second com- ing of Messiah and the New Jerusalem. If there is any ground for such a view, it might perhaps be found in the mystical form of the number connecting it with the " time, times and half a time." It is the great seven, the square of seven, and that multiplied by ten to denote roundness of computation, as well as that mathematical symmetry which is the symbol of chronological perfection regarded !nore as residing in inherent cyclical self-measurement than in any outward estimate we can make of current years. We may be darkening counsel by words without know- ledge. We M'ould not press any such views, but we are »•' of the older Scriptures. In the Old English, as in the New Testament Hebraistic Greek, the noun has the force of an adjective. The Vf'^a aiuvos, the day of eternity, is THE ETERNAL DAY OF 2 PETER, III, 18. 117 the eternal day, the aeonic day, denoting extent, and boundless extent, yet still, in a high and perhaps truer sense, quality rather than quantity, or the character of the day as belonging to the great aeonic chronology, whether it is to be regarded as a single aiijv in itself, or an aiwv Twv aiwvwVj an aeon measured by aeons as lesser ages are measured by centuries and years. In any way, how different, as thus appearing, from that blank concep- tion we connect with those withered words of ours that can only regain their life and clear impression by being carried back to be stamped anew in the ancient mint. Wickliffe's version here, though made from the Vulgate, is better than our own, and that by reason of its expres- sive literalness — " the day of eiierlastinynes.'''' By re- taining the word day, it keeps up the epochal idea, and suggests, if Ave choose to take it, the qualifying or adjec- tive sense of the noun that is in the Greek and Latin.* * We should have had all these ideas much more vivid in our minds, had our common version followed in this and similar places the Wicklifi- ian simplicity of expression. That other old idea, too, of time-words used for the very vrorlds themselves, so that it may be taken either way, and with an increase of sublimity attending either conception, is brought out in this pure Saxon English with si! the force and clearness of the Greek, The reader may see this in all those places where Wickliffe's translation, following the Latin, has world or worldis for a'tCiv and ttiOJVfj, whilst the common version has the general epithets e'ctnal and everlasting. As in Gal. i, .") — " To whom is worschip and glorie into worldis of worldis (am- vag TUV aiijvwv) — Eph. ii, 7, "In the worldis abouc coming" — Col. i, 26, " Hidden//o worldis." So also the Rlieims. The other English versions have the singular, "before the world began," notwithstanding the Greek plural, and the Hebrew plural from which the mode of expression is deriv- (;d. The translators did not recognize the idea of time -worlds, and so took those plurals collectively. We have other examples — 1 Pet. iv, 11, " Glo- rie and lordschip unto the worldis of worldis" — Rev. iv, 9, " That lyueth into worldis of worldis." The same Rev. xv, 7, xxii, 5 — " They shall reiga forever, or forever more" say the other versions. The Wickliffe has iC — 118 THE OLD WICKLIFFE VERSION. But the word day is consistent with its absolute unend- ing everlastingness. And so we are prepared to view it in this passage of Peter. Not only is it applied in the Scriptures to the great olams that divide the chronology of the created universe in its cosmical ongoings, but to the whole that preceded, and to the whole that may be thought as coming after. Thus we may reverently think of three great days, or greatest days, which may be described as the ante-time state, the kosmos that now is, and the vj/xs^a aiwvo^ or all that succeeds this world or the worlds that now are. Taken all together, they would be the ^^ yesterday, to-day, and forever, ^^ of the Divine "And thei schuleu regne mto worldis of uwrldix." But perhaps there is 110 passage in which this Old Enghsh version is more striking, or more in- structive, than in its rendering of 1 Tim.i, 17 — " Now unto the King Eter- nal, Immortal, Invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever." This has, indeed, a grand sound, though having only the general imageless adjective; but it is not equal, either for truth or effect, to the old Version that follows so closely the Latin and the Greek — "Now unto the Kynge of worldis, undeedli and vnuysible, God aloone, be onoure and glorie into worldis of woiidis, Amen." It is the counterpart of Ps. cxlv, 13 — "Thy kingdom is a kingdom of all worldis." This kind of language is the source of thegrind expression in the Episcopal PrayerBook, '\HO)-ld wi/kaitt end." Surely it is not too much to say, that if the form and spirit of these early translations had been preserved, (and certainly they are nearest to the original,) the mind of the common reader would have had something far more true, as well as far more vivid, than the blank conceptions that are given by the current terms. One style of language gives us one world with a waste continuit}', undivided and undivisible, before and after it. The other fills them up with v:o>hls and worlds of worlds stretching on in either direction as far as the mind can go towards the boundless comple- ment of the Divine Kingdom. We surpass the readers of these old Ver- sions, and of these old originals, in our space conceptions ; but how far we are behind them in those of time, is shown by the change of language and the disuse of the old vivid forms. We may seek to compensate for this by rows of decimals, and frigid conceits of solar systems turned into sand-glasses to measure eternity, but it is all a blank as compared witli those mighty pluralities, the aeons and olams, and icorldis ofwarldts of the earlier mind. DAY OF THE ETERNAL GENERATION. 119 Existence. There would seem, then, good reason for ranking this expression (2 Pet. iii, 18,) in the same class with that in Psalm ii,7 — the ancient day of the " Eternal Generation," and the day Isaiah xhii, 13, where it is said " Before the dat/ 1 am He," that is, before the whole cosmical manifestation. We might regard these as be- longing to a still higher chl-onology than the days of cre- ation and the days of prophecy, but any attempt to name them would be only a repetition of the same language, and a reduplication of the same inadequate conception. We may be content with the idea as sound and Scriptu- ral, where the conceiving faculty utterly fails to present it to the sense or the imagination. There was an ante- past eternity, before time began, " or ever the earth or the world was." Of its mode of being we can know little or nothing ; of the fact we may reverently inquire if we guide our thoughts, and our imaginations, by that only light, the interpretation of Scripture soberly conducted, but with an aim bearing some proportion to the acknow- ledged divinity and consequent grandeur of the Book. 120 KBDHEM, OR THE ANTE-TIME STATE. CHAPTER IV. Kedkem or the Ante-time State — Psalm lv, 19, ''He that Inha- hiteth Kedhem^^ — Sadducean Interpreters — Psalm lxviii, " The Heaven of Henvens of Old" — Spiritual in Distinc- tion from a Cabalistical Sense — Space Sense — Messianic Character of the Psalm — Where is Kedhem 1 — Tlie Ra- tionalist — The Twenty-four Hour Irderpretcr — The Time- less State — The Question of the Eternity of Matter — The Absurdity ifivolved in the very Inquiry. But what do we mean by an ante-past eternity, or ante- time state, as -with good Scriptural authority it may be named ? This may be called a purely speculative ques- tion. It is, however, one of exceeding interest; and, therefore, we would beg the reader's indulgence if we devote a chapter to its consideration — most scanty and inadequate though it be. We can not help feeling that there are allusions to it in the Scriptures, although in all such cases he who seeks nothing higher may find plausi- ble ground for being content with a lower sense. Of such ante-past eternity there seems to the writer a vivid re- cognition. Psalm lv, 19, rendered in our Version " He Uiat abideth of old." The Sadducean interpreter may take it of some old historical time upon the earth, some forefathers' day of the Jewish genealogies, and should he be determined to adhere to it, it would not be easy to refute him, or drive him out of it. It certainly may "HE THAT INHABITETH KEDHEM.". 121 have that sense if a man chooses to see nothing higher, but to others in another state of mind the Hebrew suggests a thought subUme beyond all expression. It is ci*!!^ 3»\ " He that inhabiteth Kedhem ;" mth. which we may compare Isaiah Ivii, 15 — " He that inhabiteth eternity." Kedhem denotes the most ancient state of anything, or rather that which was before the most ancient state of anything. It would mean etymolbgically the antiquity, not in the sense of the oldest part, but rather as the anterior or the before state. Compare Prov. viii, 22, 23, where it may be rendered " the antiquity before the world was." So here— "Who inhabiteth the antiquity,"— the ante-mundane state — the day before the world was. Compare also on^sa as spoken of the Logos, Mich, v, 1, — " Whose out- goings are from Kedhem," — egressuB ejus ah initio, a diebus eternitatis. There is something very striking in the whole expression, especially in the other word 3.«i% as applied to God — " who sitteth kedhem." It sounds very strange, and the interpretation may be condemned as strangely literal ; but may we not soberly look for " wondrous things," when such a term, and in such a connection, is apphed to Deity ?* May it not intimate to us that ineffable divine repose, that transcending quietude, that preceded all worlds, when God sat alone, dwelt alone,, in the ineffable glory of his triune existence. It may be said there is something anthropopathic in such concep- tion of the word ; but what can we do ? In what other " The thought comes out far more vividly in the old^ersions. The L XX, litcf-iX^v ir^o Twv aiojvwv— " W^o subsisted before the ages, or the ■worlds, if we take the New Testament sense which we may certainly give to the word in the Septuagint. Vulgate— Clui est «7;/f sa;cula. The Sy- riac is clearest of them all—" who was before the world,''— a'ahs DHj?,— - and there can be no doubt of the sense in which it employs the tenn, as elsewhere, for the world idea. 11 122 THE rationalist's interpretation. mode is the conception, or the idea, to have a place in our minds ? The conception may be anthropopathic, yea, must be anthropopathic, and yet the idea the con- ception represents may be one that transcends all philo- sophy. There was certainly an ante-mundane state, whether near or remote ; for such terms are merely comparative. Their power of affecting the mind, or producing religious emotion, depends on other associations. But where was Kedh^m ? It is a question w« may reverently ask. Certain commentators who call themselves sober or ra- tional, and who neither seek nor find anything profound in the Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, would carry the word back, perhaps, to the period before the Saul dynasty, or, it may be, to some such respectable antiquity as the days of Nahshon the Prince of Judah, the grandfather of Boaz, who was the great-grandfather of David — about as far as from the present generation to the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. This to their minds satisfies the language, '■'• He ivho abideth of old,'' or "He who inhabiteth Kedhem." It does pretty well ; and is a tolerably fair sense, we say, for those who choose to take it. But we would desire to bear in mind that it is the Book of the Eternal God we are reading, and we would remember the reproof Christ gave the Sadducees for their narrow yet plausible interpretation, when they found nothing but matter in the Old Testament, and spi- ritual nonentity ,^nd a few fleeting generations of misera- ble creatures who had not even a dream of anything beyond the dissolution of the body, and yet were arro- gant enough to claim the undying One as their God and the God of their fathers who had long since gone down *'the heaven of heavens of old." 123 to Sheol. " Thou art our dwelling place in all genera- tions." This, as the Sadducees maintained, was said by men, and of men, who had long since " been laid like sheep in the grave," where " their beauty," their mortal forms, the only real beauty that ever belonged to them, ''had been consuming" in their eternal " dwelling place" of mortality. So the Sadducees held, and they had some respectable grounds for their Sadducean doctrine ; but, Christ himself being witness, they were neither sound nor profound interpreters. There were those in the Psalmist's day who believed in the V'-'fo^^ ai-^jvo^, the '' day 0^ euerlastingnes,^' and such minds could readily admit the thought of a kedhem or pre-existent state be- fore the day tvhen the world ivas. There is another similar passage, Psalm Ixviii, 34, — r=-T;? ^ttw ■'tottia ashV, — " To Him who rideth on the jffeay- ens of Heavens of old — the Heavens of Heavens of Ked- hem.''^ Here, too, may the word present its radical idea of antiquity^ or a time or state before^ and yet in perfect consistency v/ith a gradation of senses (according to the taste or reverence, or views of inspiration, or spiritual mindedness in the interpreter,) until we ascend to that highest and oldest to which the hyperbole or upmount- ing form of the expression would seem to carry us. It may thus be taken for the old skies on which God rode, or, as the word may be rendered, sat throned, on the de- sert ! It may refer to the Heaven of storms which he gathered around the awful peak of Sinai. Either of these is a good sense, a most important sense. It may be taken — preserving, too, the same old radical concep- tion oi antiquity, or the ante-state — for an old heavens before the Mosaic heavens, and belonging to the times 124 THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURE. before the earth was ; or it may signify for us that most ancient state before there were any mundane heavens, atmospherical, stellar, or nebular, if we may use these terms by way of accommodation. Or if we give the conception another form, (yet preserving its essence) it may suggest to us degrees of heavens in what we have elsewhere called the altitudinal, or degree aspect, in dis- tinction from that of space and time. It may carry us -through all these heavens until we come to that oldest Ttimeless state, and that ineffable height which we have ^regarded as ultimately set forth in language like this. .A man, we say, may take the lower, but why may he not also take the higher sense, if it comes fairly out of the ever widening conception, and if it be really the case that this book, we are venturing to interpret, is truly a book of God's thoughts, as high above our thoughts as the heavens are high above the earth. Such a higher or spiritual sense, is the one taken by a spiritual mind building on the old fundamental concep- tion. We may freely call it the spiritual sense of Scrip- ture, without fear of its involving us in any cabalistical fancies ; for it is the great difference between it and any cabalistical or Swedenborgian spiritual sense, that the latter has no such fundamental conception capable of be- ing fixed by philology, but in the foundation as in the superstructure is wholly arbitrary, built on a supposed second lexical revelation, or " dictionary of correspon- dences," to which it is not even pretended that the rules of philology have any theoretical or practical appli- cation. This cabahstical or fancied spiritual sense, too, is ever dry ; it has no more warmth than light ; it has as little to do with feeling as with the intellect ; whereas THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURE. 125 the other is the rational expansion of the " spiritual mind," under the influence of pious emotion which we may regard as giving breath to the thought, \^hilst the understanding remains ever anchored on that ground idea which is the same for all. It is the same, in this respect, with the Old Testament as with the New. Be- ing 7Pap>3 (JsiVvsurfToSj " inspired Scripture," it must be capable of the same expansion from lower to higher de- grees of the same fundamental thought. There are those who contend earnestly and ably for it, as a true part of the sacred canon, and yet somehow adopt a view which renders the position in a measure worthless, even after such great pains to establish it. The course taken by the " liberal" commentator is certainly more logical, if not so pious. If it is God's inspiration it must be every where full of life — " the Divine breath," to use the words of M. Guizot, " must everywhere animate" it. The thoughtful reader must especially feel this when he fixes his mind on the sublime terms of which we now are treating. But there are others every where that expand themselves, and legitimately expand themselves, in the same ever widening, ever ascending manner. Take, for example, such words as life, salvation, righteousness. It may be the life of the body when the Psalmist says, " Thy favor is life," but what prevents its being taken for the Ufe of the soul ? " Thou wilt show me the path of life." It may mean here deliverance from temporal death ; the rationalist has good grounds for such an inter- pretation, but how much higher ground has the spiritual mind for interpreting it of the life of the spirit in this world, or for the life of the spirit as the spirit is the life of the body — and even for carrying it out to the eternal ir 126 ASCENDING SENSES. life in the olamic kingdom of God. Salvation may mean, — it does mean, — temporal deliverance, but what shall forbid its being understood in a true, yea a truer sense, of soul health, the true (fur-tj^ia even here, and the ever- lasting salvation both from Satan and from sin, from con- demnation and from depravity, when Christ shall have put all enemies under his feet. Right or righteousness may be the vindication of a temporal justice, and so it may be, and truly is, a pardon, nay, more, an absolute robe of righteousness which shall fit one to appear in the very heaven of heavens. All these senses flow out of the words, and to the mind that can receive them are as real in themselves, and as truly the meaning, as any lower significance that may be discovered by the dry light either of mysticism or neology. Those who choose may feed on the husks and throw away the fruit ; for the lower senses are really there, and the mind that is satisfied with them may rest in them without seeking anything higher or more free.* * 111 close connection with this there is, in the next verse, another ex- pression that invites comment, — " Ascribe ye power unto C od Kh-osc glory ii upon Israel, and his strength in the skies." The word D''j?hW is ren. dered in oar version the clouds; but it is more usually a word for the vi- )>ible or Space " heavens." The primary sense of the root is to make thin, attenuate, and hence to expand. Hence it is applied to the DBtlier, or the substance that was regarded as filling all space, and which, on the same ■etymological ground, is called by Aristotle »} "kBitro^kZ^vig xai 9Xoyw(5rjff ou(f»a. Thus etymologically regarded, it would be equivalent to the clae- •ical expressiCin in summo cetkere, or the frequent Homeric phrase at6i^i vaiuv. The word is also used for dust (Isaiah xl, 15,) from the radical sense of attenuation, Jijieness or rarity ; and hence, ns some think, is applied to the clouds, either from their rarity, or from the fancied resemblance which the dark nimbus, or thunder-cloud, may be supposed to bear to a rolling bank of dust. As iu that sublime passage, Nahum i, 3, — "His way is in the whirlwind and the tempest, and the clouds are the dust SPACE-SENSE OF KEDHEM. 127 The word Kedhem, it must not be overlooked, has a space as well as a time sense ; but the former would seem to come naturally from the latter. It means the East, the ould coiaitrie, the fatherland, where dwelt " the men of ^ore," the men who were before us. So afterwards Phoenicia was Kedhem to Greece, and hence they said Kadmus, or the Eastern man, brought to them the letters of the alphabet. Thus it never loses its time idea of beforeness, if we may use such a term, or die vorzeit. Both the LXX and Syriac versions have adopt- ed this space sense in the passage. They render — " Who ascendeth upon the heaven of heavens from the JEast,''^ so as to correspond to the translation of v. 5, where, instead of our rendering, " who rideth on the heavens," or the more correct translation, " who rideth on the desert," they have, " who ascendeth on the West.^^ But the LXX and Syriac version of v. 33 will not suit the accompanying expression ^^ heaven ofheavens,^^ which must evidently refer to degree either of altitude or time. Should any feel a misgiving at such an expansion of these phrases, let it be borne in mind that this Psalm is distinctly quoted by the Apostle, Eph. iv, 10, as one of the Messianic prophecies, and, therefore, there must be a higher and holier sense to it. Let " rationalism," with all its learning, go to the winds ; we must hold to this, or give of His feet" — although in this place a different word is used. In its primary sense, as well as in its applications, it resembles very much an Arabic word habaon, signifying atoms, or the[fiue particles of dust that float in the air, and of which kind of " star dust" the Mohammedan Doctors say God made the world. The Hebrew term arrests our attention here, because it seems to give us the space aspect of God's power, or kingdom, in dis- tinction from the time and height aspect. So Gesenius on this word — De- tignat ccElum ad expansione ut DifiB spatia alia. 128 THE MESSIANIC PSALMS. up the wliole Scriptures ; and the more a man heartily studies them, the more he "will see that such a holding is not a mere blind faith of necessity, but one which com- mands (not asks in aid) the firmest assent of all that is highest in his spiritual perceptions. But " rationalism" is more consistent than that Biblical criticism among us which so bravely proves certain Psalms to be Messianic, and then is perfectly content ■with such a barren work, making no use of the position after all, seeing no more in the Scripture, sometimes even less, than the rationahst himself, and perhaps (after having thus saved its evan- gelical credit) showing its learning and its hardihood by going to an extreme of frigidity of which the more spirit- ual German mind would be ashamed. This sixty-eighth Psalm describes a triumphant pro- cession of the theocratic Israel, and a transfer of the ark into its Holy Place. But it also has reference to a higher Israel, and a mightier Conqueror, who has entered into the highest and holiest Heavens. " Wherefore he saith, He hath led captivity captive. He hath ascendeth up on high,/he modern scientific lecturer, or college orator, that this idea of universal law was never in the world until Newton saw an apple fall from a tree; but long ago Socrates spoke of it as an opinion held by the sages of old, and he might have said the men of old, that " har- mony and order (xo^fAioViira, law, or regular harmo- nious arrangement,) held together heaven and earth, and that for this very reason the ivliole was called kos- mos." It was a " geometrical equality or harmony," he says, indicating that it was a higher mathematical law which after-science might trace a few steps farther, but no science could ever hope to sum in all its glorious completeness. The idea of Socrates' ancient sages is no where more clear, to one who will look for it, than on the pages of the Old Testament- It is the tzjVSy-ph, the law of Oiam, and the pa,rticular manifestations of it, are the &Viy niph, or the v^ini t=^^u> mpn, the laws of the Heavens and the Earth, Jer. xxxiii, 25, Job xxxviii, 33. the " laws of the moon and the stars," Jer. xxxi, 35. It is the " loord or law of the Lord (Psalm cxix, 89) that is established in the Heavens" — In teternum Domine, verbum tuum permanet in coelo, in generatio- nem et generationem. Ordinatione tua perseverat dies ; rjuoniam omnia serviunt tibi. " All things stand accord- ing to thine ordinances." How much better and nobler is the mere recognition of such a law,'however taught or acquired, than the science which, in its extravagant boasting at having traced a few of its links, loses all the moral grandeur of the idea, in the petty, selfish, scientific interest. It may be thought by some that the author, led away by a favorite idea, is finding too much in the Scriptures 160 THE lecturers' TALK OF " PHYSICAL LAWS." that would seem to him to have a scientific or philosophic aspect. But this would be an altogether mistaken view of his aim and thought. There is no science in the Bible — God be praised for the fact. But there is that which is deeper than science, broader than science ; we mean in respect to nature and the world. There is that which is fundamental to all sound thinking, and which science, in its modern acceptation, instead of having dis- covered or made more clear, oftentimes confuses and obscures. It is so with these ideas of laio and nature. Men thought as distinctly about them, and as truly about them, with a limited, as they do now with a multiplied knowledge of physical facts ; and the reason is, that such thinking does not depend on amount of facts, or quantity of discovery great in one aspect yet ever most minute in another, but derives its strength, and its cer- tainty, from those broad and universal views that He upon the honest, intelligent face of nature, those views that require not so much the experimenting crucible, as the musing, meditative mind. Modern science would have us believe that these ideas are all her own ; that the terms belong to her vocabulary. To listen to the rigmarole about " physical laws" which so often furnishes the whole warp and woof of a scientific lecture, one might almost suppose that the idea, and all connected with it, had been before utterly unknown to the world, instead of being interwoven, as it really is, into all language, and all thinking that deserves the name. We mean a true idea of laiv, with its two inseparable thoughts — both of which some kinds of science have a tendency, cither atheistically or pantheistically, to obscure — the thought of a lawgiver who imposes the law, and of a true subject. HEBREWS BELIEVED IN A REAL NATURE. 161 or nature, made capable of obeying it. As well might the discovery of the mighty ocean be claimed for those, and by those, who had made a few shore soundings on the edge of its unfathomable depths. This " great and wide sea" of causahty had been gazed upon, and mused upon, by the human soul, just as effectually (as far as the higher ideas of philosophy and theology are concern- ed) before physical science, so called, raised its head, as since it has filled the age with its noisy claims. The assertion is made because truth demands and can sustam it ; even if the interest of sound thinking, and sound phi- losophising, were not both concerned (as they truly are) in the abatement of these one-sided, blinding pretensions. No man can carefully study the Bible without finding the fullest recognition of a nature, or order of tilings, universal and particular. Yet Deity is ever represented as working hy it, and through it, and over it. It is not the sentimental notion of " God in nature," the preten- tiously pious, yet pantheistic idea of the Power that Warms in the sun, i-cfreshea in tiie breeze, Glows in tlie stars, and blossoms in tlie trees. No, the Hebrews believed in a real nature that God had made to "go of itself," as He had the right and poiver to do. It was a real nature under the control of One who sat above it in the skies, and who made use, not alone of the matter he had originated, but of the laivs and forces he had created (as well as the matter) to accomplish his good pleasure in the world, and to bring to pass what he had eternally decreed should be done. They distinguished, however, between two modes of action in the divine government. They made a more practical and clear division than is conveyed by our terms 14* 162 " THE FINGER OF GOD." natural and supernatural, especially as now used in their clouded philosophic sense. It was more properly a dis- tinction of mediate and immediate. It was the mediate action employing the established ordinances of the world, or it was that direct immediate action which they called by the expressive term, " the finger of God." And this contented them. The careful student of the Bible can not fail to see, and to be struck with, the manner of the sacred writers in this respect. How boldly, and with how little fear of inconsistency, they set forth these two agencies, evidently regarding the one recognition as being as pious, and as honorable to Deity, as the other. Whether He employ " a strong east wind (Exod. xiv, 21,) to make the sea go back," sending his own divine agency into the linked causalities of nature without breaking one of them, or make the water gush forth from the arid rock in crushing defiance of all the laws of solids and fluids, it is still the same unmistakable divinity. These primitive men — though with a clear recognition of nature in its true idea — see no more danger to faith in the natural, or semi-natural, in the one case, than in the immediate supernatural of the other. They went farther than this. They recognized this divine agency as controlUng, not only nature, but something"else which God had also, in his might and sovereignty, made to " go of itself" within certain limits, and for certain pur- jioses which he meant to accomplish. They did not hesi- tate to recognize him* as interfering with the law and * This idea of a divine intervening causality directing, controlling, turn- ing round, events that depend on human volitions, is most significantly ex- pressed by a curious Hebrew word which sometimes occurs. They called it flSD, Sib-ha, a revolution, conversion, or turning of anything out of its rouvse, or, as we would idiomatically say, a bringing about. There is a " HARDENING PHARAOH'S HEART." 163 liberty of human wills, turning them this way and that as important agencies in the bringing about the issue of his sovereign counsels. This, also, was sometimes medi- ate and sometimes direct. He employs the ambition of Nebuchadnezzar for one end, the weak vanity of Heze- kiah for another. Whether it be a vindictive, or a disci- plinary purpose, to punish an individual or a nation, or to show a man " what was in his heart," still it is the divine agency, and distinctly recognized as such. There is, too, the same bold assertion of the fact when he acts directly on the conduct of human agents ; — as when, for example, he " hardens Pharoah's* heart that he might striking example, 1 Kings, xii, 15, where, of Relioboam's most impolitic answer to the people, it is said — " This was a sibba, or bringing about, from the Lord, that he might establish his word which he spake by Ahijah the Shilonite." The LXX call it a ^STadr^oCpij, or turning aside. Th? jirimary image of the verb, which is very commou, gives us the favorite ancient idea of a wheel, or wheels, (cyclical movements,) as denoting me- diate and circuitous in distinction from direct or straight causality, and yet without any breach of the laws of human thinking or human feeling. The vei"b is used in the same manner, 1 Sam. xxii, 22. Hence in the cognate Arabic, and modern Syriac, a noun of causality sababun — Res qua nliqnid cum allero conjungitur — vinculum affinitatis — and hence, as a conjunctive particle — causa, propter — denoting motives, reasons, as links in a spiritual chain or circuit of events. See also 2 Chron. x, 15. * The old Jewish writers had as tender a moral sense as we have ; but they never seem to shrink from such expressions and such an idea. And why should we ? The Hebrew pTh, the verb employed here, docs not mean creating evil where evil did not exist before. We stear clear of that inexplicable problem in this case. It does not mean that a tender con- science was indurated either directly or mediately, positively or per- niissively. It does not mean, that a good and pious nature was forced to evil, or that a good and holy will was turned into a bad will. Let any one examine carefully the Hebrew verb, and he will see, we venture to think, why the moral sense of the writers was not shocked, as ours should not be. The term has no moral or even spiritual meaning in the higher import of the word spiritual. It means, to strengthen, make firm, bind hard. The influence was on the sensitive or lower nature. God nerved this wicked coward do his own wicked will, and so carry out the righteous purposes 164 BOLD STYLE OP THE OLD TESTAMENT WRITERS. not let the people go." Whether he acts directly and positively on the heart of Pharaoh, which is the only sense the passage will bear, or employs the evil nature that is already in that vessel of dishonor, it is equally the Divine power acting according to the high and most righteous counsel of the Divine Will. But let us state the bearing of this upon the main ar- gument. We would say, then, that it is this distinct recognition of each, and yet this fearless mingling of the ideas of the natural and the supernatural in the divine action, that forms a peculiar feature of the Old Testa- ment, and renders easy of belief, and easy of interpreta- tion, the assertions which look like setting forth natural processes, growths, or generations, in the creative ac- count. The inspired writer, and his old readers, were not concerned lest it should seem to detract from the honor of Deity. They acknowledged the natural in cre- ation, as easily as they acknowledged the supernatural in their subsequent history. Whether our modern ten- dency to crowd all of the one kind into the early days, and to recognize as little as possible of it anywhere else, comes from a stronger faith, and a more reverent sense of Deity, may well be doubted. If, then, the natural is in the creative account, it may certainly have been discovered by some minds. If so, it should not be insulted as a pretense, even tliough brought out so late as the nineteenth century. But, in of a divine and holy will. He made liiiu stronf^, which he had as good a right to do as to keep him alive. He made Pharoah no worse, but gave this bad man courage (heart strength) to net out what was ui him. Some may stumble at this, but those who get their theology from the Bible must regard it as a divine prerogative, righteous in its exercise and glorious in its display. GROWTH IN CREATION. 165 fact, it ^vas discovered long ago. If there is no idea of the natural in the First of Genesis, it is no'W'here in the Bible, for there is employed there the same language of hirth, oi groioth, of succession, oi generation, in a word, of natio'e, that in other parts is applied to what can be taken in no other possible sense. It is not a new dis- covery. Old interpreters saw it, and saw it clearly. St. Augustine is explicit upon it, as we have shown. He calls the creative periods by this very name of na- tures, and founds his idea of the days on this very dis- tinction of the natural and supernatural. We might fill pages with decisive proof of the utter falsity as well as recklessness of the assertion. The idea of creative gen- eration is more prominent in the patristric writings, but it has ever been in the Church as an opinion that might be orthodoxly held. But let us look again at the spirit of this boast. The Scriptures have no meaning, no ascertainable meaning, at least, on this and kindred questions, until Geology brings her fossil-lighted lamp for their illumination. It is the spirit the writer is ever so full of, and which he can not disguise. And yet how odd it is that those very passages where a natural growth is most clearly set forth, if any language can set it forth, he wholly ignores, and not only so, but in his exuberant piety brands the inter- pretation given them (and that, too, without even an attempt at refuting such interpretation,) with the oppro- brious name of naturalism — that bugbear of " the reli- gious world," so well adapted to carry with it the narrow odium theologicum. Grand work this for our man of science ! It might not be so strange in the narrow polem- ical theologue, but science boasts of its liberal spirit, its 166 THE NATURAL IN CREATION. Baconian progress ; it is ever talking of Galileo and free thought. It would be easy to show that, according to Professor Dana's easy rhetoric of " God in nature," which he has endeavored to employ against the author of the book, there could be really no essential distinction between the natural and the supernatural, or between creation and rest from creation, between origination and subsequent ongoing — but of that more fully elsewhere.* * A clerical critic in one of our religious newspapers, asks with great simplicity, and yet with an apparent feeling that the question is unanswer- able — "If Moses meant growths, births, natures, gradual processions, &c , why did he not call them so ?" This is the substance of the question, al- though we do not give the exact words. Whj-, — we would say to our clerical friend (for he professes to be a warm friend, and we do not doubt his sincerity,) Moses does call thera so — exactly so. Root meanings of words must have had some force in the early day, if they ever had force at all; and the primary ideas of the Hebrew words Moses employs are just the ones involved in this question of yours. Study carefully your Hebrew Bible, and you can not fail to see it. " Let the earth bring forth, and the earth brought forth." They are the same words that are applied to vege- table and animal parturition elsewhere. In their radical meanings they imply some kind of birth and natural growth, as much as the language used Gen. iii, 18,— "Thorns and thistles shall it bring farth unto thee." In this post-creative act, also, was there something miraculous; the earth would not have fulfilled the curse and brought forth the thorns and thistles (there mentioned) of her own unvisitcd energy, or by the old nature (then old, we mean, but once new,) which she had received on the third day of creation. But though miraculous, it was evidently connected with a natui-e still — a process of birth and growth divinely and miraculously initiated ^ but a growth, a birth, a nature still, — for all these words and ideas, as we have elsewhere most abundantly shown, are radically the same. " If Moses meant births, growths, natures, why did he not call them so ?'' He has called them so, we say again to our anxious friend. That is the very word and idea, neither more nor less. " These are the fv/cdoth," he says, " the Generations, ysvetfeig of the Heavens and the Earth," Gen. ii, 4. Examine your Lexicon in respect to the meaning of the verb from which this noun comes. What is better, take your Hebrew Concordance, and trace it in all its applications, and see if you can discover any radical dif- ference between it and the Greek yi'vvojxai, ysvvoiu, (with other words of the same family,) and the Latin nascor, nafus natura. "Why should GOD IN NATURE. 167 We allude to it here to show how inconsistently science may sometimes talk, especially when it turns pious and forgets itself. " Let the earth bring forth," — " Let the waters be gathered together, and let the dry land appear" — these passages are interpreted in the book, (whether we be wise above what is written ?" We would retort the language cl our friendly interrogator. But the word is not now so taken by readers in general, it may be said. Goicrations, as there used, may be held per- haps to be an accommodation, a figure of speech, a comparison, or it may be explained in some other unmeaning way. The same method, too, may be employed to take all significance out of the language of Job and the Psalmist, especially where the earth is said "to be brought forth" and the " mountains iu be borit," — in which expression the root of this very noun toledoth is thus used for the generations, births, natures of the creative periods. But "why should we be wise above what is written,'' we say again, or put our own faded abstractions, our own lifeless metaphysics, on these fresh Mosaic words, and then cry out metaphysics against the man who attemj/Cs to restore them. It dees not at all follow because we now, in the old age and dotage as it were of language, use nature and similar words for anything and everything, that therefore Moses employed toledoth in the same loose way, or meant to depart (least of all in this creative ac- count) from its clear radical sense of one thing, or one state of things, suc- cessively born, or generated out of another. And yet Moses in his simpli- city, aud those who thus faithfully interpret his language, may have had as high and as pious an idea of the divine power, the divine miraculous power, originating a nature, conti'olling a nature, working in, upon, or through a nature previously made, as those over-wise and over-righteous critics who think that the honor of the Bible and of the author of the Bible is tarnished by the use of any such phraseology. Those who woald well take exceptions here, ought carefully to inform themselves in respect to the difference between the ancient and modem modes of thinking. Even down as late as the times of the Christian Fathers, there is a style of language which sounds strange to many. It will not do to call Augustine a heretic, and yet he sets forth the creative successions by this very word nalurcE. From our self sufficient modem stand-point, we may call it a figure of speech, or skip it easily over in any way as of no theological or exegetical importance ; but he used it strictly as a translation, and true representative, of the Greek ySvjO'Si?, even as the Greek means neither more nor less than the Hebrew ninVlti. Had our translators instead of it used births or natures, they would have expressed radically no other idea. 168 SCIENCE ALARMED AT HERESY. correctly or not,) as denoting prolonged processes, and successions, to which we can give no other name than nature, or growth, or the hirtli, or being born of one thing or one state from another. It is, however, with the most distinct recognition, derived not from any outside philos- ophising, but from the direct Scripture testimony, that each of these growths, or natures, was commenced by the supernatural going forth of the Divine Word and Spirit, with a new command, and a new energy. This is the (pijC/J which our orthodox Professor regards as so dan- gerous. He brands it as naturalism. His science, liberal as it would be thought to be, is excessively alarmed at the heresy, and hence he deems it his pain- ful duty to Avarn the good people who may not have the science and experience of the critic in such matters, against the dangerous infidel tendency of the work. This might seem truly ludicrous to those who well under- stand the theological latitude both of the critic and the Review through which he gives the alarm ; but we would refer to it here as a beautiful specimen of consistency. This man who is so disturbed for the cause of orthodoxy, when one finds a (puVi?, or nature, in the Bible, actually claims for Geology the honor of having been the first to discover this same (puC'c in the rocks, or as he calls it, ♦' the natural in creation" ! It can only be explained on the ground that when a writer has no other or higher motive than to assail a fancied adversary, he must forget himself. Consistency becomes, in that case, a lower virtue which he cannot be expected to preserve. What does he mean by " the natural in creation?" With truly intelligent minds this whole matter of natural- ism may be brought to a short and decided issue. What WHAT IS MEANT BY THE NATURAL IN CREATION ? 169 does he mean by "the natural in creation," and his empty boast of its having been first discovered by Geo- logy ? Is it a nature that had no beginning — a nature unoriginated, unmade, uncontrolled, uninterrupted, un- visiced ? That were indeed an atheism at which Plato would have shuddered — an atheism blacker than blackest midnight. Is it, on the other hand, a nature which God created, which He made to do just what He had eternally foreordained should be done, to which he gave laws that should bring out in chronolo- gical order his own everlasting ideas? Is it a nature that had its birth in a Divine Word, that is ever and anon quickened by a new Divine Life, that both in its general and its particular ongoings, is visited by repeat- ed, oft-repeated, Divine interpositions ? Is it such a na- ture as this he means ? Then the writer is defied to find language in which it can be more clearly set forth than it IS in the book he has, either so ignorantly or so per- versely, misrepresented ? It is not enough, however, for him to brand as infidel, when brought out as an interpretation of the Bible, that which is most scientific and most pious when found written in the rocks. The religion of Geology demands a further concession, and still higher honor, and so the Professor ventures upon another assertion. Not only has " Geo- logy first discovered the natural in creation," but, " with rare exceptions, she has ever admitted the supernatural." This we can not help regarding as more perilous ground than the other, although, perhaps, not so insulting to the Scriptures. If he means by the supernatural some far off First Cause brought in as a logical necessity, or some 170 THE SUPERNATURAL IN CREATION. prime mover, or something like a first originating power ■without which we can not reason at all about creation, the proposition is hardly worth any serious notice. Au- guste Comte, much as he has been assailed bj inferior men who are no better behevers than himself — Auguste Comte would admit that. The author of The Vestiges would admit all that. In such a sense, and in some still nearer senses, he willingly concedes the supernatural. But if, taliing it in its true, and higher, and more special sense, the reviewer means that leading geological minds have been fond of the idea of the supernatural, that they have not preferred to explain everything by uninterrupted natural causality, and that the leading authority among them does not regard this natural caus- ation, as, of itself, sufficient to explain all the phenomena that science now discovers in the rocks and formations, — if he means this, he could not well have made a state- ment more at war with known and indisputable facts. There are men now of highest name in the science who would laugh at him for the assertion, if so made, and so understood in the only sense that gives it any importance, especially any importance in the present argument. But to examine the position more upon its essential merits. By its own Baconian boasting, then, science (we mean as the naturalist employs the term) can never really reach the supernatural. Its laws, of which it talks so much, are, and can be, only generalizations of facts or appearances. Repeated, or usually recurring facts, make settled laws — that is, settled in science, not in re. Unusual facts or single appearances can only suggest some law of less frequent occurrence, or less understood ; and so they all may be natural ; the con- HIDDEN WHEELS AND SPRINGS. 171 trary supposition -would be unscientific, and even irra- tional, as far as science is concerned, or in the absence of any higher light. All may be nature, an eternal causality, as far as she knows or ever can know. She goes by observation and experience, — this is her boast, — and there can be no scientific proof, or even ground of belief, that any fact or appearance is isolated, or stands out single, and unconnected with the combined causalities of the universe ; — there can be no scientific admission of this except from the experience of an eter- nity. Revelation and all a priori ideas once shut out, there is no evidencce short of this she can consistently admit. There may be hidden springs touched once in an immensely long time. She has no right to deny it. Nay, more, she is bound to assume it, as long as she re- mains truly upon her own ground. The more usual mani- festations of forces she finds in the coils of the seemingly eternal spring she is seeking to unwind ; she has no right, therefore, to say, and, when not " driven" by something from without her field, she never does say, that the less usual appearances, even the very rare appearances, are not equally so contained in its everlasting folds. Pro- fessor Dana himself, unphilosophical and even unscien- tific as he is, betrays a consciousness of this, although his eagerness to magnify Geology prevents its standing out objectively and distinctively before him. ^^ Admits the supernatural" ! he says. But what language is this for science ? It is worse than the Professor's ^'■physical natm-e'' ; that was simply an absurd tautology ; this is absurdity itself. Science does not " admif^; she proves — such is her claim. She discovers ; sometimes she graciously accejijts — as Professor Dana accepts the Mo- 172 WHAT SCIENCE SEES, AND HOW SHE SEES IT. saic account — but admitting looks like a force of some kind, an influence from without. It suggests the thought of a reluctation ; — it has something of the appearance of being " driven" — to use again the word that has aroused so much indignation — or at least of " floating" in some boat carried down the current of certain opin- ions, higher or lower, true or false, which are not science, nor any eSect of science, but belong to another sphere. Let everything keep its own place. We are not re- proaching science, but exposing the false claims of some scientific men. Science can not be expected to see what she has no eyes to see. She makes good use of her na- tural vision, short sighted as it is, when she confines it to her own field. She sees appearances, facts, events ; she observes how they come and go, and deduces laws which are but the summings, — nothing more, — of these her observations. Where the facts are numerous, she has a very strong probability, such as the inhabitants of Plato's cave might have deduced respecting the laws of the shadows that were ever flitting across the rear wall of their prison. Where the facts are few, she must do the best she can, and make a theory ; where she has but one, she must guess and wait for more, or consult some higher authority of philosophy or revelation in respect to it ; but, as far as she is concerned, and in her own pro- vince of observation and induction, she must ever, as we have said, assume that there is, somehow and somewhere, a law, a natural law, for every phenomenon, and so she can not get out of nature, — she can not look out of na- ture — she can not find the supernatural. But science, we repeat, is not to blame for this. We can not expect to see these things through her lens, any more than we NATURAL SCIENCE A SEEKER OF NATURAL LAW. 173 could rationally hope to discover spirits in the crucible, or see angels through the telescope. Natural science, then, it can not be too firmly main- tained, both for the cause of science as well as for that of all sound thinking, is a seeker of law, of natural law, in her own sense of the term, as a generalizing of appear- ances ever assumed to have come from one universal force. Atheism can not exclude from her brotherhood. Piety can give no title to admission. Auguste Comte would have a fair right to a seat in any convention. A man may deny the existence of God, and be just as sci- entific as the most devout Professor. Experience has shown this by most abundant evidence, if there were not the strongest a priori proof of the fact in the very laws of ideas. Science, natural science, is a hunter of natural causalities ; that is her business, and she can never legitimately find anything else. If she does so, it is out of her line ; she " admits" it from some influence more or less distinctly felt, of some higher authority. She " ac- cepts" it, more or less willingly, but can never be said to discover it, without violating, or, at least, ignoring for the time, her o^vn essential law. We want no better proof of this than Professor Dana's own article. Will he pretend that he has not been influenced by the sound theology of New-Haven, and the old standard ortho- doxy of Andover ; or, in other words, that the " cur- rents" setting round these venerable institutions have not " driven" his own geological boat in a pious direc- tion, it might not, perhaps, have taken in Germany or France ? Now we have no fear that the drift of these remarks can be mistaken. It is not denied that scientific men 15* 174 FAITH A SUPERNATURAL STATE OF MIND. ]iave maintained the supernatural truly, religiously, bibli- cally, in its real and divine sense. There have been those who were scientific men, and, at the same time, something more, and better. There have been many such, we rejoice to say it, who have found the superna- tural, and recognized it among their scientific discove- ries, but not from them. There was something better, higher, yea, stronger than science, that led them to it. It was a mental temperament, original in some respects, but more truly produced by revelation either in its direct or social influence. It was devout religious feeling which never would have been developed, to say the least, with- out revelation in some form. That of which we speak is of itself a supernatural state of mind, acting as well as acted upon, and leading men to believe truly in such a reve- lation as the great first supernatural fact of facts, the solid ground of credence in all other supernatural. The evidence of this suggests itself in a supposition which ^omes home to every mind. Let revelation die out of the souls of men (if it ever can die out,) and how long would science find the supernatural ? In certain regions the old •habit of believing might retain some of its power for a generation perhaps ; in others, we may say, the experi- ment has, to some extent, been already tried. There are parts of the world, there are schools of thinking, where faith in any objective or supernatural revelation has in the main already died out. They are able schools, too, most scientific thinkers, as good thinkers as can be found among us ; but where do they find the superna- tural ? As far as science is concerned, or their rank in •science, these foreign free-thinking naturalists ought to be, at least, as pious as Professor Silliman or Professor RESERVE LAWS OF NATURE. 175 Dana. But " faith comes from hearing," the hearing both of the ear and the heart. " Bj faith we understand that the worlds were built by the Word of God ;" by faith we find the true supernatural, — by faith, itself a supernatural state of soul as well as a supernatural gift. Even the false or superstitious behef in the supernatural came originally from the same divine source. It is an echo, broken, indeed, into wild and wizard sounds, yet still an echo from the earliest revelations made to the human race. Most true it is, therefore, that science, natural science, proceeding on its own fundamental prin- ciples, can never get out of nature, unless " driven" by some power lying fairly beyond its own domain. We dwell on this because the position is a cardinal one, and it is of the utmost importance to keep separate the bounds of ideas that are so absurdly jumbled to- gether. We should closely distinguish between what may be found by some scientific men, according to the latitude in which they live, or the outside theological currents in which their " boat is floating," and that which is found by science per se. Prof. Dana should be care- ful here. With all his fine talk about " God in nature," and " laws and types," he may, if he lets go revelation as the only revealer of the supernatural — itself a super- natural work — or treats it as a secondary authority, have a development theory before he is aware of it. That is, for all he knows, or for all his science can affirm or deny, there may be reserve laws of nature, which, in this vast machinery of law and types, may be represented by little cogs or springs going round and round unseen by the sharpest science, b^ause they are touched, per- haps, in the revolution of some greater wheels, only once 176 ALL GENERATION MYSTERIOrS. in ten thousand or ten million years, but which, never- theless, when the clock strikes the true time of the mag- nus annus, may bring out species from species just as certainly as the ordinary wheels that go round visibly in our times, or the less ordinary whose movements we can trace, bring out individuals from individuals ; — there be- ing no more, or, we may rather say, no less a priori mystery in the one form of generation than in the other. " Knowest thou the way of the spirit, or how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child ?" No- thing can be more absurd than the claim that any mere science can disprove the fact of such a more interior law in nature, or of such a rarer and more occult form of generation. But do you believe it ? it may be retorted on the author. Alas, we have little or no belief about it, unless as we can get some glimpse of evidence from a divine revelation. " We are but of yesterday and know nothing." Individuals, species, and all, came from the creating will and power of God. That is quite clear from the Scriptures. There is also pretty fair evidence, if we can interpret language at all, that this creation of vegetables, and of the lower animals at least, was some how connected with a new word or command, and a new power given to the then nature, or the earth. But which law of generation God saw fit in the first place to create, (for in spite of Mr. Lord and Prof. Dana, we must still continue to regard the creation of laws, principles, and ideas, as sound common sense as well as sound metaphy- sics,) or whether he created many such laws acting suc- cessively or concurrently, there are the scantiest means of knowing from revelation, and none at all from science. God made the plants and lower animals by some created TWO IDEAS OF DEVELOPMENT. 177 law, or laws, of generation, connected originally with the earth. This is all we truly know. Any theory of generation that is consistent with this, or does not con- tradict this, a man may orthodoxly and Biblically hold. We care nothing about " The Vestiges of Creation," or its degree of piety. It is the famous book, we know, of which some clergymen are so afraid — a fear that does not argue much for their firm belief in the Scriptures — and on which certain scientific men of a certain calibre, and placed in positions peculiarly favorable to a kind of orthodoxy, are ever and anon trying their steel. It teaches development, they say, and that is impious. But what do they know about it ? If the author of that book means an eternal development which God did not in time originate, and from time to time control, then we refute him very easily — not from science, but from Scripture. Goliah as he is, or is said to be, with that shepherd's sling even a Sabbath-school child can over- throw him. But if it be development without this impious, unscriptural idea, — if it be development as a more remote and interior form of generation simply, then his theory, as a theory, is as good as theirs, and they cannot refute him from any science built on present observation. Their mode of attempting it is certainly very curious. These hidden wheels, or cogs, or springs, of development have not acted, or even been visible during their inch of time and space, and therefore, say they, there are no such wheels. God could not make them ; for such a creation of laws and principles is all Platonic nonsense. Creation, they hold, is ever of hard matter made right out and out, — of matter in some way, hard or soft, of a certain density, of a certain shape, of a certain extent, and in a certain 178 THE REAL BEING — MATTER THE SHADOW. place. In other words, it is a creation of death before life, inert mass before organizing law, eidolon before idea^ effect before cause, or shadow before substance ; — unless our consistent nominalists should say, as they doubtless would, that hard matter is the real being (to ovtw? ov) next in birth to deity, whilst life, and law, and idea, have but dependent, shadowy, and unreal existence.* But there are no such wheels. Of that they are certain, for the best of all reasons — they have never seen them. What is more, they have never seen, they say, a trace or vestige of them — the reason of which we may give in another chapter. They go wholly by experience and induction. The clock has not struck in their day — their minute we might rather say — nor for many a day before them ; in other words, they know no other nature, and therefore, there is no other nature — never has been, never can be.f And so they claim the merit of having '^ Should any be disposed to come half way, and say that laws and prin- ciples are in their being and origin independent realities, but have not ex- istence in time before the material things or movements, manifest or con- cealed, of which they are the organic laws or principles, — it would be suf- ficient for our argument. They are before the matter, then, in the order of being, if not of time. They are independent existences that do not groiv out of the matter, but come into it from some other source, or are put into it by a higher Power who made them as really as he made the matter, — and made them, too, of immensely greater variety and higher workman- ship. This is sufficient. In this sense they are creations, true independent creations, of a higher order than the matter, and from which (as we go far- ther and say) the matter derives, if not its substance as matter, yet that organization which makes each material thing that is, what it is. t Had our present olam, or the vhole day of the race been a single revo- lution of the earth upon its axis (a supposition neither incredible nor absurd, since the race might have been made so as to live as much in such a period as in the one allotted,) then these immutable laws of science would, on such a view, have been altogether different. The natural, or what is the natural now, would become the supernatural, because the scientific men of such an age had seen nothing like it. The generation of a tree, or its revival SCIENTIFIC ORTHODOXY DUE TO THE CHURCH. 179 slain The Vestiges of Creation, when, in fact, it is their cowardice, or their prudence, that stops short of conclu- sions following plausibly from their boasted premises, and which that writer has had the boldness to carry out. Their " floating boat" is driven timidly in by currents which his stronger oar enables him to stem. Their ortho- doxy here is not owing to any science so much as to other influences, for which, if they have any real piety, they should thank God and the Church. It is the Bible-nur- tured and Church-nurtured belief in a supernatural reve- lation that has made them find the supernatural where the author of The Vestiges has not discovered it, and where their Baconian induction never would have discov- ered it, never could have discovered it, whilst remaining true to its own boasted fundamental law of laws. The Professors of this pious naturalism wofully deceive them- selves when they thus attempt to patronize the Scriptures, and give them the benefit of their discoveries. It may be said, too, that they fight The Vestiges of Creation in very much the same feehng that leads men in the Church, whose orthodoxy is but a shell, and whose position, there- fore, lies nearest to the infidel camp, to be ever writing books on the evidences of Christianity, and assailing the infidels. These fight vahantly against Hobbes and Paine ; they are ever running a tilt against Hume and Voltaire ; when the earnest beHever looks upon Hobbes, and Paine, and Hume, as being actually of great service to the Church, by showing men — at least all thinking men — •what they must come to if they will not docilely and after a season of torpor, or a new tree springing out, either like or unlike the old, would be as incredible ai anything we now denounce under the name of development. 180 POWER OF " THE VESTIGES" — WHY IT LIVES. reverently, and most thankfully receive the Scriptures. And so they slay The Vestiges, these valiant men ! — yea, thrice do they shay the slain, and yet the ghost will not be laid. The book still lives and has a deep hold upon the common mind. The reason is, that whatever may be its errors, it presents that thought which — reve- lation gone, or once supposed to be gone, — presses so heavily upon the soul. It is the thought to which every true thinking man feels he must come if he has to give up the Bible. He may dread it as a sane mind sometimes dreads the horrors of apprehended insanity, but he knows of no true security against it unless it be a voice from heaven believed through a supernatural faith whose essence, incipiency, and power, is heaven's own gift readily and lovingly bestowed upon all devout and docile minds. It is the thought so feared by some, so loved by others, because it is so natural, — the thought that perhaps all is natnre, and nature all, — eternal law, eternal nature — unmodified by anything that has ever come into it from any higher world of being. When faith in revelation once wholly departs from an age, or a country, or an individual, there will not long remain any belief in the supernatural. Geology can not cure this, even if it does not aid it. Science can not help the matter. Its times are too short. Long as they may seem, as compared with shorter cycles, yet when reck- oned on the greater scale they too vanish like passing shadows. On this illimitable field of an ever outstretch- ing eternity, or olam of olams, the geological epochs dis- appear like the solar days of the literalist. A stand point may be assumed from which the difiercnce between them becomes too small for metaphor. The aeonic and THE GREATER DURATIONS. 181 the solar times come to seem alike literal, alike figura- tive, alike evanescent, when regarded as measures of the still greater cycles in the kingdom of all eternities. Alas, we are lost ! In such a survey of an immeasurable universe of space and time, we can have no assurance, no hope, except in a voice from the highest heavens, a voice of God coming very nigh unto us, speaking by di- rect communication of mind to mind, whether primarily or through mediate minds, instead of the ever uncertain vestiges of nature, or the illegible book of the rocks which some are so fond of placing in rhetorical comparison with Heaven's written volume. But this whole question of the greater durations, lies away beyond the fair field of scientific induction. The scientific naturalist examines present appearances. He examines them very carefully. This, he says, was be- fore that. He is pretty safe in saying, that if there has been no disturbance — a caveat he can never wisely ne- glect — the lower deposit, or the lower fossil, most pro- bably went to its rest before the upper. When he would assign periods, however, he measures the times of nature then by its movements noiv. But this is all a guess. He can never get an expression, or a formula, for a time, except through a space, or effects appearing in such space ; but what was once the rate of that efficiency he can not know. There is no hypothesis that he can prove, none that he can render probable. The time pen- dulum, the comparative time pendulum (for all time mea- sured by space is thus comparative,) varies in its mea- suring movements so that the variation is perceptible even on the narrow field of this earth ; it changes with the latitude ; the sun minute and the same pendulum 16 182 THE SURE WORD OF THE LORD. minute do not always and everywhere agree. Even the sun minute is shown by certain discoveries in astronomy to be not a constant quantity. Our years vary, and with them all subordinate degrees of all subordinate arcs. Now, if this be true, as we may say, right around us, in phenomena that come home to the observations of our own fleeting sense, or our own fleeting historical reminis- cences, Avhat calculus of variations shall be applied to time and causal succession (the only real measurement of time) in those far ofi" regions of space, and those im- measurable remotenesses of eternity, where the imagina- tion utterly faints, and even reason reels and staggers Hke the inebriate in his delirium. Even the Koran here is better for us, has more light for us, than science. " We flee for refuge to the King of the Worlds, the Lord of the day-break." But we have something better than either. It is the sure Word of the Lord, revealing the true supernatural, revealing the creative process, whether it be of all worlds, or of our own Avorld, whether of all times, or of our own olam, whether of the great cosmical principium, or any nearer beginning on our own earth — revealing just what God deems best for us to know of earthly or mundane origin, — above all reveahng Himself, as having his abode in " Light unapproachable and full of glory," and yet "his peoples' dwelling place in all generations." It is this Word of the Lord, faithfully interpreted, heartily believed, and placed in its proper rank, before all science, and all philosophy — it is this, and this alone, that will efiectually slay " The Vestiges," and all other forms of naturaUsm that come, whether in- nocently or not, from the modern extravagant boasting, and extravagant estimation of physical science. For it THE REAL NATURALISM. 183 is this spirit, more than any particular difficulties now and then raised by seience, that is to be dreaded. It is this putting nature and the Bible on a seeming par ; a practice of which some are so fond, though all the real deference is in reality paid to science in every case of seeming collision. It is this patronizing parallel, now so commonly run between the " two books," as they are styled, " the book of Nature and the book of Revela- tion," and of which we have such a fine specimen at the close of Professor Dana's article. These are the things most hostile to the Bible, most injurious to a true and hearty faith. This is the real naturalism. 184 ORIGIN UNKNOWN EXCEPT FROM REVELATION. CHAPTER VII. WE KNOW NOTHING OF ORIGIN EXCEPT FROM A DIVINE REVELATION. The Vestiges of Creation — Who Killed the 3fonster ? — Indi- vidual Generation as Mysterious as the Generic — Revela- tion itself the Highest Supernatural — Why should toe he afraid of the Natural in Creation ? — Animalcidce — Agas- siz's Doctrine of Man — The Primus Homo — Science Oc- cupied with what is, and how it is — The Cosmical Move- ment — Science does not take it iiito Account — Hypotheti- cal Discussion between the Vestigian and the Anti-vesti- gian — Nature^s Gestation long, her Births sudden and complete — Doctrine of Types — No Meaning in the Lan- guage as used by some Scientific Men — The Atheism of " The Vestiges, ^^ in what it truly consists. We KNOW NOTHING OF ORIGIN EXCEPT FROM A DIVINE REVELATION. This we would take as the motto, not only of the present chapter, but of all that we have written on this and kindred subjects. God may make things directly, or he may make natures, laws, etc., through which things and phenomena are produced, or he may combine both methods, and work by them concurrently or successively. We know here only as he has told us. In pursuing this theme, the reader will pardon us for dwelling a little longer on this famous book entitled The Vestiges of Creation. The bugbear that has been made WHO KILLED THE VESTIGES ? 185 ofit in the religious world, the dishonor which the alarm about It has east upon our faith in the Bible, the unfair and disreputable efforts to excite odium against certain opinions hj connecting them with this unpopular name, a 1 demand some further consideration of the grounds on which 1 IS assailed, and especially of the manner in which others are assailed under cover of a protest against It Aside from its fairer and more effective theolo<^ical opponents, certain men of science* have felt it their Inte- rest to keep up a batrachian clamor about the honor of slajing the monster. Who killed the Vestiges ? may come, in time, to excite as much interest as the famou. •luestion of the nursery book with which we are all famil- iar. The author, not being a man of science, can not engage scientifically in this melee; but having some general information on such subjects, and a little reading m the Scriptures, he would respectfully venture the opin- ion, as one among many others, that this terrible book must be overthrown by the Scriptures, or not at all. If the Bible does not refute it, or furnish any means of re- futing It, then its doctrines should not be the cause of any great alarm. They become in that case indifferent to a true faith, whatever aspect they may assume. Now ^iside from what a supernatural revelation may affirm of hese primoi-dial matters, all that we can say with any tolerable safety is, that a certain theory of generation may be true, or it may not be true ; or it may be partly wrUilil o?R '? Tr,,''""" '"'''' ''^ '*^""^ "'" "'^ '"Sl^-^^' '"e^Peot of the vn .ng, of Hugh M.ller. His attack upon the Vestiges w.s the most ef 'ect:ve, as combining more of philosophy and theolo^v than c n be fo„fd u ny othe. scentific argument. Although we do nil whollj gree wi h ■n rSLj^rr^ ''' '' --'- -''''' ^^"- ^-- ^-^ ^e^as Z 16* 186 SCIENCE CAN NOT FIND OKIGIN. true and partly false ; or the -whole region of speculation may be regarded as a land of shadows of which we know less than we know of the constitution of the monstrous shapes that go under the name of nebulre in some late maps of the astronomical heavens. In other words, sci- ence can no more disprove than she can prove any such theory of origin. Both sides of such questions, we ven- ture timidly to think, lie out of her clear domain of ob- served facts and laws generalized therefrom. To speak with any certainty here, as science, she must have had an immensely greater space for her observations, and an immensely greater time for her inductive experience ; unless she insists upon intuitions, or something like a priori ideas which must not be contradicted ; and then she is clearly out of her record. There are some such a priori ideas, or laws of thinking, that have a bearing upon these questions, but science has nothing to do with them ; she does not acknowledge them ; she regards them as sha- dowy and unreal as compared with her own " exactness." >So that we may safely say, that the author of The Ves- tiges has a science as good as that of Professor Dana, and we think the theology of the book will also present a fair comparison.* The superiority, however, in this latter aspect may be freely given to the Yale College authority, if he will only frankly admit that his pious notions may have had their birth in his Scriptural education, rather than in his geological and conchological researches. * It is a number of years since we read tins book. Tlie impression left iipon the mind was not favorable to its piety. It appeared to us decidedly anti-biblical in its tone and spirit. Its style, both of thought and expres- t^ion, is very different from that of the Old Testament. It does not talk like Moses. If we may judge, however, from its very confident manner, eo much resembling that of certain other productions of a similar Baconian peaus, it must certainly be considered a work of respectable science. FAITH NOT AFRAID OF NATUIIALISM. 187 But to keep to the issue we have presented. If the Scriptures teach anything of origin, that is conclusive for the believer. He sits clown to the study of them, know- ing nothing as far as the facts to be revealed are con- cerned, and prepared to receive whatever they may teach, — even should it be found that they reveal some- thing like a development doctrine in some form, or after some of the varied uses of that wide and much abused word. For development is simply the outgoing of one existence, whether individual or generic, from another existence in which the first is supposed to be contained or wrapped up. Such a development may be single and almost immediate, or it may be varied and multifold. It may have one, or more, or many supernatural begin- nings, with ongoings after each determined by laws which God has made to do that very thing just lioiv, and H^lien, and where he has foreordained it should be done. Thus should the Scriptures say, " Let the earth bring forth," " Let the waters bring forth," he will not be frightened by it, or set himself to work to devise some way in which he may consult the honor of the Scriptures by relieving them of this odious appearance of natural- ism. He will not attempt to be wise above what is written, if he can only fairly get its meaning. He will frankly admit the fallibility of his own particular inter- pretations ; but the principle he will never surrender — the principle that we know nothing on these subjects ex- cept what we may get from the divine teachings, given to us in such way, and after such measure, as the divine wisdom may prescribe. Even should the Scriptures .seem to teach a growth, a nature, or what some would call a development in its narrower or wider senses, the 188 REVELATION ITSELF THE GREAT SUPERNATURAL. reception of it is still as much a matter of faith as though it had disclosed an instantaneous transition from not-being to perfect or finished being, or a succession yet consum- mated in the twinkling of an eye, or in twentj-four se- conds, or twenty-four hours, or six indefinite periods, — or had revealed to him any other method in this unknown and unknowable region. It satisfies the true believer either way. The mere fact of a revelation from God of what is otherwise inscrutably hidden, is the great super- natural for him, the w^arrant for believing in all other supernatural. Has a voice truly come to him from the All-knowing ? Then its revelations as to the origin of lower things will have for his faith enough of other su- pernatural, whether that supernatural is presented in the origination of the general order, or orders, of vegetable and lower animal life, with the creation, at the same time, of laws and types for their development, — or is taught as coming more specially in at the generic birth, or spe- cific making, as some would say, of every species of ani- mation hy itself, or of each individual progenitor of such species by itself, from the " great whales" (which the Bible seems to speak of as a special formation) down to the lowest and most invisible forms of the million-formed animalculse that have their habitation among the closest particles of other matter animate and inanimate, or that are found in every globule of living blood, and in every drop of stagnant water. Let him have for it something which he can trust as a " thus saith the Lord" — some word from the supernatural sphere itself — speaking not to his science but to his faith, and he will believe the natural, or the supernatural, without confounding either, and whether the latter be rare or frequent, — revealed WHEKE SCRIPTURE SAYS LITTLE WE KNOW LITTLE. 189 only as acting in the most general beginnings of life, or, as the Scriptures would seem to intimate, and science would perhaps deny, carried clear through in some cases, so as to be present in some part of the quickening process of every individual, at least every individual human generation. What, then, has Scripture revealed in respect to the origin of the earth, — the origin of things that grow upon it — the origin of man ? Our object here is not so much to answer these questions, as to state certain prin- ciples in relation to them. If the Bible has something to say on these matters, let us hear it and thankfully re- ceive it. We shall never get any reliable information from any other quarter. If Scripture says little here, we know little ; where it says nothing, we know nothing. If its language is general, our knowledge is general ; if it gives us but an outline, we can be only certain of the outline facts, although it will be no irreverence, we think, to suppose a filling up, if we are careful to keep out eve- rything that may be inconsistent, or may seem inconsis- tent, with such outline view. It may be, and it is, ra- tional to think, that the account is limited to an outline view because we could not comprehend the more detailed processes, or their ineffable rationale, as given, or at- tetopted to be given, in any human language. There are such ineffable processes in the generations that are constantly taking place around us, even in this settled condition of things ; how much more full of them may have been the primordla reriwif There is something which all the science on earth can not explain, and never will explain, in the life germination of every garden seed ; there is an every day mystery, ! how much higher and 190 MYSTERIES IN ORDINARY CAUSATION. more hidden still ! in the wondrous transmission of the human vitality, even considered in its lowest sensitive form, and aside from the rational and divine element in our being ! If there are such inscrutable hiding places, impenetrable chasms, we may say, in the Hnks of this ordinary causation as it is passing continually under the eye of our sharpest science, what an abyss of the unknown, and to us unknowable, must there be in the awful transi- tions from nonentity, — in the principiis pi'incipiorum, the transcending primeval births, the quicTcening, not of transmitted life, but of vitality itself. " Vestiges^^ of Creation ! Who shall dare talk of them, except as his way is illumined by the lamp of God's own Word ? In opposition to such a claim of science, how appropriately may we accommodate the grand Vulgate version of the Lxxviith Psalm ? — Tu es Deus qui facis mirabilia ; in aquis multis semitie tuge, et vestigia tua non cognoscen- tur. i3»*ii3 kV> 'T'lriiapy, " Thy foot8te2)S are unknown." Why should we be afraid of the idea of the natural in creation, or of the mediate as distinguished from the m- mediate. If God chooses to make a nature, give it its laws, ideas, potencies, times or periods, and then work by it, making other creations by this creation, what have we to say against it ? Whose pious science, or scientific piety, " shall touch His hand and say unto Him, what doest Thou ?" This hyper-religionism is not for the honor of the Scriptures. It is to save to science, or to certain aspects of science surrounded by religious influences, that honor through which it especially claims to patronize the Scriptures, and to assume a controlling voice in its interpretation. What does such science know of phys- ical life, or the conditions under which it may be devel' OMaiN OF MAN. 191 oped ? To deny that God could make a provision by which it could be brought out in some manner different from what we call ordinary generation, is to run into a Charybdis of materiahsm worse than the Scylla of which they affect so pious a horror. We are naturally in the same condition of utter igno- rance in respect to the origin of man. The Bible repre- sents it to have been specially supernatural — something not to be resolved into a wider life that had a beginning in some former supernatural, but, standing by itself, a special isolated act. The creation of other animate exis- tences is 'given generally and generically. It is repre- sented as somehow connected with nature or the earth. Nothing is said about the making of individuals, even in multitudes, much less of pairs, or any individual pro- genitors. There must have been some reason for the absence of this kind of language in the one case, while it is so marked and pecuUar in the other. The origin of man in two individuals — one of these created out of the other — is the great and striking feature of the account. And yet this sacred region, too, has this false science lately invaded, whilst, as has been already intimated, some of the religious world who are determined to have a harmony at any cost, are preparing, as usual, to strike in tune with whatever key-note she may sound, or to fol- low wherever she may make her move. But here, again, this kind of science has undertaken something clean out of her inductive province. She can only define a species in one of two ways — theoretically, by the philosophical idea (that is, borrowed from philosophy,) of generic unity of life, or practically, by the scientific law of a certain amount of resemblance held together by a greater or less 192 AGISSIZ'S DEFINITIO:!?. permanency. This latter, or the mode which though the more defective more truly belongs to science, has been chosen. As thus given, it is strictly a matter of quantity, and in this direction the science that employs it can never get out of the ever changing quantitative idea. But all such definitions grounded on quantity or degree, -whether of resemblance or anything else, must be ever inconstant, continually varied by new facts, — these facts, too, chang- ing even within the range of our very narrow known, but which, when compared with the unknown in time and space, become absolutely wortliless terms in the se- ries, too vanishing to enter into any trustworthy analysis. Thus an amount of resemblance that might make a pretty fair probability for one extent of time and space (suppos- ing that to be all that is, or is to be, aflfected by it) could afford no ground for a classification demanded for another. The application of the rule to a short historic term might make many separate varieties of man, — a vastly longer time might shut up, not only man, but all the lower ani- mals with him, into one universal brotherhood. Mr. Agassiz, for example, defines as difference of species, all differences that were distinctly such when known history commences. Put back this date of history, or put it for- ward, and the definition is good for nothing. If science defines a species by the other mode of a supposed once existing actual unity of life, from which the whole spe- cies has diverged, that will do ; but in the case of the human race, such unity, or want of unity, is a fact neces- sarily transcending human history, and only capable of being made known to us, or disproved to us, by a super- natural revelation. To find this historical point of unity, we must take the Bible account, or step back to some DIGNIir NOT DEPENDENT ON MODE OF ORIGIN. 193 antiquity that may furnish the time necessary for such a back convergency of varieties into one. But in doing this we have no guide in science. The amount of it all, then, is this — of the origin of our planet, of the origin of life upon it, and of the origin of mem, ive must have a revelation from the Creator himself, or remain in im- penetrable ignorance. In respect to these matters, therefore, our only busi- ness is to study that revelation. If what it reveals is scanty, it must be either because God did not deem the knowledge omitted as of any great importance, or did not deem us capable of fully receiving it. With sunhke clearness haS it made known to us the most important, but, otherwise, undiscoverable, fact of a primus homo, — the very fact which modern science, or that which claims to be most scientific, is taking upon itself to deny. It gives us, with hke clearness, the fact of his divine super- natural birth ; it teaches us something, less distinctly, of his physical origin, but still the Bible does not make the dignity of man to depend so much on his mode of origin, especially his material origin, as on the divine- dealing in the important covenant transaction made with' that one man as the physical, spiritual, and forensic re- presentative of all his posterity. But of all this, and of all that relates to the origin of man and the world, we repeat it, — and it will bear to be repeated — we know only from the Bible. By the livmg Word of the Lord alone can we refute The Vestiges. Just as the Bible is firmly beUeved, will the latter book, and all similar books, have but little hold upon the com- mon mind. With such hearty and general beUef in a Divine Word, there will be no need of any geological aid: 17 194 SCIENCE EVER DISCOVERS MYSTERIES. to faith, and without it, powerless will be all the efforts of one kind of science to lay the evil spirit which another kind of science has been so efl&cient in raising. Such must ever be the position of science in respect to revelation. And even in regard to cosmical know- ledge in general, we may safely say, that from the very nature of man, and his confined position, natural know- ledge must ever be relatively very small. It looks large to some who are in the midst of it, but to a true thinking it contracts with its own discoveries. Paradox as it may seem, it grows darker with every addition that is made to its feeble light, because, in fact, that Hght, if we have no other or higher, must ever reveal mysteries faster than it can solve them, and so continually throw a denser and still denser gloom on the dark back ground of human ex- istence, making more and more inexplicable the problem of human life and the enigma of the vast and terrible nature in which we seem to be sunk and lost. So, we say, it must be to the thinking ; but there is a great deal of science that never thinks, strange as the assertion may seem ; it only watches for phenomena, makes experi- ments, adds to its little heap of curious facts, attends scientific conventions, reads scientific papers thereon, and therewith is content. Take it in its widest field, science is legitimately occupied only with what is, (or rather is seen to be,) and how it is. The future and the past belong to her only as she can safely carry the present into them and measure them by it. But the moment she begins to do this her boasted exactness begins to fade. She can calculate an eclipse, but it is only on the supposition _^that not only the observed phenomena remain the same, but that the rate of movement, and the FASTER THAN SHE CAN SOLVE THEM. 195 rate of the rate of movement, remain the same ; just as we tell the time of day by the clock, or predict any future position of the hour and minute hands, if its rate of mo- tion does not in the mean time suffer any variation. This does well enough for a relatively near past, or near future, such as the time of day, or the movements of the clock, in respect to the astronomical changes, and the visible astronomical changes in respect to some great cosmical movement that may be neglected in ordinary calculations, but which it would be very unscientific for us to leave out of the account when we are rash enoucrh O to apply present scientific observations to the measure- ment of the great olamic tim-es. Thus viewed, in either case, whether it be that of the clock or of the eclipse, the changes in the cosmical time-table become infinitessi- mals in regard to our magnified present. They imper- ceptibly vary the result. But move off either way, ad- vancing into the future, or receding into the past, and the unknown comes pouring continually into the scale, faster and faster, until it forms quite a disturbing quan- tity, — yea, so as to affect the very balance of fact that must be known and taken in to form anything like a true induction. Carry it still farther, either way, into the very remote, and unless we fall back upon revelation, or some unscientific a priori principles, as some would sneeringly call them, all becomes a guess, a fool-hardy assumption that has not even the dignity of a conjecture. But when we keep our thoughts upon our own world, and our own race, the ground assumed becomes still more sure and incontrovertible. On the supposition of no supernatural revelation having ever been made, or of its being lost to knowledge or belief, it may be safely af- 196 THE TRAVELLER LOST IN THE WILDERNESS. firmed that the real darkness hanging over the problem of human life, yea, of existence in general, would be greater now than in the days of Pythagoras, and that the increase would be in the direct ratio of the increase of natural knowledge from that time to this. It would be like the traveller lost in the wilderness. He collects specimens of herb and mineral, he examines the curious positions of rocks, he gazes upon the stars above his head, and ex- plores the earth beneath his feet, but he is ever more :i0st still. The multiplicity of objects only adds to his '-•confusion and perplexity. Darker and darker grows the interminable forest, or wider and wider spreads out before him the blinding bewildering waste of the boundless de- sert. In view of this, there is no trifling like that of cer- tain kinds of science, especially when regarded in con- nection with its inane boasting. " Is it not true," asks Professor Dana, " that science (meaning of course na- tural science) is ever tending to the clearing away of doubts" ? No, we answer boldly. We take a direct issue here, and we have proved our side of it. Natural -science alone — let the qualification be ever remembered, .for it is of the utmost importance in the argument — na- 'tural science alone, and with all that the widest claim (Can bring within her province, is ever, to a thinking" man, "breeding difficulties and doubts inexphcable. There is enough darkness in one magnified drop of water to lead such a one to implore light from a higher world, or to flee for protection to the least evidence of a revelation from above the sphere of the natural. Again he asks — " Is there no foundation for full faith in the teachings of na- ture, or the deductions of the human mind therefrom ?" The sentence is ambiguous; it may mean faith m nature "WHERE SHALL AVISDOM BE FOUND?" 197 as the object of belief, (for which there is certainly a foundation, a blessed foundation, though not in nature herself,) or it may mean a foundation in nature for faith. If such be the meaning, again we answer, no. There is darkness in nature, there ever will be darkness in nature, growing ever, the more we explore her by her own light alone. God meant it should be so, — we may reverently say it — to drive us to himself without this endless circu- itous mode of seeking him. It is for our moral discipline that we should walk in the wilderness, but the true light that shines on nature, and renders scientific progress any thing more than a blinding maze, is not from nature her- self, — as would soon be found should there ever be a set- ting of that ancient Star in the East, whose beams so many mistake for their own or nature's illumination. " The Heavens declare the glory of God," but it is to those who receive the " higher law" than nature, that " law which is perfect, converting the soul, that testimony of the Lord which is sure, making wise the simple." How different this " declaring''' is from that search for links without beginnings or ends, that tracing of utilities and designs ever terminating in nature, which is boasted of under certain aspects of science and " natural theology," may be elsewhere shown. It is alluded to here, simply that our meaning may not be mistaken. There is, in- deed, an outward glory in God's ivorTis to those " who seek Him in his Word.'''' But from nature alone there ever comes forth to the thinking soul that query she so solemnly suggests but never answers — " Where, then, shall Wisdom be found, and where is the place of under- standing ? The Deep saith, It is not in me ; the Sea saith, It is not in me," Nature can not tell why God made 17* 198 WHO PUT LIES IN NATURE'S MOUTH? her, or why He made man. She might give up all her secrets to science, if that were ever possible, and yet be as far as ever from revealing the secret of the universe, or that wisdom which alone makes nature herself intelli- gible. But though we say no to Professor Dana's queries, we can not subscribe to the conclusion he would attach to such denial. " If such," he says, " be actually the end of man's contemplations, he would be forced, in just in- dignation, to write false over the whole face of nature, and to replace the word God with that of demon." Who charges nature with being false ? They put lies into her mouth who find in her what God alone can reveal, and has chosen to reveal in some other way. They make her false who would place her at the foundation of what she can not support, and which God meant should be the foundation, the available support, of any true living faith in her. They thus " write false over the face of nature," when they should rather write ignorance and folly on their own boasting knowledge of her revealings. They *' replace the word Grod with that of tc?oZ," we will not say demon, when they make nature the fountain of light, and all but worship this veiled power, or talk of her as in any sense a parallel revelation. There was once a pretty thing they called natural religion, viith its five moral ar- ticles, after the style of the Herbert and Bolingbroke school. Some even thought they could have it, and, at the same time, the written revelation, too, as a sort of reflection of the higher creed. Butler swept this all away. There has since grown up what may be called, not so much natural religion, as the religion of nature, or of natural science as a parallel revelation, to say the i NO MIDDLE GROUND REVELATION OR ATHEISM. 199 least, with the written Scriptures. The same service is demanded by the Church in respect to this assump- tion, and when it is done, then may we expect the " re- storation of the old belief," in something like its old strength. When this confused middle ground is all cleared up, or men are shown that there is, in truth, no such middle ground between revelation and atheism, we may trust the better feelings of humanity, fallen as it is, for a return to the book of God with a firmer hold, and a faith more strongly anchored, perhaps, than any the Church has ever before possessed. We are not defending the author of The Vestiges, or adopting his theory. We know not how that theory might strike us, if compelled to give up revelation. After such a sad event, there would be but little differ- ence in value between any systems of science or philo- sophy. But we have not come to that yet. We hold the doctrine of one Moses, "a man of God," who derived his facts from the mind to which there is no unknown in time and space, or height of being. Yet, still, since there has been so much said about it, it might be expected of us to state briefly some of the objections that might fairly be made to such a doctrine of development of spe- cies from species. There are two principal ones that we have read of, or that occur to the mind as of chief import- ance. The first is physical, the second metaphysical. It is not the law or mode now, and from appearances that we discover, or, rather, the want of appearances, we infer that it was not the law or method in the long geological epochs. This is the physical objection. The proof of it is supposed to be found in the absence of all transition marks, transition forms, or half-way stages, 200 PHYSICAL OB.TEOTIO'N' TO DEVELOPMENT. such as there would have been remains of had there ever been such a thing in nature, creative or otherwise, as species changing into species, or a new species coming from some naturaL We think we have stated the posi- tion fairly, and since our stand point as followers of Moses renders us perfectly impartial here, we may also give a reply that may be offered, if our scientific friend, Professor Dana, does not find in such a " hypothetical statement" the seeds of another alarming heresy. It might be said by the man who has found, or thinks he has found, the vestiges, and whom for the sake of distinc- tion we may call the Vestigian, that analogy, as he reads it, is against such an objection. In the individual birth^ he might say, nature is sudden, though her gestation is comparatively long, silent, secret. Even in her most re- markable changes, as we know they take place, you do not commonly find marks, at least any visible or promi- nent marks, of the transition state. The preparation is made slowly, imperceptibly, stilly ; the consummation, when it comes, is quick, clean, and complete. There is much analogy to show that in her mysterious births, nature modestly vails her face, and chooses the night, whether it be of the shorter or the longer day. So may it be, he would say, in the still higher mystery of specific generation, higher, it may be called, in some respects, and yet, in itself, no more a mystery than what is called ordinary generation. Gestation is long, but birth is sud- den and mysterious. He finds many curious facts in evidence of such a general law. Nature may now be carrying in her womb embryo powers, and embryo laws, which no naturalist hath seen, or can discover, and yet as really there as the power that sends forth the new GESTATION LONG, BIRTH SUDDEN AND PERFECT. 201 life in the spring after the long torpor of winter, or quickly ripens the new fruit in every recurring autumn. True generative powers are never wholly inert, although they may lie long apparently dormant. There was something going on all the time in the grain of wheat that lay three thousand years in the cloths of the Egyp- tian mummy, and then grew again in English earth. It was doing something all the time ; for we can not con- ceive of a physical power that is not, in some sense, doing, energizing, producing some effect in time and space ; and yet no science could discover such an energy. And so in nature on a wider scale. The process may be too noiseless, too deep down for any scientific lens ; it may be too slow for the watching of any experience though it be that of successive generations ; it may be too hidden for any science to find any of its links, and tie them to- gether in any inductive series ; and yet, when the hour of travail comes, the evolution may be as rapid and as sudden on the transcending or the wider scale of genera- tion, if there be such wider scale, as we know it to be comparatively in ordinary or more usual growth. In nature, thus contemplated, even though there might be transition movements, there would not be intermediate transition forms, or, if so, rare and obscurely visible. When the long cj^cle of gestation is drawing to its close, and the long invisibly revolving wheels (invisible because science can only see powers in their efiects) touch at last the hidden springs to which they have been coming nearer and nearer at every successive revolution, then comes forth quickly, and perfectly, the new birth, the new growth, which may have been as truly in the original 202 TRANSITION FORMS. law, or great wheel of the cycle, as any of the more usual powers and forms of reproduction. We need not give at length the rebutter to this, or the surrebutter. The anti-Vestigian who sticks to nature as he sees her, may talk of polywogs and tadpoles, and col- lect his statistics of transition marks that nature, the present nature, leaves when she does, or seems to do, her present work irregularly. For she does sometimes blun- der, — it must be confessed, — and make faults in gene- ration, as well as those that are found in geological strata. Though possessed of artistic skill of the highest order, yet, like other finite and imperfect agents whom God has made, she sometimes works out an idea badly. And this, says the other party, or he might say it, shows that had there been any such strange transitions in the olden, the very olden time; there would have been left in the rocks some visible traces of such abnormal, or to us ab- normal ways. He might maintain, also, that the birth in its highest outward completeness, may be throughout discovered in the gestation if we watch it close enough, and have glasses powerful enough ; and he may be right, wholly or partially ' right ; we think he is right in the main ; especially against any Vestigian opponent, who, like himself, is content to appeal to no higher authority than inductive science. Yet still we decide not dogmat- ically between them — Non nobis tantas compoocre litee. Our only business here is to get, if we can, the fair mean- ing of the Scripture teachings, be they full or scanty, on these primordial matters into which neither of these con- tending parties have either right or power to carry their speculations. If revelation gives us something, be it METAPHYSICAL OBJECTION TO DEVELOPMENT. 203 ever so little, bj -which we may hope to reach a conclu- sion, we will make the most of it. If it gives us nothing of the kind, then we have scientific and philosophic hberty to adopt either side, without fear of any charge of heresy, or of any hard names that either the scientific or religious bigotry may cast upon us. The other, or metaphysical argument, has a still stronger look against the Vestigian, and yet we can not pronounce it perfect. To talk of the higher coming out of the lower, it says, and says truly, is something worse than any contradiction of nature's laws ; it is a contra- diction of ideas. " What is not in, can not come out." It would be plus e minore, more from less, and that is the same as something from nothing. This is well taken, we say, if we assume a certain hypothesis, or adopt one which present facts seem to establish. What is not in, can not come out. True ; but in the absence of any facts to the contrary, it may be said that it is m, and therefore may come out. There are, however, such facts, furnishing proof which we can not deny without danger of universal scepticism. There is more in the man than in the monkey, and, therefore, man never could have been in the monkey. We need not be troubled about man here, as we have special Scriptural proof in his case, and in conservation of his dignity, but some consideration is also due to the nobler species among the lower animals, who can not be so well shielded by direct Scriptural interpretation from this derogating suspicion of development from seemingly inferior natures. To develop the mammalia from the reptiles would also seem like getting more from less, or bringing out what was never in. So the dog seems to have a higher nature, to 204 WHAT DOES GEOLOGY MEAN BY HER TYPES ? have more in him in fact, than ever could have been sup- posed to be contained, dormant or otherwise, in the stu- pid masses of half-animated flesh that inhabit the water or the mud. In the same manner might be stated many other cases. And yet this is a difficulty for geological science rather than for a development theory, or partial development theory, which might be so framed, and on pretty fair Scriptural proof, as wholly to escape it. We say partial development theory, for it would have so far to depart from uninterrupted development, (a thing Avhich any one who holds it would very cheerfully do,) as to admit the Scriptural idea of a divine Word, or a divine interposition, supplying this higher or j^Zt^s quan- tity, every time there was such an ascent in the animal scale, although building each time on the lower physical. We do not maintain, and have not maintained, even this in respect to man ; we were rather cautious about carry- ing so far this super-building of the higher upon the lower, although we speculated and hypothesized some about it ; but if our scientific friends are shocked at it, will they, pray, tell us, in all clearness and honesty, what they mean by that doctrine of types of which they say so much, and Avhich Professor Dana is so fond of exhibit- ing, even at the expense of all consistency, in his charges against the author. We would enquire of him elsewhere what he means by his " laws ;^' but we would ask here, and with a deep sense, too, of the difficulty of under- standing him, — What does he mean by his types ? If he does not find the man in the fish, he certainly finds the fish in the man, the mammaha in the man, the monkey in the man, the whole caravan of lower animation, we may say, in this single all-containing homo. We have OUK OWX NATURE TAKEN INTO A HIGHER. 205 no particular objection to this speculation of Geology ; on the whole, we rather like it, although the special Scriptural account of Adam contents us ; but does not this look something like development ? If it is not a de- velopment of man out of the lower animals, it is certainly an envelopment of the lower animals into man ; and that equally affects our dignity by making them physically bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. But we need not be humbled at that thought, or, if humbled, it should be with joy and penitence, when we remember how a higher and heavenly nature (if we may use the word nature in this connection) took upon himself, or rather into himself, the nature of man, thus raising us from our deep abyss of animality, internal and surrounding, to a dignity which no psychological rank could impart, and no connection with lower orders of being ever diminish. Geology teaches, — Professor Dana teaches, — that th^ lower nMure of the fish is the ground on which is some- how built (in type at least the most important part of the process) the higher nature of the reptile, whilst this- becomes the ground of that which is next above, and so on until we come to the upper stories of the scale. Has this doctrine of types any meaning as taught by science t Or what does it mean ? If ayc would have anything more than a most inane figure of speech, it can denote nothing less than an actual stream of life flowing on w"ithout breaks in its continuity, and yet, from time to time, re- ceiving from a higher source a new energy and a new elevation. In this stream, as their constant materiel,. (to use the term in its philosophic sense,) the types are impressed, — each time with a higher beauty, a higher finish, and a higher life. It is, in fact, when rightly 18 206 THE TYPES AND THE PLATONIC IDEAS, viewed, precisely that doctrine of Platonic ideas against which Professor Dana attempts to excite the easily ex- cited religious odium. Under another form of language, and without knowing precisely what it is, he admii-es it- greatly, and is never tired of introducing it into his arti- cle. Some scientific men, of highest note abroad, had brought this mode of speech into the scientific dialect. Others have adopted it, pleased with the pretty sound, yet with so Uttle clear knowledge of its real force that they are ^er running into inconsistencies in the use of it. Plato represents these types or ideas in nature as something distinct from her laws. They are the Cirs^- jui,aT(xoj Xoyoi, the 8'permatic words sown in the stream of natural causality. It is a figure, indeed, and yet some- thing more than a figure. The type is an impression sinking into the nature as it flows, and not merely a material mass separately originated, outwardly affected, and artificially formed, each time, in imitation of some- thing outward that was not vitally present in its organiza- tion. The lower type is carried by the stream into the higher life, and there it receives a real addition of beauty and design that is transmitted to the next, and so on — becoming more ideal, that is, less gross, sensual, utilitarian, merely animal, at every step. Above it all is the great Architect of Ideas carrying on the creative work — mak- ing a nature, — that is, originating a nature, sustaining that nature against the necessary deterioration of its own finity, making it the mold to receive the divine ideas, and, as the plastic stream flows on, impressing upon it continu- ally a higher and still higher idea from that eternal para- digm, that timeless thought, which was with Ilim *fo twv fciwvwvj " before the ages or the ivorlds began." FALSE TYPES — NOT TYPES BUT IMITATIONS. 207 Whether this doctrine of types, or ideas, be true or false, the view we have thus presented is the only one that makes it anything more than an unmeaning simile. We have endeavored to put some meaning into this lan- guage Professor Dana is so fond of employing. Tyi^e^ sounds well ; it is, indeed, a beautiful, as well as most significant word, but, then, as he uses them they are not really -ruTroi, but i^i^ri(fsi5, not types, but imitations, not the true in-forming architectural design, as wrought in and constituting the real molding, but a mere delusive fresco painting. This cheating fancy can only make itself intelligible at all by representing each work of God as separate, and Deity as each time separately imitating in every after production of his creative hand something which he had done in earlier efforts. It represents the ■Great Printer — with all reverence be it spoken — as making over and over again the same type or types, not only at the printing of every volume, but for every im- pression of every page, and word, and letter, — nay, more, as casting again each time, and for every letter, a new metallic mold. This is not printing. In such a pro- cess there are really no types, no molds, but only imita- tions of them. All this results, if ideas, and types, and that in which they flow, the continuous life, are not by themselves, in natiira rej-um, as real existences as the matter hard or soft, — yea, more real in any true and proper notion we can attach to the word reality. In the other view, or rather want of all definite view, which pre- vails among gome scientific men, there is nothing truly typical or ideal — nothing even that can be called com- prehensible, or of which we can perceive any idea or meaning. All comparisons we know, and all words fail 208 ATTEMPT TO GIVE MEANING TO THE TYPES. here. There is no diiEculty in taking exceptions to any expressions, however carefully guarded. Still there is a fitness in this language of types that has struck the most religious as well as the most philosophic minds, although as sometimes used they are mere sound and shadow from which all significance and all ideas have departed. We may well ask, again — Has this doctrine any mean- ing as taught in scientific books ? If it has, then Avhat consistency is there in branding with an odious name a statement which only attempts to bring out that signifi- '■sance, and in holding up as a bugbear that Platonism from which the idea has been filched, although, it may very well be, without any definite knowledge on the part of some who make the greatest parade of the language.* But we would not lose sight of the only conclusion we have sought to establish in this chapter. "We may guess, Tve may fancy, we may philosophize, we may pursue ana- logies clear or dim ; but, after all, we hioiu nothing of •origin aside from revelation. The writer would say for : * The author, in that passage of The Six Days of Crcatioa which has called out one of Professor Daxa's most jiious rebukes, did not go as far as this. Ho was very cautious — more cautious, perhaps, than he need to liave been. lustend of thus building the mau on the fish, as this scientific doctrine of types must do, if it means anything, he simply said that if the Scriptures had taught that the human bodj'had been a growth from lower to higher, he would not pronounce it monstrous or incredible. Pretty safe this. And then he proceeds to show some reasons from Scripture which would seem to be against it. Professor Dan'A has only left out an if, that most unimportant word in a hypothetical statement. The amount of it, ihen, is simply this. The autiior said he could believe with the Scriptiireg, *what Professor Dana holds witlwut the Scriptures and, we may even say, without any intelligible idea. This is the ground, too, on which ho j-ro- nounces the book " decidedly infidel in its tendency." It is hard to decide which is the more striking here, the unconscious inconsistency, the gross absurdit}', or the extreme narrowness of the ciiarge as coming from one who would be thounht a liberal minded and liberal thinkiiiarman of scienco. i>SALM CSXXIX. 209 himself, that avray from this authority he has no theory of development or undevelopraent ; none, at least, that he would not surrender, in a moment, to any fair demand of interpretation against it. For the doctrine of ideas he must confess an exceeding fondness. He thinks Scrip- ture is not against it, if there is not rather something which, although in the Hebrew or Oriental way, looks very much like a recognition of at least a similar view. " Thine eyes did see our substance yet unformed,* and * Psalm cxsxix, 16. LXX, AxaTSPvatfTov jxoo. Symmachus, d|i/.o^- fflwro'v ffce, ichen 1 was formless. Vulgate, iinperfectum meum, my un- wrought OY unfinished. "In the days." This is not expressed, although significantly given by the words in our ti-anslation, " in continuance." The passage, doubtless, refers, in the first place, to ordinary generation in the maternal womb, but it suggests the greater sense ; and may there not be a transition to the greater sense, — in other words, from the individual to the mysterious creative generation? May not that remarkable lan- guage, "tlic loicest parts of the earth," be exegetical of the words ia Genesis ii, 7, " And the Lord God foiTued man of the earth," nttlHrt ya ? Was there a process in this primitive formation, or generation, of the first hu- manity in the perfecting of the first individual man ? Those who say that the brevity and tone of the language excludes such an idea, should com- pare with it the expression, Jer. i, 5, — " 1 formed thee in the tcomb." Had we known as little of ordinarj', as we do of primitive generation, or the creative fTlVlll, some zealous advocate of literality, as he styles it, might call a man an infidel for suggesting that the language in this latter text might be consistent with the idea of a process, long or short, or a gesta- tion, that is, a formation, or making, through a system of law and causal agency. It may be as much outline language, in the one case as in the other, and should render us cautious how we make our knowledge, ia fact our ignorance, the infallible measure of the meaning of God's brief yet mysterious language. There are difficulties, certainly, attending this ■view of Psalm cxxxix, and the mere suggestion of such a transition sense is of- fered with great diffidence ; but there are also difficulties, which every com- mentator has felt, as existing in some parts of this language, when we at- tempt to confine it wholly to the first view. Especially is this the case with that strange expression, " the lowest parts of the earth." If a figure for the maternal womb, it is no where else so employed in Scripture. Still, in either ^aew, our leading thought of a super-material formation, in some 18* 210 " THE LOWEST PARTS OF THE EARTH." in thy book our members all were Avritten Avhen as yet there were none of them" — '•Hn the clays'^ when they had not yet come out in outward being, but were being formed and " curiously v/rought" in the divinely formed womb of nature, amid the interiora of generic causation, — in the very depths — " tlie fowest paj'ts of the earth.^^ Is it true of the maternal gestation, (which would seem to be the first meaning of the passage,) and is it not also true, and may we not suppose it to be affirmed as true of the higher and older birth of our humanity ? God made the tree " before it was in the earth," — that same tree which the earth afterwards so mysteriously brought fort] t indivi- dually and specifically into outward materiality. He made it " before it grew," — that same thing, in one and a most important sense, which afterwards did grow. He made, — from no material seed, or outward material substance, as way transcending tlie matei-ial, and going continually before the material, receives the same support. Just as the tree is made before it grows, so here something is made and regarded as truly in being before it c.r-iuls — stands Old — visibly, tangibly, outwardly. Every one who studies the pas- jsnge closely, must feel, we think, that the idea of foreknowledge, simply, of a future event, or of events as future, does not come up to the mj-steri- ous strength and breadth of the language. Not fore-knowledge, {presci- ence,) but omniscience, is the great thought of the Psalm. "No darkncsx can hide from Thee." " The darkness is light about Him." He looks through shades which neither our optical nor our spiritual vision can hope to penetrate, and sees what IS — sees it directly, not only in the timeless ideas, but in the very natures he has made to bring it out in chronological existence. We might say, in addition, that such a thought of human origin, if we could suppose it entertained by the Psalmist, could not be called scientific or philosophical. Though inspired, it might still lie naturally in his mind, ■and in perfect harmony with the ancient thinking about man as the child of earth, formed somehow in her womb, yet having, at the same tiiiio, a high and heavenly origin not only of his spiritual being, but also of his physical existence. " He is of the earth earthy," and yet we are not driven by this to suppose that there was not an unearthly, a supernatural, a trans- <;ending process even in his physical creation. HOW DID GOD MAKE THE FIRST TREE? 211 we can learn,— that same potency which afterwards pro- duced its first material seed, and had its first material semination, after the manner which nature has ever since exhibited. Did he make the tree by outward plastic shaping, leaves, branches, roots and all, with its perfect seed fully formed, a tree that never grew, a seed that was never born from any parent stem, and then place it in the earth, just as a human gardener makes a place for the transplanted oak and gathers the earth around its roots ? If the strangely mysterious language will not allow us to hold this, then must we take a view, which, whatever may have been the duration or manner of the growth, involves all the difficulties about antecedent laws, and typos, and organizing seminal powers, which some men would so easily and so ignorantly avoid under cover of the opprobrious name, as it seems to them, of Platonism. But the whole ground is too serious and too sacred for any rash speculation. We are greatly attracted, we say again, by this doctrine of ideas, and that corresponding doctrine of types whose adoption by modern science we would regard as one of its highest glories ; yet, still, we can as truly say, that, if demanded by any clear autho- rity of revelation, we would yield it, at once, to the higher teacher, if not without a passing regret, yet with a con- viction that the truth which comes in its place must far more than make compensation for its loss. The Bible here is everything or nothing. On this great question of origin, as well as on that of destiny, there must be no thrusting it aside on the ground of its province being solely the moral, as some would define the term, in dis- tinction from the physical. Who gave them power to run this line, or what peculiar qualifications have they 212 THE REAL ATHEISM OP "THE VESTIGES." for settling this boundary ? In determining the line, and on both sides of the line, as far as it assumes to teach, the Bible is everything or nothing. If we can only establish this position in the minds and hearts of our readers, "we shall have done some service to the Church, for the sake of which we would yield any of our own particular inter- pretations, however prized as falling in with certain views, or whatever of personal value they may have acquired as the fruit of severe labor and some faithful study. The atheism of " The Vestiges" is not simply in its doctrine of development of new 'species in nature ; for all science may be defied to show why God might not have made such a law, and put into nature such a con- tinuation of life, as well as the equally wondrous, if not in some of its aspects still more wondrous development of individual life from individual — certainly more won- drous when predicated of the higher organisms, and es- pecially of humanity, than any mere growth of animal- culse out of conditions hitherto unperceived by science. The atheism of The Vestiges, we say, is not in this, but in its studied exclusion of the divine and supernatural, as far as in conception they can be excluded, although barely admitted from a logical necessity at one and that the remotest end of the scale. It is, along Avith this, the ignoring of the Bible, although the author professes all respect for the Scriptures. We have no right to say that this profession of respect is any less sincere than that of the writer in the Bibliotheca. In both, Bibhcal interpretation is the boat, and science the strong current in which it floats, and by which its course is to be con- trolled and harmonized. The religious world may, per- haps, get its eyes open to discover that if the helm is to MYTHICAL VIEW OF MOSAIC ACCOUNT. 213 be thus surrendered, it will make but little difference in what direction the boat drifts. Faith is as truly gone in the one case as in the other. It is this claim of science, and this giving up of the pilotage that is the real natural- ism, the more dangerous, perhaps, the more piously it talks of harmonies. These have not been made from in- terpretation. In fact, the very thought is contemptuously discarded as a false pretense — as a "clapping 0/ the hands in great glee at the thought of keeping up with the progress of science," when they are only carried along on its triumphant wave. Have we not some grounds for saying, that there is really less heart in such an easy harmony than in doubt itself? — the sorrowful doubt, it may be, that rejects all hope of reconciliation. The writer feels that he can never stand on any other ground than that of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures in the most common sense of the term, and of the absolute verity of the Mosaic account. If forced from this, he must " walk mournfully beneath the sun" in utter despair of any satisfying light from science or philosophy on the great questions of origin and destiny. But he would not judge others by his own temperament, or his own position. If any ^an hold on in some other resting place, God keep their feet from slipping. It may be that one who, pressed with difficulties, takes the Mosaic account as mythical, or adopts the theory of partial inspiration, may really have a more honest and hearty love for the Bible than others who claim a higher orthodoxy. It may be, that he sees not, or that he shuts his eyes to the difficulties that press upon his own lower path, but it is very possible, too, that he may have a deeper sense of the preciousness of the Scriptures, and that he would feel more grief for their 214 NO HEART IN SCIENTIFIC HARMONIES. total loss, than many, whether in the scientific or reli- gious ranks, who prattle away about harmonies, and yet have too little hearty interest in the great question of a written revelation, to make them feel a doubt, or gird themselves to the encounter of a seriou.8 difficulty. THE SIX DAYS AS FOUND BY SCIENCE. 215 CHAPTER VIIL THE SIX DAYS AS FOUND BY SCIENCE. The Writer in the Andover Bibliotheca — His Nebular The- ory — The Reviewer Jinds no Difficidties — A hearty Faith is not so easily satisfied — The chief interest of the Mosaic Account — \st. Its Supernatural Character — Id. Its Hex- ameral Division — The true Greatness of the llosaic Ac- count — Greatness of Moses as compared toith Aristotle or Bacon — Professor Dana's Seven Points — Of the First Three Geology knows nothing — Her Protests or Acceptan- ces of no Value — Rests in Nature — The Scientific Scheme of Creation — As well Six Hundred Days as Six — Tlie Reviewer' s Boat driven hy two Forces — The Word Begin- ning — Sudden leap from the Birth of the Light to the Growing of the Mosses — Immense Distances from which Light travels — Want of Chronological Harmony — Im- mense Hiatus in the Second Day — A Modest Note — Spec- tral Light of Geology — The Rakia or Firmament — Was it the Breaking up of the Nehidar Rings ? — Had Moses any such View, either as Fact or Conception ? It would seem to be a part of Professor Dana's plan, in his two Andover articles, to give a scientific theory of Creation. The book reviewed is condemned, not so much for a failure in the only thing it professed to do, that is in its interpretation of the Scriptural account, (for of this the reviewer has not a word to say,) as for some 216 SCIENTIFIC RELIGIONISM. deficiency in not coming fully up to that nebular hypo- thesis of creation which has become so great a favorite Tivith certain scientific "writers, and vf'ith. which they so please some of the religious people delighted as they are to be taught that Moses is so much more scientific than they had ever imagined, and still more delighted to find the Bible actually believed by such wonderfully clever men. It strengthens their faith greatly. The testimony of a mere theologian, or of a mere Bible student, would not have half the value. It is this assumption of the widest cosmological view, that in the estimation of some minds gives the article in the Bibliotheca Sacra a credit, perhaps, that would not have been conceded to a less ambitious attempt. And yet it is not easy to make out what the outlines and features of this hypothesis truly are. It is presented in such a rambling method, and there are so many ambitious suggestions that lead the writer away from any regular path, that it is very difficult to determine what it really is in itself, and still more dif- ficult to determine that " harmony" between it and the Scriptures, without which the title of the article is all a deceptive misnomer, in other words — a pious fraud. He makes the Mosaic creation commence with the very beginning of matter and all worlds. It is cosmological in its widest sense, embracing the nebuloe and nebular condensations, the throwing off the rings that formed the solar system, and that whole process which belongs as much to the material formation of the remotest visible or invisible bodies, as of our earth and moon. There is no other meaning to be attached to his remarks on the author's use of the word beginning. He is altogether hypercritical, or this word " beginning" as employed MXDS NO DIFFICULTIES. 217 in the Bible account of creation, is taken by him for the absolute beginning of all material existence, the widest in space, the remotest in time. But it is folly to talk of Professor Dana's views of the Bible account. What he presents does not lean upon the Bible at all, and he takes no pains even to give it that appearance. In general it marches on independent of the Scriptures, all along assuming a harmony, but made out on no Bible grounds. It is taken for granted that it must be so, and this, per- haps, to a careless reader, might look like a reverence for the Scriptures too profound to allow the question of dif- ference to be even so much as raised. Now we have not the least doubt of Professor Dana's sincere belief in the Scriptures, and yet we venture the paradox that a very hearty faith would not have been so quiet, so calm, in its undisturbed assurance of a hypothetical harmony. The immeasurable importance of the questions concerned would have made it more anxious. It would have found more difficulties, such as a hearty study of the Bible ever finds, although, at the same time, it gets from the same source a light, and strength, and grace, we may say, to overcome them. Now this is a peculiar feature of Professor Dana's articles ; there are no difficulties in them, none whatever ; everything is as easy as the latest geological theory. All he had to do was to weave in his nebular hypothesis in the way best adapted to show off this latest science in some of its more specious aspects. To look into the Bible, and to study the Bible with the hearty purpose of seeing how all this really agreed with the language of Moses, would have been troublesome. It would have been to meet with perplexities. There would have been some danger, too, of running on posi- 19 218 A HEARTY ANTAGONISM. tions that certain minds might, perhaps, call infidel. It would have required, moreover, let us boldly saj it, a patience and a discrimination of mind that are not de- manded by the easy natural sciences, and we do not ex- cept even Geology from the remark. It is easier to form theories here than to get at the fair meaning of old words, and to lay a good foundation for the interpretation of an ancient document. It is this absence of all difficulties in the Andover articles that we would especially present to the reader's notice. If he is intelligent he can not help drawing the right inference. It must be seen, how- ever, that it gave their writer in some respects the ad- vantage as a critic. Having nothing in his own way, he had the more leisure to make objections, and find diffi- culties in the way of others. To use the language of a gentleman of high scientific standing — " having no real disagreement with the ultimate conclusions of the work, he had the fairer opportunity for charging on the book faults and deficiencies which, even if real, had nothing to do with its true design. Had there been a hearty antagonism on the merits, instead of a spirit of mere sci- entific petulance, it would have given a different tone to the whole article. Such a hearty antagonism on the merits, would naturally have compelled something like a fair statement of the real positions of the book assailed, for the very purpose that they might be the more squarely and availably met." But to return to Professor Dana's theory of creation. We see but little of outhne or feature in it any way — nothing but that which the next general change in geo- logical language, and geological speculation, may destroy as easily as it has created. But how does it agree with AS WELL SIX HUNDRED DAYS AS SIX. 219 the Scriptural account ? This is here the question, the only question. Where is the Omnific Word, the Brood- ing Spirit, the iiaming, the dividing, the working — the rest ? Not but that these ideas, or some of them, may be suggested by the scientific theory if such theory is read by the lamp of the Bible, — but are they AYords or ideas that would have ever come out of any discoveries of sci- ence alone, and upon its own ground ? He has much to say of light and life ; talks eloquently of types and laws^ taking good care, however, not to have much meaning in the phrases, and specially avoiding all the great and real difficulties connected with these most mysterious ideas. He preaches finely about " God in nature," trying to re- present the author as very heathenish on these points, or at least far less orthodox than the Reviewer. He tells us why God made mammaha, when he did, and why he did not make them before. He has much to say, — in fact he talks everywhere about " the harmony ;" but where do we find the six days ? No man can read this preten- tious article, so ostentatiously entitled " Science and the Bible," and derive from it any reason why there should be six days any more than sixty or six hundred. In the book they are the prominent feature. In interpretation they could not be overlooked. They were the res gestce, the real matters of fact narrated. In the scientific theory they are made entirely subordinate. They are to be taken only in a very loose and general way. It is one of the points of the harmony where we must not be too pressing. The scientific side is so taken up with that other idea of antiquity that it almost wholly overlooks the remarkable Scriptural feature of the hexameral succes- sion, so distinctly" defined by the regular supernatural 220 IDEA OF DURATION SUBORDINATE. divisiorij and of so much more importance, both in itself, and for the consistency of the narrative, than any dura- tion be it long or short. It is just as much a succession, whether passed through in six very long days, or in six very short days. The six-fold aspect preserved, nothing more need be asked for the integrity or consistency of Scripture ; but take this away, or render it confused, or indefinite, with nothing but forced arbitrary lines to mark ■the divisions, and the fair face of the narrative is blotted ; ■that by which we know it is no longer recognized ; its identity is gone. The other idea of duration is subordinate to this. We l)elieve the Bible language to be fully and fairly consis- tent with the most remote antiquity, — using the term relatively as compared with historical times now mea- sured and passing upon the earth ; yet still short times might satisfy the same language, especially in the absence of any outward riew that might give interest or import- ance to one or the other aspect. Now, it is this idea of antiquity that has been regarded as the legitimate prize of Geological science. Hence the absurd sensitiveness at the claim of discovery from any other source, even though that source be the Word of God. Hence, too, the strange disposition, not only to sacrifice to this every other feature of the Mosaic account, but even to assail with unfair criticism and odiously disparaging epithets any effort that may arrive at the same or a similar con- clusion by the hermeneutical road. We have spoken of the six day division as being a very prominent and indispensable feature of the Mosaic history of creation. But it is not even here we are to look for its hisrhest interest. This hes rather in the fact of its TRUE GRANDEUR OP SCIENCE. 221 being a supernatural revelation from God himself. It is its own supernaturalism, whatever it maj reveal of the natural, or of any other facts. In some previous remarks we may seem to have disparaged the objects both of sci- ence and of revelation, by representing our greatest times and spaces as such comparative infinitesimals. But, in truth, such a view does not at all affect the latter, or di- minish its true greatness. We might say the same of science when considered in a proper light. The true grandeur of science is this discovery of its own littleness. It is most sublime when most lowly, most truly great, when, instead of boasting of its exploits in the spirit of our scientific Reviewer, " it puts its hand upon its mouth and its mouth in the dust," — if not in the true fear of the Lord, at least in the awe of the Infinite and the Un- known. But taking science as exhibited to us by such writers, it can never have any real or absolute greatness. It must ever be a quantitative thing, and can, therefore, never be certain of anything more than an infinitesinial rank. It has no other rule than that of amount in some aspect — amount in time, in space, or in power. This is the only value it knows or can know, — how long a thing exists, how much space it occupies, tvhat it does, or the amount of dynamical action it manifests in such space — and these are all comparative. Their rank ever varies with a supposed extent of the universe. Their value, intellectual as well as physical, ever sinks with the sup- position, the rational supposition, of an unknown immea- surably if not infinitely exceeding the utmost that is known or can be known respecting them. In the same ratio sinks the intellectual rank of minds whose utmost attainment in the knowledge of the universe can only be 19* 222 TRUE GREATNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES. measured on the same comparative scale. Hence it is no dream, no fancy, but a most sober deduction from the seeming infinity we see stretching out around us and above us, when we say, that the times of the scientific man may be infinitesimal moments, his worlds, of which he has so much to say, miscroscopic motes, himself an animalcule, and his boasted knowledge, as compared with higher intelligences, but the dullest instinct of the worm. This may be true. Leave him to his science alone, and all her boasted laws and analogies would go to show that in the immensity of space, time, and power, it actually u true. Such is its greatness on its own favorite scale of mea- surement. Nothing can protect it from the rigid appli- cation of its own rule of quantity in one of these three degrees. Such is the greatness of Geology, in itself con- sidered. But the Scriptures have a different greatness, an absolute greatness not depending for its rank or value •on any known or unknown size or age of the universe. It has the same greatness whether there be one earth, or bilHons of solar and stellar systems, whether its creative times be six solar days, or a thousand years, or ten thou- ■sand times ten thousand ages. It has a greatness differ- ing essentially from this, and which no comparison, or mere quantitative relations, can ever affect. In what, then, does it consist ? We answer, — Not in its times and divisions, great as they are, not in its antiquity, or its revelations of antiquity, comparatively vast as we believe them to be, but in the fact of its being a revelation. This takes it at once out of the inconstant and ever depressing rule of quantity, by connecting it directly with the Eter- nal and the Infinite. It is the fact that it is God speak- NOT COMPARATIVE BUT CONSTANT. 223 ing to US worms of the dust — the Great Soul of the Uni- verse (we are not afraid to use the language) throwing nature aside, taking off her vail, manifesting his ineffable personality by talking directly to us, not waiting till by searching nature we find out God, but finding us who were otherwise eternally lost, — graciously coming down to us through all space and time and height of being, tell- ing us of himself, and how he made this world in which we live, giving us some of the steps in the process, and that, too, in language wherein the common mind is on a par with the most scientific, revealing to us wherein he made use of nature, and how from time to time (be they long or short) he came forth personally from his own supernatural celestial sphere. This is the interest of the Mosaic narrative, an interest, we say, remaining the same constant quantity whether there be none, or billions of other worlds beside this, or billions of other ages before our mundane history commenced. There is a sublimity in the other features ; but it sinks in presence of this fact that the wondrous history itself is a voice from the sphere above nature, from the " firmament that is over the heads of the living powers," a voice from the Eternal and the Infinite, talking to us and telling us what science never could have told, and for which she never would have had even a language, had not revelation, from the earliest times, furnished the ideas and conceptions on which such language is founded. She might have found the same facts she now finds, and traced the same phe- nomena, and the same sequences of phenomena ; but she would never have known creation, she would never have found the supernatural, she would never have risen above the sphere of physical causation. As long as men kept 224 MOSES GREATER THAN NEWTON — WHY? this early ligbt, the " visible things did manifest to them the Eternal Power and Godhead." When they lost it, as Paul tells us, the religious instinct remained, but it sank into that nature worship of which all heathen mytho- logies, and nearly all heathen philosophy, were but the direct or mediate products. This, then, is that other kind of greatness which the unphilosophical science, if we may employ the term for an important yet too little recognized distinction, can never reach. This is the greatness which is dependent on no real or hypothetical size of the universe sinking every part into nothingness by its comparison with the whole. This is a greatness which is measured by no flowing terms of quantity, but by a constant equation giving the constant term of nearness to God the great central heart of the world. It is the value that never changes ; it is the theo-centric position that has no paral- lax. It is that which made Moses so much greater than Aristotle, or Archimedes, or Galileo, or Newton. This is the greatness that makes one verse of the revelation given through Moses of more value, and its right inter- pretation of more real importance, than all the demon- strations of the Mechanique Celeste, and all the discov- eries of all the Geologists. It is not the extent of the supernatural announcement, nor the amount made known to us respecting the world ; for when we are once assured that the divine voice has truly broken through nature, there may be as much ground for faith in the scantiness as in the abundance of the revelations. The silence in respect to that over which the vail still remains, may be even more expressive, more sublime, having more reli- gious awe, and thus producing a closer confidence, than REVELATION EQUALLY GREAT THOUGH PARTIAL. 225 might have come from its removal, even if our souls could bear the unveiled aspect of what God has not seen fit to make known. This might be our reply to some who think that the creative revelation is degraded, and made unworthy of Deity, by being supposed to be confined to our inferior earth instead of taking in the whole universe in space and time. The rational soul longs for the super- naturnal ; it listens for the supernatural ; yet let it be assured of the voice and a whisper may suffice it. A revelation thus given may have respect to the smallest part of the kosmos, to a satelHte, or a satellite of a satel- lite, and yet, on this very account of its being a revela- tion, have something for us more precious, immeasurably more glorious, than all that any inductive science has discovered, or may yet discover in the widest fields of space and time. The most astonishing thing of all, is the fact that this poor natural knowledge — poor, we mean, in the attitude assumed by the Reviewer, though having a beauty and an honor when it chooses to be mo- dest — should so dare to put itself face to face with the Scriptures ; not in the attitude of a manly though impi- ous antagonism, but in the far more insulting spirit of petulant rivalship. For we can give it no other name than this when it pretends to have superseded the neces- sity of interpretation, and claims priority of discovery, as though it were some contemptible quarrel about the in- vention of a new machine, or the first sight of some shower of meteoric stones, or of some broken asteroid, or some worthless comet still roaming among the unsettled irregularities of nature. There ai-e scientific men of noblest stamp ; we have professed our sincere respect for them, and can not be repeating it for fear of being 226 A GREAT WONDER R'EVEALED BY SCIENCE. misunderstood. But it may be also said, that among all the "ft'onders science reveals, there is nothing so truly wonderful as the fact that some of its professors can stand in the presence of these four great Scriptural ideas, the Word, the Spirit, the Ineffable Working, the Divine Re- pose, and yet babble away about their " rock written revelation," when their "highest decypherings of these old palimpsests, even where they reveal some clear and orderly ideas, do not so much as make an approach to these transcending verities of the Mosaic account. They are still in a region far below, if not in space and time, yet in the rank and grandeur of idea. We have a spe- cimen of this in what may be called Professor Dana's summing up. He makes seven points. The first three refer to the great primordial questions — the true ideas of nature, of matter, of natural causality, or growth as having its origin in a Divine Word, and its efficiency in a Divine Spirit. The others relate to the phenomenal facts as they occur in the order of the Scriptures, or the supposed order of science. With regard to the last four points, " Geology," says the Reviewer, " can make little exception to the author's conclusions ;" — implying that she differs from him on the first three. Geology is very gracious here ; but need any intelligent reader be told that all this parade of points is shown to be absurd, and all this graciousness of Geology is nullified at once, by the simple consideration that these first three must, from their very nature, lie entirely out of her domain, so that her protests, or her acceptances, should she make any, are really of no value whatever. Revelation may settle these points, or leave them unsettled. Philosophy may legitimately entertain them as matters of abstract specu- HESTS IN NATUKE. 227 lation ; but to Geology, or natural science, in the com- mon acceptation of the term, they belong not at all, and no true man of science who is, at the same time, philo- sophical enough to understand what truly falls within her province, would ever think of claiming them as sub- jects of any inductive or scientific decision. In a similar absurd tone of authority, the Reviewer asserts that " the intervals of rest in nature which Pro- fessor L. speaks of, are not in the records of the earth." Has he decyphered those records ? lias he clearly inter- preted even their title pages ? Is he sure that he under- stands the language in which they are written ? Men may get hold of an alphabet to some imperfect extent, as is the case in respect to some of the Assyrian inscriptions, and yet the words, much more the meaning, remain a deep enigma. Does he certainly know what really is retrogradation in these movements, — what part of the cycle is directly onward and upward, what is the reverse, or the appai-ently reverse direction, or what is the stand- ard by which up and down, higher and lower, are really to be determined ? He contradicts himself, moreover, in the very next sentence ; or else it has no meaning. " The longest suspension of life in North America took place, as nearly as we can learn, between the coal period and the middle reptilian." There the reader has it as exact as it can be fixed by the geological almanack, within a few thousand years more or less ; or "as near as we can learn" about such ancient matters ; a very modest proviso truly. An occasion for the display of geological technics and scientific exactness bhnds the writer, as usual, to the inconsistency in which they in- volve him. A suspension of life certainly looks very 228 SCIENCE TAKES REFUGE IN A PRIORI IDEAS. much like a " rest in nature." The Reviewer, however, shudders at the impious thought that there may be dete- riorations or backward movements in the physical history. It is in the way of the favorite notion of an ever right onward, right upward, or rectilineal progress. And this might be rational, if physical development, or the perfec= tion of nature, were the great end in the divine kingdom. This end, to be sure, is all that science can legitimately look for, as long as she confines her vision within her own field, and even this she can only guess. As she walks alone among the catacombs of geology, with her dim lamp revealing more darkness than light, with death and disso- lution all around her, and the ghosts of long extinguished life starting up everywhere in the midst of former ruin and decay, what can she do, or rather what can her votary do, but to assume that there is some clue to the labyrinth, some path that amid all these windings and turnings may lead again to the upper air of heaven, thus making every seemingly backward or circular movement a progress after all. But where does science, or rather the scientific man, get this idea ? Nature does not teach it to him. She reveals broken planets, extinguished stars ; her nebulae may be systems going out, the smoke and cinders of old wasted worlds. What has been may be again ; this is certainly fair Baconianism ; the shifting scenes may bring once more upon the stage the old catas- trophies with ten-fold greater ruin. What right has sci- ence, frightened by this, to leave her old inductions, to abandon in terror her facts, of which, at other times she boasts so loudly, and run for shelter to a priori ideas, or to the lessons really learnt from revelation but which she pretends to read in the worn rocks of the earth and NO SURE EVIDENCE OF PROGRESS IN NATURE. 229 the shadowy nebulie of the skies. In nature there is no sure evidence of progress, that may not, at any time, be destroyed by the signs of some greater catastrophe. If Tve believe in a progress on the tvhole, or of the whole, it is an a priori idea having its birth in an irrepressible long- ing of the soul, instead of any reliable conclusion of in- ductive science ; but even such a progress of the whole, as a whole, may be perfectly consistent, scientifically con- sistent, with the relentless sacrifice and destruction of parts, — yea, of parts having an immeasurably higher rank than any that science can assure us of as belonging to us or to our world. But when we think of parts alone, the highest known parts, nothing but a revelation from God can give us assurance of exemption, or any hope of progress or even of rest that can fear no change. Let revelation go, let appearances be our only guide, and what is our position on the great wheel, that any human science should pretend to determine in what direction it is turning, or the angle of curvature as it slowly bends from the apparent tangent line, or on what side of us is that unknown centre of motion from Avhich the upward or downward, or advancing or retrograding course of that curvature is to be reckoned ?* * When viewed iu the light of science alone, there is much pertinency, and mach interest, in a strange query started by Aristotle in his Book of Problems, (if it be his,) Sect, xvii, Prob. 3 : " The question is, how shall we take the terms before and after, old and young ? Or, if there can be a beginning, a middle, and an end, in a system which goes through all stages, and returns into itself, why may not we be in the beginning, as well as anywhere else ? And if, moreover, there is a circle of the universe, why may not the birth and going out of things be such that they continually come again, and again perish ? On which supposition of a cycle, there could neither be beginning nor end properly ; nor would there be any ab- solute before and of/cr, such as would come from being nearer to, or more distant from, any fixed beginning. Nor would we, iu that sense, be before 20 230 WORLDS MAY DECAY AS WELL AS TREES. But to pursue this thought, full of interest as it is, would lead us too far out of our proposed path. Profes- sor Dana says he can not read even rests, much less decays in nature. Other men, however, of highest sci- ence, say they have discovered them, or what looks very much like them. Analogy, too, might teach that if there are decays in the lesser organisms, and this goes on as far as we can see, there may be also decays in the greater. If the flower, the fruit, the tree, the animal, the man, the nation, the race even, may decay, so also may a- world ; and so all nature, the universal physical kosmos, may have its growth, its maximum, its retrogradation, perhaps in time its disappearance or going back among things unseen ; or it may sufler any whole or partial changes as subservient to some higher world than nature, or some higher state of being, to which all physical existence may be regarded as introductory and probationary. Our Reviewer can not find in the rocks, or the " re- cords of the earth," as he calls them, " any evidence of nature's rests," and, therefore, he holds to an eternal right onward physical progress.* But if he can not read it in the records of the earth, has he never read in the Book of the Lord, that even " the Heavens grow old," otliers, nor vvonld they be before us — and this because of the continuity," T^j (fuvEySfOtg. We have given a very free translation, but preserving the thought. It is certainly a strange idea, and yet science might be chal- lenged for a better view of the time existence of the universe than that of this repeating cycle. An everlasting right onward progress, without rests, maxima, or perfections such as the Bible discloses, would be far more dif- ficult, besides seeming to necessitate a similar past. "This would seem to necessitate an eternal growth and progress in the past. But the natural or scientilico religionism can not be consistent. The past eternity of nature or matter is a horrid dogma : its eternal futurity of progress is not only most scientific, but most pious ! THE " NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH." 231 (for this is the fair meaning of the Hebrew iV^i^, Psalm cii, 27) : They wear away through age ; they are wasted and renewed like a garment ; " like a vesture are they folded up and laid aside," when purposes in God's king- dom that the science of Newton is as incapable of fath- oming as that of Thales, may require that nature should decay, go out, yea, at some period, perhaps, be wholly dispensed -with in the higher economy of the olams. The Scriptures also tell us of a " renewed Heavens and a renewed earth," when "the former things shall have passed away," and even the old book of the Heavens, so much more glorious than the dark book of the rocks, shall be " rolled up as a scroll," to make way for the still grander volume of the grander spiritual dispensation. What shall be in the future may have been in the past. We prefer these ideas of the Bible to any guesses derived from the rocks ; even though it had not been that a sci- ence equal in all respects to that which finds no deterio- rations in nature had found just the contrary. There are various readings of this old book of the rocks ; he is a rash critic who decides dogmatically about disputed meanings without waiting for the full variorum edition which may, perhaps, be in time expected. To read the Bible by them, at least before that time, would be some- thing like the parallel attempt now made to confirm the dark annals of the kings of Judah from the supposed clearer records of Assyrian dynasties, or to illume the visions of Isaiah by the phosphorescent light that is dug out of the mounds of long-buried Ninevah. We would be far from disparaging the scientific interest in the one case, or the deep historical interest in the other. It is the false parallelism in which each are sometimes placed with the 232 SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF CREATION. Scriptures that calls out our remark. What a terra inn- hrarum would Geology be if we had no higher truths than science furnishes ? How dark would be the resur- rection of these long buried cities if they did not rise before us in the light which the Bible itself sheds over .their mournful ruins ? Some further attention is due to the scientific theory ■ of creation presented in the two articles in the Andover IBibliotheca Sacra. We find it almost as much a chaos ;as the condition of the earth on the first day. There rseems to have been in the writer's mind a disproportioned •combination of two schemes, one the purely scientific, as he would say, expressed in scientific language with a great display of its technical richness, the other forced into some faint resemblance to the Scriptural division. It is evident, however, that this does not come out natur- ally. It would never have been thought of, had it not been for the obvious propriety of having something to justify the title of the article — "Science and Revela- tion." It is a division that does not occur to scientific men in other countries where the boat drifts on a freer current, and the real influence from which it is derived lis shown in the comparative disposition of the two author- ities. The boasted harmony is all on one side. It is the swelling and jubilant song of science, with a very slender thread of Scriptural accompaniment. If it were not so serious a subject, we might say that the full and crowded notes of the one are in almost ludicrous contrast to the few thin quavers that here and there betoken the presence of the other. It is, in fact, an accompaniment more marked by its rests than by its notes ; and cspeci- FINDS NO DIFFICULTIES. 233 ally may we say this of that second bar -where a long semi-breve silence fills up the whole mysterious space. That there is really no heart in this harmony, is shown, moreover, by the fact of the writer's so completely shun- ning all difficulties. These met the interpreter directly in the face. He could not go round them, nor over them, nor keep silence about them. The critic, however, has very easy work ; he may notice them or not, just as he pleases, or just so far as it suits his science to recog- nize them. There is, for example, the remarkable lan- guage of the second day wholly ignored. There is the still stranger language of the third and fifth, — " Let the earth bring forth" — "Let the waters bring forth." This, too, is passed over in utter silence, unless we re- gard as a notice of it the attempt to charge the book with naturalism in the interpretation, without, however, any effort to show how the idea of natural growth could be kept out of the fair exegesis. But it may be, that the critic admits, in some way, the natural growth of the first plants. He does not believe, perhaps, that they were all outwardly made, like waxen toys, made roots and all, and then stuck in the earth to grow or that thus the earth " might bring them forth." Was it the outward formation of an outward seed outwardly sown in the earth by the Almighty hand ? That has the same diffi- culties ; besides, we are plainly told that the first seeds grew, in some way, out of the first plants. Was it the creation of a seminal power older than both tree and seed — in other words, the creation of a law, force, or causal power, of which the outward material tree, instead of being the germinative source, was itself, in truth, the first effect '^ That would look like creating them before 20* 234 PHILOSOPHICAL EIFFICULTIES. they were in the earth, before they had outward material being, whether this before was to be taken in the order of nature or in that of time, — a piece of Platonic mysti- cism, (take it in either sense,) in which the Reviewer finds " no edification." It would be the creation of ideas and laws, and these, as separate from their pro- duets, are things hard to be conceived of. Aside, then, from the philological, there are great philosophical dif- ficulties attending every view we may take of this most mysterious process of creation, — being in fact almost equally mysterious on whatever side we may survey them. What appears very simple in one aspect, is full of obscu- rity when contemplated in another. The direct outward making of every new material form, and the imitation^ each time, of some former type, without any real growth therefrom, or physical connection therewith, would ap- pear to some minds perfectly easy and intelligible ; to others it would be most unmeaning, and, therefore, most difficult of comprehension. Why could not God have made the higher creations at once without the previous imperfect stages that must come and pass away before them ? There is no science that can even begin to an- swer this question. The lizard without toes must go be- fore the lizard that has- toes, and a most scientific zoolo- gist entertains an audience with this as a marvellous proof of the divine wisdom and omniscience.* We must *The lecturer expatiated on this at great length. Some lizards bad toes on their right foot, some on their left, and some on both feet. Some had -one toe, some two toos, some three, and some no toes at all. It was in an tjvangelical latitude, and so there was adapted to it a very fine peroration on the Divine plan and Divine Omniscience as displayed in this arrange- ment, and the glory of science in thus revealing it. It put us in mind oi the impious yet frank declaration of the French atheist, that " the heav- ens declare the glory of the astronomer." It did look as if the glorification SKILL IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF LIZARDS. 235 admit, of course, the divine presence in every real tran- sition from less to more ; but where is the wisdom of these repetitions, or the need of these imitations, if there be no physical connection between the stages, no connec- tion, in some way, of a varied yet unbroken life ? There is no vaticination in it for the lower irrational race, and of zoology or of the zoologist, was really the uppermost thouglit in the mind of the lecturer. Nor can this remark be deemed uncharitable, when it is borne in mind that all this rapture about the divine plan in the con- struction of lizards, was from one who has so vehemently opposed and denied the great central truth in the divine plan for the salvation of human souls. But in itself the whole argument is a deception and an abuse of language There is a plan in these lizards, undoubtedly, and so there would be if they had been made in any other manner, with toes, or without toes. But as far as science can see, it is a plan terminating in itself, it is an adapta- tion terminating in itself, or in something of the same physical order. A follower of Democritus and Lucretius admits of series and order in nature, and so, in one sense, of plans. They said it was the nature of nature to work so, and so they even held to a kind of instinctive intelligence in na- ture, but were no less atheists still. The divine Wisdom or Omniscience, of which the lecturer speaks so confidently, is quite a different thing. It has respect not to the plan of the lizard alone, in itself considered, or as a means of showing curious arrangement, and thus the glory of science in discovering it, but to the connection of the lizard, the serpent, the animals noxious and innoxious, and of man himself, in the great plan of being. The facts, in themselves, may be very curious, very worthy of scientific exposition, they may show an admirable adaptation in the toes of the liz- ard to the use the lizard makes of them ; but when we talk of the divine wisdom in this thing there is a higher question — Why was the lizard made at all, and the rattlesnake with his fangs, and the horrid monsters whose loug-lifeless remains the geologists find in the rocks, — those horrid mon- sters whose teeth were so admirably adapted to devour other contempo- rary monsters in the pre-Adamic ages. The zoologist examines those an- cient teeth, he exhibits them to his staring audience, he points out how well adapted they were to their devouring purposes, he expatiates on the wisdom and omniscience of God as therein displaj'ed, and the religious world is delighted to find that men who know so much can talk so piously. It begins to be thought that those who are so orthodox on the genus La- certa, can not be so far out of the way in their doctrine of the genus Hotno and the human pluralities. But there are some who are too iireverent, or it may be, have too little faith, for the ready reception of this naturalizing piety. As they listen to the account of these pre-Adamic monsters, na. 236 SKILL AS DISTINGUISHED FROM WISDOM. for the higher there would seem to be other and more direct modes of conveying the lesson of the divine pre- sence and the divine omniscience, — such as we find in the First of Genesis, the Tiventieth of Exodus, and the One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Psalm. Of course, we are here only expressing our own difficulties, and not ture's curious adaptations are all regarded as of inferior moment, if not ut- terly forgotten, in view of another suggested query that overwhelms the thinking soul. The thought will come up that every time those horrid jaws have closed, it has been on some mortal agony, some writhing, quiv- ering flesh, some palpitating system of sensation as wondcrfhlly harmon- ized, and as well adapted as the cruel teeth themselves to show the marvel- lous skill exhibited in nature's plans. Explanations of this are now and then attempted by some of our physico-moralists ; but they seem less than superficial ; they do not even touch the surface of the matter ; if they have any effect, it is only to suggest another difficulty, ever greater than the one they attempt to solve. Skill, \nAeeA\ There is no doubt of the .s/c///. That may be detected in abundance. But "where shall wisdom be found ? The Sea saith it is not in me ; the Deep saith it is not in me ; Sheol and Abad- don, the Grave and Dissolution, say ■wq have "heard a rumor thereof with our ears : It is not found in the land of the living." And yet one who thus queries may believe in the Divine Wisdom and Omniscience as strongly as the scientific lecturer — perhaps with a stronger faith : for he goes by faith here and not by sight, whether it be ordinary or scientific vision. He can not wait until his natural knowledge connects together all those innu- merable links which would make such belief an unanswerable inductive conclusion. God has given him a better guide in certain feelings and ideas of the soul, and when they have become dim or dead, grace, it may be, has renewed them, and so he believes, most rationnU>/ believes, where he can not see. He believes in the wisdom, where he can not see the wisdom. God is certainly wise, though nature were oven still more full of enigmas. God is certainly good, he would say, though his lot were cast in some re- gion of the jdiysical universe where the natural adnptations for producing pain far outnumbered all that are found in our own Valley of liaca. We have no wish to underrate what is really curious and interesting in science per se, and such would we regard the lecturer's facts in relation to the liz- ard. We would not wish uselessly to disturb any pious sentiment, though fed merely by natural contemplations. But it does seem to us, that that higher ground of faith which every truly religious mii-id must admit to be necessary, is obscured, to say the least, by the modern tendency to rest in mere physical adaptation, and to applaud that physical religionism whose main worship is ever the laudation and glorification of science. WISDOM WHERE WE CAN NOT SEE. 337 making our own exceedingly limited vision the measure of the divine intelligence. There may be, there must be vast wisdom where we can not see ; God has given man a priori intelligence enough to see that, and this may, perhaps, be one great difference between him and the lower animals, with whom sense and experience are the only measure of things and thought. The mode of cre- ation is full of difficulties, philosophical as well as philo- logical. This is our position here. But science, the science we are characterizing, passes glibly over them, or goes silently around them. At all events, it does not think of encountering them. This may be owing to modesty in "the Student of Nature," or it may be that he is so dazzled by his own light, that he does not see the difficulties that lie below his facts, and which trouble other minds of a different temperament, and a lower or- der of thinking. We must, however, make the exceptional remark, in passing, that Professor Dana seems to have had some trouble in his mind about the birds. He looks into the Bible here, and finds that our old translation represents them as the product of the waters. This is rather start- ling, although, in itself, not a particle 'more mysterious than the other language, and so he resorts to Professor Bush to show that the Hebrew may be rendered " Let the birds ^j%," — thus making the language indefinite, and getting rid of the seemingly troublesome connection with the waters. We have certainly very high respect for Professor Bush, both as a man and as a scholar, but this will not do. If he will examine the passage more carefully, he must see that this rendering, which seems, at first view, rather plausible, can not stand the test. 238 THE BIRDS FROM THE WATERS. The Hebrew construction will not admit it. It is the descriptive future with omission of the relative, (tisiy tiis"!) an idiom well marked in the sacred language, especi- ally as forming a peculiarity of its earhest state, and therefore, as we might expect, occurring so often in the Arabic. In fact, we have precisely the same expres- sion, and in the same order, in the Koran, Surat vi, v. 38, "T^ui n-'Nta, Urd that flies. It is equivalent to a de- scriptive participle with the article as it occurs in Greek, and is used by the Septuagint as a translation of this very passage, *£Tsiva ■rsTo'iJ-sva, birds that fly ^ — or to the verb with the relative, aves quce volant^ or volajites — the flying birds. This is the rendering of all the old versions, together with the Targum of Onkelos, hnsn nsi» " bird that flies.''' The other, or the imperative use of the future, '■'• Let the birds fly,'' requires a different order of the words, and this order, when that sense is demanded, is not departed from. The New Baptist Version gives the same rendering as Professor Bush, and to avoid, per- haps, the same apparent difficulty. We have all respect, too, for some of the scholars engaged in that work ; but our old translation here is right. The volatile as well as the reptile, to use the words of the Vulgate, had a ma- rine origin. Moses does teach this, whether it be natur- alism or not. The expression would seem to intimate, that in some way, directly or mediately, nearly or re- motely, through the types, or through the life, or through the matter, the divine creative power did bring them from the waters. Now we have heard that science finds fish types in the birds, — thereby testifying on the side of Moses. If so, it is all the better for the credit of science. But be that as it may, such we believe to be the only THE SCIENTIFIC SIX DAYS. 239 fair interpretation of the strange Mosaic language, wliat- ever difficulties it maj be supposed to bring, either to the religious or the scientific side of these questions. The Reviewer's " boat" has evidently been driven bj two forces producing a sort of compound motion. There must be some appearance of accommodation to the Scrip- tures, and this occasionally warps its course ; but the mind is ever and mainly upon something else. The Har- mony of Science and the Bible ! The reconciliation of Faith and Geology ! In the book reviewed, there is no such unmeaning, and we may say untruthful aim pro- posed. It is in fact ever kept out. The Scriptures are to be interpreted, not reconciled. Science and the Bible have nothing in common. Even in respect to prime phy- sical facts of origin and destiny, they occupy two distinct departments, one of which is far below the other. But m the Review there must, in some way, be a harmony to correspond with the title, and so in one place, there is a general enumeration of six periods. We have, 1st, Light, 2d, a mysterious blank, 3d, Division of Land and Water with commencing vegetation, 4th, Celestial Bodies or manifestations, 5th, The Long Marine Period, 6th, all that follows, though without any division Scriptural or scientific. This long marine period being a favorite no- tion, and there being but one period remaining, all of a later date must be thrown together, and without any of the reasons for its being a day by itself which in the Bible are so prominently presented. This scanty act of homage once rendered to the Spiritual Power, very much as the Italian Machiavelli makes his appeasing bow to the Conclave, science breathes freer and passes on. It 240 THE HEXAMERAL FEATURE. gets into the larger field, and gives its larger view. The boat is now on its own buoyant element. It is out of the narroAY perplexing currents of Moses, and here the pilot, in his freedom and his jubilancy, forgets himself again. In the outline just stated, there is some faint re- semblance. In what follows, it is almost wholly oblit- erated, — we mean, in its principal feature, or that by which chiefly Moses would know its face. The hexam- eral aspect disappears. We are justified in what we have already said, that if Moses were unthought of by the reader, he would as easily find in this scheme sixty, or even six hundred days, as well as six. There is no supernatural Word dividing the one from the other, — nay, more, there are no divisions, which, for all that any inductive science can legitimately deny, nature could not have run over as easily as she runs through any of the intercluded sections. In the Mosaic account these divi- sions are distinctly made by the Word of the Lord, each time,* and we want no other proof. The geological account with which we are now dealing does not exhibit them in any distinct manner, and if it did so, could not, as we have before proved, ever show, by any scientific reasons, that the same nature could not have developed them all, or, which is the same thing, that they were not all con- tained in the first nature which God made and endowed with laws for that purpose. Science could never satisfy us that the Author of nature might not have given, and did not, in fact, give to her, the wider as well as the nar- '^"And (Jod said," etc. Let the render observe how regularly this oc- curs each time. Then let him compare it with the " ^oinc;s forth of old" of the Logos, Mich, vi, "The ouf goings" of " Wisitom," Prov. viii, aud the Word, Heb. xi, 3, " by which the worlds, or ages, were framed." WHAT NEED OF SUCCESSIVE NATURES. 241 roAver limit. And this is the point to which we are espe- cially desirous to call the reader's attention. It is all important in determining what science may legitimately claim, and for showing, what is far more vital to our true faith, how entirely we must be dependent on a revelation for any sure knowledge of the metes and boundaries in this matter. Now the Bible has given us just this know- ledge. When Moses tells us the "Word went forth, or uses that transcending formula " And God said," we know that it was to do some work which nature — whether a new nature then made, or any older or pre- vious nature — could not have done, and was not made to do, without a new divine energy. We know it from the divine teaching ; we certainly know it in no other way.* ■* It is, in general, more wise, as well as more reverent, to seek for tlie meaning of revelation, than to ask why God has given it to us as he has. And yet the latter question may be sometimes involved in the former, anA^ to some extent, inseparable from it. It might have been revealed to us simply that God made the world, or that he made all things, leaving the times, the manner, the order, the succession, and even the fact whether there had been a succession, an entire blank. Some think that this is, in fact, all that is meant ; everything else being a mere accommodation tc human notions, or a mythical adormnent. ^Ve can not, however, thus re- gard it. There is, at least, an outline. ^Ve think we can see a reason, why it was not more, and yet enough given to show us a succession, or a series of consecutive steps or natures in the divine working. It may have been to teach us that with Him there is a reserve fountain of power im- mensely greater than he has ever yet manifested. Had there been given. to nature, in the Jirst place, all the potentiality necessary to bring out the universe in time as it was intended to be, and had such, accordingly, beeru the revelation made to us, it would have been no less divine, but far less impressive. It would have removed the supernatural so far away, that the idea would have been dim, if not wholly lost. Had the supernatural,, on the other hand, been more frequent, the depravity of fallen beings would have run into a similar, or we might saj', perhaps, the same error, by con- founding it with ordinary nature. There would be resemblances in such events, as well as iu the strictly natural. Hence, science would begin to. classify, talk about laws, and thus attempt to bring them under her jurisv diction. 242 EXTRAORDINARY LEAP. It could be shown, that there are direct inconsisten- cies in this scheme. We have assurances from the high- est scientific authority that its geological science is really no better than its philosophy ; but Ave prefer to keep here on the higher and wider ground. In his attempt to be cosmological in the widest sense, the writer involves himself in difficulties surpassing all explanation whether of geology or of exegesis. From the wide universe in its earliest dawn of physical being, down to our little earth, there is a forced and sudden leap which is out of all sci- entific as well as Scriptural harmony. And so in respect to time ; we come from the birth of the light in its essence, from the primordial nebulous matter that first issued forth from the invisible nonexistence, right down to the moss- breeding, grass-growing days, which, in comparison with the first, would be like the ratio of Mr. Lord's clock measured times to the common geological epochs. The Reviewer finds fault with the interpretation given of the word beginning. He would be more orthodox here, which it was perfectly easy for him to be, since science, when it assumes this attitude, may just as well take at once the widest as any more limited ground. One costs no more than the other ; and, Scripture being ignored, it is as easy to find the six days in the earliest as in the later chronology. There is, however, some attempt here at exegetical criticism. It is so striking that we can not pass it over. The writer really thinks " that Moses by the Avord beginning meant the beginning," and seems to fancy that such an argument is truly a settlement of the great questions Avhether it was the beginning of time, the beginning of God's first energizing in the universe, the first going forth of the Logos, without which Ave are MATTER AN ENERGY, AN EVER-DOING. 243 plainly taught in tlie Scriptures there is no creation of any kind, — whether it was the beginning before which there was no beginning, or the beginning of a special w'ork in time and space more directly connected with our own mundane habitation, — a beginning commencing with some existing state of the thing which is the subject of such Avorking, and with f^ special act (such as the brooding of the spirit upon the waters,) that was the beginning of a subsequent and well ordered process. All these questions he would regard as answered, or, at least as silenced by the profound exegetical opinion that " Mo- ses by the word beginning really meant the beginning" ! This closes the argument, and renders any other view or remark quite superfluous. But let us look at this soaring view, and see where it really carries us. The writer would make it the begin- ning of the first material, yea, of the first dynamical ex- istence of any kind. We say the first dynamical ; for although there is an attempt, very unscientific and much after the manner of the Italian priests, to excite the the- ological hatred against the author by the common bug- bear of the eternity of matter, yet all science may be defied to show what matter is, if it is not resolvable ulti- mately into the idea of pure force regarded as something subsistent, and separate from a spiritual energy in which it had its origin. Life, v;e have before said (p. 201) was inconceivable except as an energ}'', a doing some- thing, whether by way of outvrard effect (out-doing') in space, or of resistance, that is, maintaining itself against other forces, — as we might there have qualified and rendered unexceptionable our remark. All latent for- ces, as they are called, may in this way be regarded as 244 DIFFEREXCE BETWEEN REST AND INERTIA. continually acting energies, — an inert 'power being a contradiction both in terms and idea. The same may be affirmed, though in a lower sense of matter itself. Life is organizing power, acting or resisting according to an idea. But matter, in the lowest conception we can form of it, is still energy. Rc^t is not inertia. The latter is strictly a mere negative idea that can only be predicated of nothingness. It can have no place in a real universe. The former, as is implied in its ■etymology (re-sto, resisto,') is an equilibrium of powers, a quiescent balance ef forces, but none the less a contin- ual energy, an ever doing, as the very ground and con- dition of its existence. If so, then the first material cre- ation must have been the first dynamical creation, or the beginning of any energizing in space and time below the purely spiritual or divine. It is his determination to bring in his nebular theory •that leads the writer to this. The light mentioned by Moses he would have to be the first light, — not simply the first light upon our earth, and which the plain inter- pretation of Genesis makes to be posterior to the waters, but the first light that ever shone in the universe, the first light ever called into being, the first light in its very essence as it came forth from the invisible, the first out- beaming of the Shekinah, the very birth of that unap- proachable entity that forms the robe* of the King Im- " \Vc hesitate to regard svicli expressions in the Seripfure as mere figures of speech. It would certainly seem to be taught that Deity has, somehow, and soniewhere, a physical splendor which the human eye could not behold and live. Moses could only look upon its l^initiS, its darker side, or rear shadow. It would seem to be the same that Peter calls ^Sya'ko'n'^-ifrii So^a, "Ihc Excellent Glory " or the mngnificcKt glory, 5 Pet. i, 17, from wliich, or rather under which (iro T>;.c} came forth tlio FIRST LIGHT OP PHYSICAL BEING. 245 mortal. This birth of the light, then, if it is referred to by Moses, was in the work of the first day. We might say, earth's first day, if we followed Moses at all, for he makes his first mention of it in the verse wherein he be- gins to speak of the creation of the earth as being before that of the heavens, and this mention is immediately after what is antithetically said of the darkness on the face of the terrestrial deep.' The Spirit broods upon the Waters ; then comes forth the Word, and the luminous manifesta- tion is made. But in the scientific theory, which, al- though, professing to be in harmony with Moses, is too ambitious to take him for a guide, we are yet far oflffrom the earth ; we have not yet come near its lower orb ; we are immensely distant from it in time and space ; we are not merely in the heavens, the astronomical heavens of nebular and stellar systems, but in the very remotest time and space bounds of the all but infinite universe. The scheme re(i[uires that the light mentioned by Mo- ses should be the first light of physical being, the first born of the cosmical creation, and this would carry us to a time before any division of the universal fluid, before the active commencement of gravitation, or of any draiv- ing to separate centres of motion as the initial embryotic voice that proclaimed the Eterual Son. The truth that God is a Spirit is not at all at war with the thought that he has made for himself such a pe- I'uliar reside.ice ia an outward glory. If, however, we regard it as a mate- rial splendor in any sense, it must be older than that light that first " shone out of the darkness" (Ix (fxoTOvg, 2 Cor. iv, 6,) which i-ested on the early Tellurian waters. For other mention of this Shekinal glory, of which the .Jewish Shekiuah was the earthly representative, the reader is referred to such passages as Isa. vi, 1, John xii,41, Acts vii, 55, Luke ii, 9, Psalm civ, 1, 1 Tim. vi, 16, 1 Kings viii, 11, Ezekiel i, 26, 27, 28. Certain very strange notions of the Jewish doctors respecting it, may be found inBuxtorf'sChal- daic Lexicon, on the word triiS©. 21* 246 MOTION OF LIGHT. conception of systems and -n-orlds. We take this nebu- lar theory as we find it presented by scientific men ; but although greatly admiring it, in some of its sublime out- lines, we can not be responsible for the difficulties it throws in the way of that scientific exegesis of the Mo- saic creation which would mate it cosmical in the widest and oldest extent of the term. The chief difficulty arises from what is said, in the books, of the motion of light. If the consideration of it draws us into a seeming digres- sion from our main course of argument, we ask the read- er's kind indulgence. Science tells us, and we are in- clined to believe her, that there are worlds now visible through the most powerful telescopes, yet so inconceiva- bly distant, that to have reached our earth within any historical period their light must have been traveling toward us for millions of years before man appeared. The ray that now terminates its long journey on the retina of a human eye, commenced that long journey when our infant earth had not yet been " robed in its garment of clouds," or " wrapped in its swaddling band of thick darkness,"* yea, had not even been born, or come forth from the nebulous womb ; unless we regard it — which, scientifically, we have no right to do — as among the oldest cosmical existences that came out in •distinct form and position. But we are not confined to ihe visible, even though it be the most remotely visible coming to us through the most far-seeing, or tele-scoino powers that have ever been brought to the aid of the hu- man optics. The same scientific analogy presses us on to multiples even of such an inconceivable space and iime, and to multiples of multiples so vast that all of the * Job sxxviii, 9. INCONCEIVABLE EXTENT OF THE UNIVERSE. 247 past and future that our mightiest coroputations can ex- press are insufficient for the journey. Is any science so narrow, not to say trifling, as to limit the universe to the range of Lord Rosse's telescope, or to fancy that all be- yond this arbitral^ limit is a dreary void — a boundless space that a boundless time has never yet seen occupied, in any part, with creations ? Let us test the reasonable- ness of this by some of its own numerical estimates. In- stead of the clumsy and utterly inaderpiate methods sometimes employed to denote immense distances, let us take a pure mathematical expression whose inconceivable power is in direct and striking contrast with its extreme simplicity. Take at once, as its basis, the remotest celes- tial object from which there ever fell a ray upon the spectrum of our mightiest telescope. Call its mile dis- tance X. Then take that transcendental power x"^, and if this be not enough, carry it up the ascending scale x"^, until the degrees of involution themselves amount to x. We are now where the mightiest distance to which the mightiest lens ever penetrated becomes a vanishing infin- itesimal ; and yet we have no right to stop, no analogy that does not carry us still onward, no " sufficient reasori'^ to suppose that we have done anything more than make a beginning of a beginning in the estimate of God's crea- tion. Do we shrink from calling it infinite ? Certain a priori theological ideas do, indeed, forbid the supposition ; but science has no resting place. The same induction that compels her to take the steps already taken, presses her onward forever and forever more. A necessary theology teaches that the universe must be finite ; and yet it may be so, and still extend, most probably does extend, beyond any bounds that even such a formula 248 EACH WORLD WITH A LONG PROJECTING RAY. could reach. We may be near the centre ; we may be near the outer verge, and yet this immeasurable near- ness such, that even between us and that outer verge there may be a wilderness, not merely of solar and stellar but of cosmical systems, — a wilderness of worlds comr pared with which the whole cosmical region through which light has ever travelled to us may be like a single leaf in the forests of the Oronoco. Now the first light that ever shone on, or out of, these distant worlds, or in these inconceivably remote times and spaces, may have been, must have been, junior to the birth itself of that luminous essence, than which we can conceive of nothing older in time and creation. But fixing the mind upon this later cosmical radiating light, we may muse upon the question, although we can not venture to ask it — how long has even this light, this first and most distant radiation, been travelling down to us ? How long before it will ever reach us, or where, perhaps, will be our world, when it arrives ? We are lost. The geological epochs disappear like the fast falling autumnal leaves, or the rapid rain-drops as they vanish in the mea- sureless waters of the ocean. All proportions fail us ; all numerical ratios become incommensurable. Mr. Lord has a very easy way of getting along with this. If he takes the common scientific idea of the motion of light, which we think he does, — for he, too, would be scientific — then he has only to form the very easy hypo- thesis, that all these remote worlds, being all created 'luring the solar week of our earth, were each of them made with an immense projecting horn (rp. ^^'i^s xs^au- vo'f,) or ray of light, issuing from them, and just so long or carried so sufficiently near to us on their first crea- FAITH UNSHAKEN BY SIZE OF THE UNIVNRSE. 249 tion, that their continued light would just reach our earth on the evening of the fourth day. Professor Dana would doubtless regard that as all folly, and would think, per- haps, that he wholly avoids it in his more scientific view of the Mosaic creation. He has increased the scale, to be sure, but losing sight of the principle which should govern in the management of so unvaeldy an instrument, he has only increased the difficulties in the like ratio. Carry it fairly out, where it will fairly go, and the neces- sary elongation it demands for the Mosaic First day, and especially the disproportion it must bear to all the rest, involve us in an absurdity the more disgraceful as the scheme from which it comes is the more pretentious. But is not revelation, too, and all religion, overwhelmed by such a view ? Not at all. Faith stands unmoved and undisc^uieted, if we ^^•ill only keep in mind the estimating principle that has before been adverted to. The great- ness which science computes is quantitative ; hence, too, comparative, and self-overwhelming. However far it may stretch itself, it is driven in to nothingness by conceiving still greater bounds to the physical universe.* On the other hand. Faith and Revelation connect themselves * Tlie samo remark is applicable to that kiudrcil sj-stom of tlieologj- tliat irrounds itself on idililia:, and " greatest happiness," and makes its measure of sill dependent on the amount of niischiof or uuliappiness produced by it, or by its example of impunity, and this, of course, ou some supposed extent of the universe, — sia rising in moral enormity (if we may use the word moral in such a connection) as the universe is supposed to expand, and sinking as it withdraws itself into narrower spaces. Hence it must be aa wholly quantitative as the inductive science to which it is allied. It can have no real qualifi/, or absolute essence, independent of outward com • putatioa. For happiness (wcU-feetingJ and utilities are ever terms of amount in some order or degree, and whatever is grounded upon them mast partake of the same changing character. But the idea of the Good must be soiiicthiivg constant, ever the same, be the universe small or great. 250 THE UNIVERSAL TEHOM OR NEBULAR DEEP. with the supernatural, where the " least in the kingdom''^ is greater than all physical existence. In a fixed rela- tion to a Divine Centre, they present a constant value for each single world, and each individual rationality. It is the same as though that world were the only world, and that individual rationality the only rationality, ex- cept the divine, in the universe both of space and time. Hence no comparison, and no variation of quantity, can derange it. As far, at least, as any such scientific dif- ficulty is concerned, it is a faith that might unshrinkingly accept even an infinity of natural worlds, without dravr- ing its anchors, or parting its cables from their strong hold in God's supernatural revelation of a distinct super- natural world, or state of being. Now, to connect this with our main argument, the sci- entific or nebular scheme of the Mosaic creation requires that the light mentioned Genesis i, 3, should be the first light of universal being, and so, of course, the previously mentioned waters must be sublimated into the all-pervad- ing nebular _/?i«'(^. Instead of being, in any sense, a cha- otic earth, a teliom (tairrn) of waters, it is the nebular tehom, or nebular deep of the universe, out of which came all Avorlds and all systems as well as our own. This, then, was the work of the first day ; but how are we to travel from it to our own " little earth," as it is called, when such a name is thought to suit other parts of the theory ? How are we to get safely down from such dizzy heights of space, and such remotenesses of time, into this " inferior satellite" which God has seen fit to make our secluded habitation, and to which is really confined all our cosmical knowledge that is not the merest mathemat- ical estimate of masses, distances, or comparative visual THE NEBULAR THEORY. 251 angles in space. Such a rash leap might be expected from a mere blundering man of exegesis, but cautious and " exact science," as she calls herself, should have furnished a more secure ladder for so perilous an achieve- ment. She should have made a bridge for us over thi^ tremendous chasm. She should have shown more clearly in which one of the six days, whether in the first or se- cond, we cross from the nebular deep of the kosmos to the dry land, or terra firma, of our own httle islet of the earth. Now, we have nothing to say against the nebular the- ory. Aside from any scientific knowledge on our own part, be it less or more, we could not help respecting what had been advocated by a Henry, a Peirce, and an Alexander among ourselves, to say nothing of distin- guished names abroad. We must confess, too, a great admiration of the sublime physical views it presents, as well as of the genius displayed in their scientific exhibi- tion. But, at the same time, there may be a very rea- sonable doubt whether it can be exegetically forced into any accommodation with the Mosaic creative history. If this nebular theory is to pursue any consistent analogy, the first works it discloses, or the first energizings in mat- ter, can only be regarded as concerned with the rudimen- tary formation of immense systems of worlds instead of the later individual organic growth of single planets. This is judged on the same principle that leads us to re- gard the growth of a tree as a much longer and much older w^ork than the special growth of its fruit. It is a fair comparison that would represent single worlds, and even systems, as the later quick-germinating branches, or ultimate mature products, of the great slow growing 252 NEBULOUS FLUID BREAKING UP. organic body, which, although only preparatory to the fruit, takes a vastly longer time for being brought to the perfection of that fruit-bearing state. Now, the product of the nebular movements are conceived to be (whether truly or falsely does not concern our argument,) immense systems of worlds emerging after inconceivable times, and countless stages, from the at first universally and equally diffused nebular ocean. This primal deep of matter, which the ambitious scientific interpreter would thus make to be the tehom of Moses, is regarded as con- densing, cooling, separating into immense primal divi- sions, and thus acquiring separate centres of cohesive gravitation that divide, if they do not destroy, the allegi- ance to the universal power. These slowly float away ; increasing condensations again part from each other the immensely distant extremities, or separate them from their central parts ; new centres of gravity are formed, and thus the great mass is ever breaking up into initial and succeeding portions, dividing and subdividing them- selves in degrees and stages unknown, and only conceiv- able in the ratio their number bears to the vastness of the finite yet immeasurable space and time they may be supposed to occupy. Next come the smaller yet still immeasurable nebular masses containing the cmbi-yo germs of unnumbered systems. The imagination, — the rational imagination, if there be any rationality in this scientific hypothesis — traces them as throwing off their rings, parting and parting again into concentric waves, surging and eddying in their abysmal vortices, ■whence first emerge islets of nebular worlds still greater, perhaps, than all our sight or thought includes in the visible universe. Kosmoi next appear, and, at last, stel- Solar systems born. 253 lar systems come forth from this grand march of progress. Planets are-yet unborn ; the sun is but an embryo, earth still lower down, an embryo of an embryo. Solar sys- tems are among the things that next take rank and posi- tion in space — First, floating banks of still condensing nebulous ether, disturbed again, and parting into smaller rings which somehow (though science has never explained to us the strange process) break up into spheres and throw off their satellites, until, at last, we but begin to approach the confines of that time and space where geo- logy finds the first dim letters of her real alphabet, the first rude cyphers of her vaunted " book." In fact, there may have been innumerably more stages than these. Adopt this scientific hypothesis, and there is no place in an all but infinite universe where we may scien- tifically stop. Ascending above satellites, planets, solar systems, stellar systems, cosmical systems regarded as a still wider and more ancient elimination, we may have many more as well — earlier in time, more extended in space. The divisions and subdivisions may be beyond any through which the almost invisible speck that floats in the deep currents of the ocean may have been parted successively from its position in the larger floating mass, the earth bank, the boulder, the rock, the mountain, up to the continent, and the globe. We may be but the detritus of the universe. A division carried, in idea, even to such an extent, would not, as we have shown, affect our true moral rank, or our true moral value ; but in determining, or conjecturing, our physical place, we have as good a right to draw on the philosophic imagma- tion for the greater as for any lesser series, and science 22 254 DISPKOPORTION AMONG THE PEKIODS. is defied to prove the one any the less rational than the other. All this, however, may be true or false. We care but little about it — little, we mean, in comparison with the preciousness of what God has actually revealed to us about our own secluded satelUte — all the more precious, too, because so graciously revealed by Him. But we take science as we find her in her exact or inexact de- partments ; we carry out her hypotheses as they may be legitimately carried out ; and we deduce that conclusion, which, however startling, is strictly deducible from the assumption of some scientific men when they would teach us that the Mosaic creation is an expression for their nebular system of the universe. Thus the absurdity of such assumption is shown from the utter disproportion and confusion it would introduce between the creative periods which Moses has defined so distinctly with their regular evening and morning divi- sions. Especially would this be the case in regard to the first and second. The commencement of the nebular movement, and the primeval hght that preceded it, must be assigned to the first day. Its first evening, or darkness, with which it commences, must, in that case, have been the darkness of the old jprivatioriy the antithesis not of the luminous presence but of being itself, the darkness that rested "upon the face" of nothing, — contrary to every impression we get from the Mosaic account. Its morning was not the first morning of the now visible earth and illumined waters, when the previously created " morning stars sang together, and all the Sons of God shouted for joy," but the first gray dawn of the first nebulous undulation that faiutlv stirred the ocean of nou- ARE ALL PARTS OF THE AVORLD OP EQUAL AGE ? 255 entity. Thus it lies far away from the other days. It is immensely remote from them in space ; its locality is not the earth, but the broad field of the universe ; its time is measured by no earthly change marking any terrestrial evening and morning, while its least period runs through the course of inconceivable ages before earth was born. Yet from such an unimaginable magnitude of space and time, a magnitude for which mathematical analysis finds no expression that does not start with a measuring unit transcending all that sight reveals, there is a sudden jump riglit down to this earth, and all the rest is occupied with earth's mosses, earth's reptiles, and the dispersion of the earthly vapor that the sun may shine upon them. What is still more absurd, the second day must be wholly overlooked, as having no work assignable to it. There are difficulties in the Scriptures, but none to be compared to this into which we get ourselves by departing from interpretation, and taking this pious talking science for our guide. Some answer might be attempted to this, by the sup- position, for it would be nothing more, that all organic bodies in the universe are of equal age, that all parts have 'proceeded jyari passu from the first nebular stages, exhibiting, at every date, and at the present time, an equal advancement ; so that the same days, the same periods of gaseous fluid, water, atmosphere, land, vegeta- tion, animal life, etc., would do for all. In other words, that the day of the week for each might be found from the same almanack, and the age of each determined from the same chronological table. But there is no evidence of this. The visible analogy of things furnishes strong evidence to the contrary. Even to the naked eye there 256 "STAR DIFFERETH FROM STAR IN GLORY." are striking differences in the apparent states of different parts of the visible universe. " One star differeth from another star in glory." It is probable that there is a like difference in their ages. We mean their relative age ; for one organism may have existed for thousands of centuries and yet be in its youth, whilst another, mea- sured but by days or years, has already reached its de- crepitude. The telescope carries the proof of this much farther. Modern discovery shows that the varieties are Incalculable. They run through all degrees of infancy, 'of juniority, and perhaps of senile decay. Even in our near solar system, right round us we may say, great vari- eties present themselves in the stages of progress. There is good evidence that some of the planets are not yet as far advanced as earth in its first and second days. Jupiter, huge as he is, has not yet got off his " swad- dling bands." (See Job xxxviii.) He is where the earth was when the cloud was its permanent garment. Our best astronomers have just shown that the rings of Saturn are in a fluid state. He exhibits what some, with much plausibility, think Moses may have meant of an ancient state of the earth, when there was a real sea of waters above as well as below the firmament.* Our more dis- tant neighbor, Neptune, may be nothing but gas, or have lardly arrived at the density of liquid ether. Mars may be yet azoic, or, " as nearly as we can learn, some- where between the coal period and the middle reptilian" ; whilst Mercury may have passed that stage of condensa- * 111 tliis way. perlmps, vre might account for the fli)0j,aaTa, hloicbicrs, bubbles, etc. 266 ARCHEOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY. tific schemes, yet the forcing upon him of so much geo- logical or astronomical knowledge really over-docs the business. It is too much for the credulity, either of the sciolist or the religionist. This extreme nebular view of the Mosaic account may be met by the same answer that we have given to Mr. Lord's narrow hypothesis. They are both, although in draerent ways, opposed to what may be called the archaeo- logical and eschatological analogy of Scripture. First, — to compare it with the narrower view, — the creative days are no more common solar days than the great days of prophecy are such. The darkness on the waters, the Brooding Spirit, the sky appearing, land appearing, vegetation, animation, man — these are no more confined within the clock-measured limits of twenty-four hours each, than the great " Latter Day" of the world, the " Day of Judgment," the " Day of Christ's Reign," or the Hfjt-s'^a Aiuvos of St. Peter. And so — to run the se- cond parallel — these creative epochs of our own planet have no more connection with universal nebular conden- sations, and the origin of galaxies, stellar, and solar sys- tems, than the corresponding predicted periods of earth's eschatology have to do with the destinies of Sirius and Orion. There is grandeur enough in Moses as he is. Science can never elevate his thought, or mend his lan- guage. " And darkness was upon the face of the Deep, and the Spirit of God was brooding o'er the waters," — the same waters that afterwards in obedience to this life- giving power " brought forth the living thing" each after its type, idea, or kind. How remarkable the conception ! We have become familiar with it ; we have marred it by our science and our philosophy. But throwing these GRANDEUR OF MOSES. 267 aside, and going back to the early day when this was written, we can never exhaust our wonder in the contem- plation. Whence came it to these primitive writers of Job and Genesis ? The difficulty is certainly not met by saying that they took it from others, even if there were any proof of such a mere assertion. Whence came it to the early human thought at all ? Viewed even as an pagination, a picture of the mind, it is hard to account for it without the aid of the supernatural, or to resist the belief that it came from a knowledge higher than any to which science can ever hope to attain. There is gran- deur enough in JMoses as he is, we say again. It i1 the only greatness that can truly and religiously affect us. The nebular view of the universe may be physically right m itself. ^ It strongly challenges our admiration. But, after all, it has mainly guesses for our science, whilst it presents but a cold waste for the imagination. It con- nects itself but little with any devout feeling, and has really no basis in any fair interpretation of Scripture. 268 SCIENTIFIC SIX DAYS AT WAR WITH EXEGESIS. CHAPTER IX. SCIENTIFIC SIX LAYS AT WAR WITH EXEGESIS. 'The Word Bara. — The Beginning — Tlie Shemitie Mind — Words for Creation. — The Heir exo — The Neto Testament Terms — The Philosophical Greeh — The Arabic Words for Creation — Emotional Aim of the Bible. — Did Moses think of an Absolute Principium'^ — Six Arguments : \st. From the First Verse generally — 2,d. The Words Heaven and Earth; Do they denote Universality'^ — M. The Earth the Locus of the First Energizing mentioned by Moses — ^th. The Light after the Waters — Wi. Heavens Built over the Earth — Qth. The First Verse, if severed from the rest, must be Extra Dies. — Parallelism of the Mosaic Account with the First of John, — Patristic View of its 3c? and Ath Verses. Such is a fair statement of the scientific difficulties in the way of this nebulai- accommodation of the IMosaic account. There may be errors in detail. There may be some things the sciolist may call blunders, and for which we should not be much concerned, even should he prove them to be such. For the general view the author holds himself responsible, and the foundation that has been laid for it, he thinks, can not be shaken. But now, turn we to another proof, to the more sure ground of rational exegesis. Connected with these questions is the meanina; of the word sis, rendered create, the mean- THE VrORD BARA. 269 ing of the word ^^»m-., or beginning, the meaning of the expression used to denote the origination of the earthlj light, and the discussion of the order in which the first creative events — we mean those recorded by Moses actually took place. We will touch upon these in 'the briefest manner consistent with their importance, avoid- ing, as much as possible, what has been elesewhere and previously said. The author has been asked, " what Hebrew word he would substitute for the one used, that would convey the precise idea of creation out of noihmg,''—(^Bihliotheca Sacra for Jan. 1856,^. 103). He answers very briefly, — there is no such Hebrew word ; there is none such in the old Shemitic languages, and the only reason that can be given for it is that there was no such idea in the Shemitic mind,— we mean no such idea objectively con- templated, or that had made itself outward in their actual thinking. The root xna is sometimes used to denote the " making of a new tiling in the earth," as in Jeremiah xxxi, 22, or a prodigy, something before unknown, or that had not appeared, as in Numbers xvi, 30; but how different this is from that most difficult of all meta- physical conceptions, the bringing into substance from absolute nihility, every candid, inteUigent reader must at once perceive. In one sense, and a very inteHigible sense, the production of any new tUng, or of ^.xi^new state of things, is a making of what ^vas not before, and so a coming forth from not being. In this view the hu- man artist creates what before was not. The rags are not the paper that is made from them, nor the paplr the rags. Neither are the paper, the ink, the cloth, in a true sense, the book, even regarded in its mechanical or 23* 270 GOD OLDER THAX MATTER. artistic execution, much less the -words, and still less the thoughts contained. The extraordinary nature of the act makes no difference in the case. The opening of the earth, Numbers xvi, 30, was not the elimination of any new substance, nor of any new force, but only the bring- ing out of a new effect from causes natural or supernatu- ral. In other words, trace it as far as we will, it is ever, in such cases, to be regarded as a new thing, not new matter. And yet it does not follow, but that if the question had been distinctly put to an ancient Hebrew or Arab, Do you believe the world, or even matter (mak- ing him understand the distinction) to be as old as God ? he would not have said No as distinctly as the profound- est theologian or metaphysician among us ; as intelli- gently, too, we might say, since, in respect to this primal idea, all minds are on a par — it being rather a neces- sary logical negation we are compelled to utter, than any thing we can reduce to a conception, or any form of ra- tional thought. So we believe that the descendant, Avhether of Isaac or of Ishmael, would have promptly .answered, had the query been presented to him : but ;it was not a speculation of that Hebrew mind, nor a form of that Hebrew mode of conceiving, nor, conse- quently, a phrase of that Hebrew mode of language which God in his wisdom selected as the human me- dium of his oldest revelation. We venture, therefore, to say, that creation out of nothing is neither affirmed nor denied in the Old Testament,* although the divine huilding (xtiVis) of this present world of ours, and of the heavens, or sky, immediately around it, and the ap- * Wc moan, by any use of this word ; although there are passages where the idea may seem to be expressed in some other way, as Isaiah, xlviii, 13. THE PURE SHEMITIC THEISM. 271 pearances of the heavenly bodies therein, are most sub- limely set forth, — far more subhmel}'- and impressively than could have been done by any metaphysical lan- guage that would have -been required for the abstract idea. Such speculations about the eternity or non-eter- nity of matter, were on each side of the Children of Shem — beyond the Indus and beyond the Halys. They entered into the early Greek and Hindoo philosophy; but the Shemitic mind, that lay between, was too simply practical in its worship to think much about them, and too pure in its theism to feel much alarm about them. Paradoxical as it may appear, we may even venture the opinion, that this pure theism was saved from a philoso- phical deterioration, by that very thing which some would object to as the anthropopathism of the Old Testament. It is pantheism with its philosophical dialect and its ir- reverent attempts to explain the inexplicable archreology of the universe, that has bred the wildest theological mon- sters. It is the scientific theism that runs into a dry nature worship, whether disguised in the mythological forms under which the crude yet ambitious knowledge of the early times sought to conceal itself from the vulgar, or the talk of laws, and forces, and principia, whicli now serves as the medium of a like spirit, and a cover to a like false yet vaunting religionism. The anthropopathic images of the Jewish Scriptures preserved that all-impor- tant idea of personality, — an idea of so much more reli- gious value than any abstract notions of causation or originating power, and which is ever tending to perish from the minds of those who claim to themselves what they would call a higher style of thought and language. We believe that every one must feel this who enters 272 GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE. deeply into the spirit of the Old Scriptures ; neither can such a one fail to have observed the remarkable fact, how intimately connected, sometimes, is this anthropo- pathic language with other declarations that startle us by a spirituality of conception surpassing the highest hu- man utterance. And thus do these Scriptures speak of creation. We recognize this combination of the unutterably sublime with the simplest forms of speech expressive of architec- tural or constructive ideas. The same mode of thinkinsr and speaking comes down, too, to the writers of the New Testament. They^ certainly, were not compelled to em- ploy language merely adapted, as some would say, to the infancy of the world, and only used in the early days because nothing better and higher could then be obtained. Philosophy, in the meantime, had grown to swelling dimensions. The language in which they wrote abound- ed in her choicest, most carefully compounded diction. There Avas certainly no lack of metaphysical terms in the Greek, as is shown by the fact, that, in this respect, it has become the store-house of the modern philosophical speech. Especially was this the case in regard to the language of generation or origin. Plato's Parmenides and Timaeus furnished enough of this lingo of the heing and not being, and the ovra, and the m---? ovTit, and Latin Sero. The creative idea is involved in that of semination and growth, Qa-na (^sp), to get — acquire — jjossess. We have elsewhere remarked upon this word as having in Hebrew the sense of generation, and so of creation, examples of Avhich may be found Genesis iv, 1, xiv, 19, 22, Psalm cxxxix, 13, Proverbs viii, 22. Compare the order of ideas in our Saxon get — he-get — he-gotten. Ta-na {Ta-ya-nd), (T^^)? the plastic sense — to form, or fashion (of earth.) La-ha (JLa-wa-liai), nxV, or niV, the sense of sliining — sliining vapor. A noun from it is used to denote the mirage, or the appearance of seas or lakes in the desert, — thus giving us the idea of order and beauty standing forth from waste and desolation. Should any one say that such sensible images are all that could be expected in the early age of the world, or that language is thus necessarily sensuous, we can admit the view without the least hesitation. Language traced to its roots is ever sensuous, and must be so, not because it is addressed to the early men, but to all men, as men, who can never do without sensuous images in their thoughts. It was so, doubtless, in the early speech, but let it be remembered that when the wters of the Bible THE NON-APPARENTIA. 277 came to use a language which philosophy bad vastly im- proved, (if it was an improvement,) and carried as far as possible out of the sensuous into the abstract, or seem- ingly abstract, they still adhered to the old style, repre- senting creation as a building, a putting together, o, fram- ing of ivorlds or ages, and, in the most supersensual (or rather least sensuous) conception they ventured to em- ploy, a bringing forth of the phenomenal, not from abso- lute not being (^m ovtwv) but from the non appearing (fx'<7 ij3aivoy./vwv) — the 7ion apparentibus,* as Calvin truly renders it. "We admit the necessity of language, and we only ask those who make the objection to give it all its force. We understand, notionally and logically, the proposition, zvhat is, once was not. We can carry it thus notionally and logically to the extreme negation of all sense conception, but what have we left but a blank in thought, unless the sense reacts, and images a dark nihility, as, in some way, the material ex quo, out of which all things in some way came ? We may, at any time, if we please, have this blank thought as a refuge against that apprehension of matter's eternity which some would regard as the sum of all heresy, and which the author himself holds to be atheistical. But when we * We have already referred to one of Professor Dana's exegetical criti- cisms oa the word beginning. There is another on which he ventures in respect to tlie view taken of Hebrews xi, 3. He calls the reading, and the version, which would be in accordance with this sense, "a liberty taken with the sacred text.'" Mr. Lord does the same thing, but as he puts it on the ground of sheer falsifying, and without the least shadow of refuta- tion, we can not regard him or his charge as worthy of any notice. When any man of any real weight as a Biblical scholar makes the objection, our brief defence would be, that a view sanctioned by the two oldest versions, the Latin and the Syriac, brought out by Calvin, and sustained by the best modern German authorities, is so far from being a " liberty taken with the sacred text," that it has the best of all critical arguments in its support, 278 LIVING THOUGHT OF THE LIVING GOD. have reached such an extremely rarefied, or rather nihil- ified negative, what is it, for strength and vividness, and power of religious emotion, as compared with the concep- tions aroused by the radical images of these Arabic and Hebrew words ? If God has made the revelation in this manner by way of " accommodation" to us, why should we not be accommodated by it ? We may seek to get above them ; we may, in so doing, involve ourselves in any amount of darkness under the name of the profound ; and it will not do us much hurt, perhaps, unless it obscures the impression of those accommodating images with which He who made the human soul as well as the physical worlds has so graciously furnished us. When this is the case, it may be found that we have gained dimness for brightness, vacuity for fullness, a dead gnosticism for living thought, — that living thought of the Living God which Revelation aims to give us, as something vastly more glorious than any mere knowledge whether it take to itself the ancient form of a philosophical pantheism, or the more modern guise of an arid scientific theism. Should the question be put in this form — What He- brew word would Moses have probably employed, had he actually wished to convey this idea of an absolute cre- ation of matter from previous nonentity, or of force, activity, and motion* from a previous negation of all these ideas ? We may answer, that it would most likely have been this word hara. This, however, would not be on the ground that such is the radical idea of the word, but because it would come as near to it as any others of the * We have no words that are strictly the uegationa of these. ImmohU- ity and re$t are not the negation but the ojiposilion, or resistance, oi activ- ity and motion. THE ABSOLUTE BEGINNING. 279 formative class, and its use for something new and before unseen (although without any recognition of the meta- physical idea) would make it yet more suitable. Still, the whole decision of this depends on the context. It is purely a question of interpretation, with which science has nothing to do, even had she any means of answering it. It is, moreover, altogether distinct from that other view of the absolute beginning, at some time, of material existence, as matter of fact. To deny that is atheism. But whether Moses meant such absolute bednnino: of all undivine existence, is a question that has been enter- tained by the best men in the Christian church. It af- fects no man's orthodoxy, or reputation for orthodoxy. It may be that INIoses took in all of material being as far as he knew it, or that he meant to teach, and was in- spired to teach, the general truth that all things came from God. But this may have been in various ways, and for various purposes. The aim may have been an impression of the Divine power and greatness, rather than a lesson of curious knowledge. The accomplish- ment of this aim might have been attempted in the use of general terms universal in extent, so as to satisfy the philosophical state of mind, but comparatively feeble in respect to strength and vividness of emotion ; or it might have been effected, perhaps better effected, by presenting, for such a purpose, a picture partial and temporal, yet most graphic, of the Divine power in the building of the visible heavens and earth, with all that is visible in them, regarded rather as they ajypear than in their essence or essential causality. It may even be conceded that if Moses had been interrogated, as one has supposed, he would have said that he meant all things, 280 LUCIFERI, OR SOXS OF THE MORNING. in space at least ; and yet, the question returns, "VVliat is the fair import of his language, and how does it au- thorize us to fix any metaphysical notions upon his pic - torial words ? We have elsewhere remarked, that it could not have been the beginning of all spiritual being below the Di- vine ; for angels, " Sons of God," " Sons of the Morn- ing," or Lucife?-i, are recognized as being in existence ■when God laid the foundations of the earth. Angehc tsxistence implies some kind of dynamical occupancy of space, which it is very hard for us to separate from some idea of the material, unless we ascribe to such beings attributes we have been accustomed to think of as spe- cially Divine. But be that as it may, we come back to the first verse in Genesis, and we ask, — What does it fairly mean according to the conceptions it creates in our minds ? " In the heginning Crod created the Hea- vens and the Earth.'''' Does it refer to something ante- cedent to all that is mentioned in the subsequent verses, or is it, in fact, a title or caption to the whole account ? 30 that the Heavens and Earth there mentioned are the same Pleavens and Earth described immediately after- wards in the second and eighth verses. We would con- fess that the main arguments inclining us to the latter view, arise from the gi-eat difficulties (not scientific, but hermeneutical,) connected with the other. In the first place, there is no intrinsic evidence that the first verse is thus severed from the others, or that it stands by itself denoting a period of distinct and antecedent working, — much less a period so remotely antecedent as would be required for a scientific hypothesis commencing with the absolute elimination of light. This would be our -first I FIRST VERSE IN GENESIS. 281 argument. Ifc is negative, we admit, and not conclusive. The opposite view has most respectable advocates, and was held by some of the Fathers. It would not be at war with any other conclusions we have deduced re- specting the indefinite length of the days. That inter- pretation is entirely independent of it, and may be main- tained, with equal force and fairness, without denying that Moses meant the absolute principium, or expressing anj opinion about it. He may have meant some ineffable antecedent act ; but if so, then it might be very fairly argued, that to such act he also meant that the word bara should be specially, if not exclusively, applied. That was creation, then ; all else was a mere arrange- ment of what had been created in the beginning. But other uses of the word, not only throughout the Bible, but in this very account, are at war with such a suppo- sition. There were creations after the primordial act, — creations, beyond all doubt, the fashioning or organizing existing materials both into outward form and internal constitution. But without dwelling farther on this, we proceed to our argument — 2d. If the First verse means a creating act antece- dent to all organization, then its words Heaven and Earth can not be taken in their definite, visible, or local sense, as they are afterward employed, but must be regarded as general terms for the first matter as yet undivided and unformed. Some have supposed that this was actually expressed by the particle mn, which was understood to denote the matter^ the substance, of the Heavens and the Earth. The best Hebrew sholars, however, reject any such notion, regarding this little word as simply a sign of the accusative case, or rather as having very 24* 282 HEBREW WORD FOR MATTER. much the same force with the Greek and Latin reflexive pronouns ; so that £=i''>s»n nx and pwn nx -woukl be the Heaven itself^ or the very Heavens^ and the very Earth. We would not attach much importance either way to any argument drawn from the use of this particle, but, thus regarded, it would favor the interpretation which makes the Earth and Heavens of the first verse the same with the Earth of the second, and the Heavens mention- ed in the eighth below. But if Moses meant the origin- ation of matter per se, " why could he not have said so" ? We use the language of an objector, which is applied to another purpose, but is more applicable here. If it be said that the Hebrew language furnished no such word as matter in its elementary or philosophical sense, ov first matter distinct from any particular forms it might assvime, this would only show how foreign all such metaphysical or elementary conceptions were from their clear practical •modes of thinking.* When something like the idea of * The Hebrew had roots from which such words could be formed, when- ever the progress of speculative thinking might make them necessary for those who used the language. We have already refeiTed to the plural of ■I3y, the word for dust as thus employed, Prov. viii, 26, [Six Days of Cre- ation, p. 323,) and we might cite another that would geem to come the nearest to such an idea of any terms in the Hebrew Bible. It is the word S3^J>, much employed by the Rabbinical writers to denote liubsfance, and having something of the same thought in a few places of the Old Tes- tament, as Genesis ii, 23, where Adam says of Eve, according to the com- mon rendering, "This is bone of my bone," but it may be translated, sub- i-.tancc of my substance. We might suppose this idea of substance to come from the sense bone, so frequent elsewhere, were it not that such a view would be out of harmony with the spirit of the remai'kable expression, Exod. xxiv, 10, where it is used to denote the very substance, or supposed substance, of the Heavens themselves, (t^"i>3ffln tSisy,) ''the very sub- stance of the Heaven in its punty." This would rather lead us to refer such use of the word to the primary idea of potccr or strcufcth, which be- longs to the root as a verb. It wonld take us directly and naturally to MOSES UNDOUBTEDLY ORTHODOX. 283 first existence from nonentity is to be expressed, which wc think is intended, Isaiah xlviii, 13, then we have the bold personifications of poetry, so much more eflective than any prose statement that Avould have required the other kind of Language. " I call to them, tJiey stand up together.^^ No doubt Moses was as orthodox here as any of us, but did he think of primal matter per se ? That is the question. Did it come within the plan of his sublime de- scription ? It is said, with some apparent force, that if not taught here, this great truth of first origin is wanting in the Bible. That we think is an error. There are other places where it would appear to be expressed, such as the one just referred to in Isaiah, and still more clearly in John i, 3, which seems to go farther back in time, and to be more universal both in space and height, than the account given by Moses. And yet if it were not taught in the Scriptures, it would detract nothing from the evidence of their inspiration or their dignity. The being of a God is not taught, as a direct lesson, in the Bible. It is everywhere assumed, not as something which might be deduced from any scientific search into nature, but as a thought which the human soul has no right to be without, even for a moment. It can not be innocently destitute of it, that is, innocently atheistical, that notion oi force, resistance, and so, o^hardriess, v^hich is the ultimate of all our thinking about matter. The same word seems to be used of the primal matter, or primal causal energy (whatever that may be) of the hu- man organism, in the passage before quoted from Psalm cxsxix, 14, "My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." The thought is, that this primal matter, or primal force, is "naked and laid bare to Him with whom no creation is invisible," (xTiVij CtCpavi)?, Heb. iv, 13,)— thereby implying how obscure it is, and difficult of conception, to the finite human mind. 28-i ALL WORLDS IN TIME — ALL WORLDS IN SPACE. during the time that would be necessary for drawing a conclusion from physical facts, or outward testimony of any kind. The same may be said of the dependence of the universe on God, whether that universe be gi'eat or small ; for the amount of space and time here makes no difference. It was, therefore, a sufficient design in Ge- nesis to give us that which must ever be to us the most glorious example of God's woi-king, namely, the kfisis, or building of our own earth and the near visible heavens above it. That all things else, known or unknown, came from the- same hand, and this in respect to time as well as space, would be, not so much an inference, as a thought inseparably connected with it, and so, we might say, re- vealed in it. He who made us, made all things ; " and without him was there nothing made that was made." But let us look at the objection in another' form. It regards it as a derogation from the dignity of revelation, if Moses, in his graphic picture, is not supposed to begin with the absolute principium before which time was not. But there would seem to be a ready answer to this by putting a precisely similar question. If all things in time, why not all things in space ? Why not all worlds as well as all ages, — that is, all aeons or olams in one sense as well as in the other. If it be said that the one is to bo inferred from the words Heaven and Earth , how- ever partial the space knowledge or conception with which these words were connected in the mind of Moses, then we also say that by a like inference we mount up above the particular times presented in his creative pic- ture ; although, whether we shall gain anything by so doing, either in clearness of thought, or vividness of emo- tion, may be a very serious question. FIRST VERSE m GENESIS. 285 It maj be said that the world had not then science enough to have understood the language necessary for such a space revelation, in the attempt to convej anytWn^ like an adequate conception. That maj be. But are we sure that the world had science enough then, or has science enough now, or ever will have science enough to apprehend adequately the ineffable mystery of primordial formation ? The fact may be inferred from an account necessarily partial so far as we can make it matter of conception ; but did such primordial birth of entities, as entities, form a designed part of Moses' vivid picture ? Iks IS the question, and this brings us to another view ot the subject. We say, then — 3dly. The beginning, of which the writer of Genesis i speaks m the first verse, must have been a beginnino- on this earth, the very earth we now inhabit; and thfs is mamtamed because the earth, or the waters of the earth was the place of the first distinct act mentioned in the account. " The earth was without form and void * Tor waste^ and desolate) and darkness was on the face of the deep. Here we have the opening of this grand drama with Its SIX subhme acts. It is the date and the locus of the first special energy-we mean the first special energy recorded. " And the Spirit of God brooded on the waters. Now, if by the word create, in the first verse Moses had meant an act, or acts, prior to this, we think he would have used the same language ; for we may regard it as an established Bible truth, that all cre- ative acts, and creative agency, are through the Spirit 286 LIGHT OLDER THAN AYATER. and the Word. (Vide John i, 2, Coloss. i, 16.) But for such antecedent act, if Moses meant to set it forth, there is no mention of any such agency of the Spirit ; there is no such going forth of the Word. Would the formula, so emphatic and constant afterward, have heen omitted in the great primordial scene, if the writer really meant to make it part of his description ? This " brood- ing on the waters," then, is the first creative act, if not of the universal origination, at least among the acts pic- tured, and meant to be pictured, by Moses. If so, then this was the beginning, not of all things absolutely, but of the Mosaic account. 4th. In the universal creation, it is not easy for us to conceive, and still less easy to believe, that the absolute origination of light was later than the constitution of the water. It is not an objection of science, but of our com- mon thinking. Light, in itself, must have been before the grosser fluid. But we would not depend upon this alone. Scripture confirms the thought that it must have been the oldest of material manifestations, if it is material at all. We refer to passages already quoted, which re- present it as the raiment and dwelling place of Deity, — language which, for reasons already given, we can not regard as simply figurative. Again — the Luciferi* or light bearing " Sons of the Morning," or " Morning Stars," must have been light, or must have had light, * In these Luciferi there is a reference, doubtless, to AugcHc or super- human beings. But the old belief did also connect them wiih the stars as their abod^ or as their luminous representatives. We have alluded to t!iis in the other volume. Six Dajjs of Creation, pp. 349, 350, to which the reader is referred. Wliether this old belief, in the days of Job, be fanciful or not, it shows the idea that stars really existed before the creation of the earth, and that is a just argument in the interpretation of the Mosaic ac- count IN GENESIS, WATER BEFORE THE LIGHT. 287 wlien they " shouted for joy and sang together," at the laying of earth's corner stone. The language may be poetical, but ifc is very significant. It is inconsistent with the idea of a universe shrouded in " primeval dark- ness," to^use our critic's language. Such darkness, did, indeed, rest on the earth when this ancient music of the spheres was heard, but there must have been morning somewhere sv To7g iitov^avloig, " in the Heavenly Places," or, rather, as the word means, the Super-celestial Places. When we come, however, to consider the particular chro- nology of the Mosaic creation, and the picture of events as they took place on our earth, nothing can be more clear than that, if it observes any order of ideas, the wa- ters, and an earth covered with waters, were before the light there mentioned. It could not, therefore, have been the primordial light of the universe, but only its first shin- ing on that dark, and undivided, and therefore forinless waste of waters. We see not how the conclusion can be avoided. If light is earlier than water, then the argu- ment deduced from it respecting the absolute principium being intended in the INIosaic account utterly fails ; and this would equally be the case whether light is regarded as a substance or an effect.* *The primordial light must have been before the waters. Such "is the argument of Professor Dana, p. 114, January number of Andover Biblio- theca Sacra. To be sure, he denies that light is an "independent entity." " It is a result," he says, " of chemical change," or " produced by molecu- lar disturbance." Here he thinks he has actually seized the mystery. Light is " molecular action." Hence, he argues very sagely, light being molecular action, matter vrithout such molecular action veould not be light — that is, it would be dark; and so, also, having no heat, it would be cold and dead. " Let it be endowed, then, with intense attraction (moderate attraction it seems would not do) and it would produce light as the first effect of the mutual action begun." " Thus science, in its latest develop- ments, declares as distinctly as the Bible, ou the first day light was." 288 IS LIGHT AN INDEPENDENT ENTITY ? 5tli. In the Mosaic narrative the Earth is created before the Heaven. Such, also, is the representation in other Here we have again the curious paralleHsm ; ouly science, as usual, holds tlie most prominent place. It is not behind Moses in anything. It talks " as distinctly" as the Divine revelation which would have been wholly unnecessary had it been delayed until these " latest developments." Such a scientific display may wonderfully strengthen the faith of certain religionists who know as little of science as they do of the Bible ; but need the intelligent reader be told that there is really no light in it ? The " lat- est developments" are yet at a vast distance from the real mystery. They do not tell us "where light dwelleth ;" they can not " show us the path to its house." Boast as they may, the challenge in Job is yet unanswered. The philosophy of a Humboldt frankly admits this ; the science of other men resents the assertion, as though it were an insulting derogation h-om the claims of the second " revelation." Light, then, is an effect — an effect of some condition of material sub- stance. This is all that the Professor's fine words amount to. We would ask, in the first place, does he mean the sensation to which there is fre- quently given this name, or with which it is so often confounded ? Light, in that sense, is a mixed product, an outward material working in some kind of combination with an inward sensorium, or sensorialaction. But no one ever expressed that more clearly than Aristotle did two thousand years ago in his treatise Ils^i Yv)(rii. " The latest developments" have ceataiuly done nothing in that direction, unless something should result from the clairvoyant experiments of Dr. Hare and the Mesmerisers. But light is an ej/cct. What then? An e/fcci is an out-icoiking ; and this out- working is all that science can see. It is an out-working conditioned on a certain state of matter, and this state of matter is another out- working con- ditioned on another state, and so on up to the primal material entity. So, also, is water an effect. It is conditioned on a certain combination of oxy- gen and hydrogen. These, too, may be effects — each of them — and their conditioning forces may be effects, and so on, effects of effects, as far as science can trace, should she rub her glasses to the utmost. She has for some time been engaged in splitting up matter into any number of " inde- pendent entities," though all along suspecting that she is in the wrong di- rection. She may be near tlie other leg of the hyperbola of i)rogress, where it curves round again to the ideas of simplicity and unity. She niaj-, per- haps, in time, discover the first matter. But as far as we can secit is ever an effect. It is, all along, a doing, an activiti/, (for that is all that science has ever seen and therefore all she] can infer) until we get up to this first matter, and what that is but a doing, an aclivily still, we caa not tell. Nothing, then, is gained by this. We might as well take light for an entity, as any of the material states in which it is said to be coudi- ANCIENT SCIENTIFIC CONVENTIONS. 289 parts of the Bible — " Who formed the Earth and stretch- ed out the Heavens over them." " To the Lord belong tioned, even if science liiiew far more tlian she does know, or ever will know, about these conditioning causalities. Instead of knowing " wliere light dwelleth," either as an entity, or au effect, our scientific Professor can tell us notliing about the material condition even of its secondary mo- difications, or the molecular state on which depend varieties of color. He may use as much technical language as he pleases, but it all comes out iu this bald, barren proposition, — a certain atomic or molecular condition is the ground for the reflection of a certain color in distinction from any other. Very likely. We could almost have told that a priori. The Professor may be safely defied to tell what that molecular condition is which makes the paper ou which he writ s of one color, and the ink he uses, of another. He can no more tell us how one hair is black or white, tlian he can make one hair black or white. Again, he says, the light is conditioned on the chemical aiHnities of the molecules ; but wlio knows if it may not be the other way, the affinities of the molecules conditioned on the light ? Chemical afiinity may be condi- tioned ou the presence of a substance which is the ground both of the affin- ity and the ultimate visibility ; and this conditioning substance we may call light, although it is invisible to science, which cau only see results, fjfccts, — out-workings, even of light itself. On iuch a view, it would be very much a question of naming. We may stop at any one manifestation, or we may call everything an effect, and deny it the name of an entity, until we mount up, actually or iu thought, to the first matter, or the first activity/, the one universal material substance of the aniver«e. Is everything else a manifestation of this primal matter or primal activity? For we must saj- for ourselves, we find it very difficult to conceive of it in any other way. To such a question no science can say Yes or No. Are there one, or two, or more [first material principles? The discussion of this question com- menced in the first Ionic Scientific Convention of which Thales was first President; and we must say that the meeting of 1856, which lately took place in tlie city of Albany, had not yet arrived in sight of a decision. The modern gathering, liad, doubtless, a vastly greater array of facts, and those facts, too, arranged and classified in a vastly more scientific order. They, therefore, had a perfect right, which right they fully exercised, to talk much more of progress, and blow a louder trumpet ; but iu regard to these first facts they were pretty mucli on a par with their bretliren of the olden time. And so it is even now. Our scientific Professor, with all his talk of molecules, cau tell us no more about these primal harmonies of matter and the universe, than the blind player on the street organ ; he knows no more than the child " where light dwelleth, or what is tlie way to its house" — we mean in the sense of this Bible queiy. He is as isnorant here 290 EARTH MADE BEFORE THE HEAVENS. the foundations (the columns of the earth) and he hath set the tehel (the risible round mundus or sky,) over them." — 1 Sam. ii, 8. This might be called poetical imagery ; but there can be no doubt of its having its ori- gin in the prose description of Moses. After the general title, the first work is the earth, and on the earth. Then we have the making of the firmament above the waters. This firmament is called the Heaven. That is its name, and this naming is followed throughout the Old Testa- ment. It is conclusive as to what is meant in these poetical expressions. What is of still more importance, it determines the manner in which other Hebrew writers, whether historical, didactic, or poetical, interpreted the Mosaic language. The order is most significant and un- mistakable, if we will only view it from the right stand point — The Earth — The Firmament, or Sky, — The as on the questions, whether what ho calls gravitation is the finality of phy- sical action, or the terms employed in resi>ect to it are the finality of sci- entific language any more than vortices and epicycles ; — although he was so absurdly indignant against "the mind" that would place them in any sense, and for any purpose, in the same category. We are not derogating at all from the true dignity of science, when we thus call to account those who would injure her by unmeaning claims. This swelling talk has too long been addressed to the easy popular think- ing, and its correction is demanded, not only in deference to higher ideas, but as a service to science itself. But to return to our starting point — the nature of flight has really nothing to do with this discussion. Be it an ef- fect, an outworking, a conditioned state of matter, an activity, an entity, an independent substance, or anything else about which a logomachy may be started, still the real question remains the same. Was the light men- tioned by Moses the beginning of light, the first manifestation of light, if you choose, before which light never had been during an cuilless ante-past eternity, or was it the first light, making the first morning, on earth's dark waters i This is the question. Whichever way decided, it is one solely of interpretation. Science has nothing to do with it. No " revelation" she can make can herein contradict Moses. No gabble of any of her vota- ries about "affinities nnd molecules," can ever confii-m him. ORDER OF THE MOSAIC PICTURE. 291 Heavenly bodies appearing therein. Wliatever changes this disturbs the -whole harmony of the narrative. It makes the picture full of distortions. Now such an order of events is inconsistent with the supposition that Moses meant to set forth, in the first verse, an antecedent work- ing in which the Heaven (in that case necessarily the astronomical heaven with all its hosts) was before the Earth. It will still less agree with the scientific repre- sentation that expands the Mosaic sky into nebular rings. It is, however, in admirable harmony with the view that regards the work of the Fourth day, not as the absolute making (from nonentity) of the then new matter of the Heavenly luminaries, but the making* them to be lumi- naries (nmKtt) in that clear firmament, sky, or heaven, which now, through some causality unknown to us, and not revealed to us, is prepared for their visibility, or as the locus in which they appear. How the idea of the astronomical Heavens afterwards came in, or the Heaven of Heavens, has been elsewhere shown. This Jewish idea, or, as we may rather call it, the an- cient idea, of the Earth and Heavens, or sky around it, as forming the Tellurian mundus, is found in various parts of the Bible, and almost always presented in the same way. The Earth is the main thing in the picture. It is the foundation, and the Heaven is built around it. The latter, is, in fact, a part of the Earth, having its origin from it, and its existence dependent upon it. When the Earth departs, the Heavens depart, or are * If the name making can be g:iven to any organization short of the first matter of which they are composed, or its absolute origuation, then it may be given to such Hght-producing arrangement, or constitution, as well as to any other. Every study we can give the language and the context con- firms this view. 292 THE HEAVENS AND THE EAKTH. 2 PETER, III, 5. *' rolled together as a scroll." So St. Peter speaks of the Heavens and Earth of old, which arose from the water and had their consistence through and from the water,* and the Earth and Heaven that are now reserved for the judgment of the fire. In that great physical catas- trophe " the heavens shall pass away," the atmosphere be destroyed " by fervent heat," the sky dissolved, the luminaries therein put out, and darkness come again over Avhatever may be left of the charred and blackened rsarth. We are not prepared to interpret Scripture on *i:hese points till we come back to this old conception. And it was a true conception. This sky above our heads, -and the luminous points that appear in it, are truly Tel- .lurian.f The glorious sight would not exist for a world wrapped in rings and belts of darkness. It is the stars as they appear in our firmament, as they are pictured in our raJcia. They come from the far off " depths of space," these luminous points — However unequal their respective journies, with equal radii do they appear through Earth's revealing sky-light dome. They fall upon the blue Tellurian eye-ball very much as the Tellurian images themselves strike upon the aqueous firmament of the human eye, whence they are * 2 Peter iii, 5. The best rendering of this verse is that which regards i^ VOaroS as implied in (he first clause, or as belonging as much to the first clause at to the second ; so that it would read "the Heavens of old and the Earth were of water," ov from u-alcr, which was the old doctrine of Thales, derived probably from Moses. t We use this word here from necessity. T'cllus, in distinction from Terra, denotes the world earth, or the earth as a world, or the centre oi' a world. It is, therefore, the only word that will take in what Moses means by the "Earth and the Heaven" — the latter being included in the idea of the same world. eavid's thought of the heavens. 293 represented on that still more central retma, in which, and through which, each secluded soul sees all it ever sees of outward mundane things. What lies beyond in the distant regions whence these appearances come, is another question, which we answer more or less perfectly, or rather, more or less imperfectly, according to our sci- ence. The ancients may have known much or little about them, but it would not change the reality, the real ap- pearance^ or the language. They could speculate as well as we. Our science has given us no advantage in this respect. They had theories, some of them, even about an " infinity of worlds." There was nothing to prevent the Jewish mind taking the same direction. David, musing on the Heavens, may have had, and we sometimes think he did have, some such thought of im- mense existences, or immense fields of being, lying be- hind those luminous points, or that luminous picture which he describes as the embroidered work of God's fingers. Something arose in his mind which sunk man' into insig- nificance, and from which the Seer does not recover him- self until he comes back to the earth, and finds relief in the contemplation of man as lord of all below the skies, placed in dominion over all terrestrial animation. But science has changed all that, it may be said. All our theological views, says one, must be modified in conse- quence of the modern discoveries in astronomy. Not at all — we reply. Our earth is still the same secluded place in the universe that it was in the time of David. God meant it should be thus shut out. He has, perhaps, secluded all other parts of the universe in like manner. To us, and to every other world, if there are such other worlds, it is the same as if no other than itself existed. 25* 294 EMPTINESS OF MERE SPACE KNOAVLEDGE. He is the God of our world, the same as if this single planet "were the only theatre of his creative and providen- tial power. And science has not, can not, change this in its essence and reality. It may give rise to a differ- ent view of the universe, but it is only in forced concep- tions, having their ground in intellectual or mathematical estimates that can not be retained permanently by that imaging faculty which, after all, must ever rule our emo- tions. We come back again to the old picture, — yes, we will say it, to us the old reality, — that places us precisely on a par with the men of the olden, yea, of the oldest time. We talk much of our scientific views of the universe, but there is certainly a deception about it. For the most part, we have simply made defi- nite, to some extent, what the old mind contemplated as indefinite. We have obtained something like satisfactory estimates of nearest distances. We have increased the conceptions of space extent. Where the ancients rested in hundreds and thousands, we have gone on to tens of thousands ; where they had tens of thousands, we talk of millions. And yet we are deceived in the real value of this by making estimates of space magnitude the real test of greatness. Our scientific calculations look vast, indeed,"when viewed from our stand point ; but examine them carefully, keep out the swelling pride of mere space discovery, and let reason, pure reason, have fair play. On such a view, how do these splendid constructions of mathematical genius wither up into the merest skeletons and ghosts of knowledge ? It is a knowledge of spaces, forces, masses, and that, not in their ideas, but as repre- sented by points, lines, curves, angles, sines, cosines, and tangents. That is all. And that is much, says the HIGHER ORDERS OF BEING UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE. 295 matliematician. It is so in the scientific aspect ; we have no wish to underrate it on its own field ; and yet what does it tell us more than the unshaded outline map of some unknown and unknowable continent ? We see in such map points and distances ; we see waving lines of various lengths crossed by rectilineal parallels ; but in all higher and truer knowledge connected with our human interests and human sympathies, it is as void as the waste ocean that surges around its unknown shores, or the blank space that rises immeasurably above its formless surface. There are beings of a higher rank than human, many orders of them probably, whether the inhabitants of stars, or of worlds of a different kind too aetherial to be seen by our grosser vision ; but for this knowledge we are indebted to the Bible. Science here is as silent as the Pyramids. She would rather regard the human race as the highest to which the physical or creative progress has yet arriv- ed. But Scripture has revealed it to us ; for the know- ledge has a nearer bearing on our spiritual destiny, than any science we may possess of the visible worlds of astro- nomy. Nothing there is known which can in any way aflfect our Scriptural theology. Whatever of Ufe there may be in those conceived or estimated spaces, whatever rank of being, whatever goodness, happiness, beauty, or their opposites, — whatever pohtical or social condition, whatever moral state, confirmed or fallen, redeemed or lost, — all this is no less matter for the imagination, and no more a knowledge which is to change our theological belief, than it was in the days of Abraham and Pytha- goras. But we are rambling agam. To resume the order of discussion, we have — 296 THE FIRST NIGHT OF THE MOSAIC CREATION. 6th. An argument from the Mosaic division of the creative times. It is clear, on the face of "the account, that the whole creative process there set forth, whether universal or partial, or whatever it might embrace, was meant to be included in six days or divisions of time. " In six days God made the Heaven, the Earth, the Sea, and all that in them is." Whatever, therefore, was extra dies, does not belong to this account. It may have place in some other or greater chronology, but does not come into the Geology or Ouranology of Moses. But if the first verse denotes a separate antecedent work, whether nearly or remotely antecedent, it would be thus extra dies ; for nothing is more clearly impressed upon the account, than the fact that the hexameron commen- ces with the night. It is as clear, too, that the light is the first morning. It is equally evident that this is the antithesis of the darkness resting on the terrestrial waters. Put them together, and we have the two limits of this First day. Can the great primordial act be as- signed to the night ? If so, it was the beginning of the night, for the light was its termination. But if the be- ginning of a night, what was before it ? We get into strange positions here ; and the reason is, that every man's soul must feel that there is neither consistency, nor harmony, nor rationality in such a view. If we make the Mosaic light, or the command for its outshining, the primordial act, then the darkness before it was the dark- ness of nothingness. This might seem consistent in itself; but no one can read the account, and reconcile such a view with the language of Moses. If the darkness was the darkness of nothingness, the waters were the waters of nothingness, or, to adopt the scientific term, the THE PRIMORDIAL ACT, EXTRA DIES. 297 " fluid" of nonentitj. Here is chaos certainly ; but it is in the mind of the one who attempts to form such a conception. All is confusion, waste and void, a mental tohu and bohu instead of one of the most vivid pictures language was ever employed to express. The reader will see, of course, that the remarks do not apply to the fact of such origination, but to the supposed representa- tion of it by Moses. The primordial act, through which matter is supposed to have come into being, is no where in the diorama of this first day ; it is therefore not set forth in the Mosaic Creation^ whether iNIoses thought of it or not. No rational mind, we say, could think of calling it in question as a fact ; but that does not make it any the less extra dies. The creation recorded by Moses was all in six days. To find what lies fairly within these limits, be it partial or universal, belongs to the truthful inter- preter. Whatever lies without, and can by no consistent effort be brought within, may be left to the vaunting theories of an ambitious science, and the speculations of a bigoted unbiblical theology. "We can not close this excursus without adverting to the obvious parallel to this Mosaic account which is presented in the beginning of the Gospel by John. We have a heginning mentioned there. We have also a light, and a darkness in which (not out of which, as in the Mosaic account, 2 Cor. iv, 6,) the light shone. This Light was a much older light than the one revealed Genesis i, 3 ; even as the heginning here is a far more ancient begin- ning. It v/as the EikuVj Colos. i, 15, the A'aaCjadiia ?va, "f/ie tilings that are seen,^^^ to which the ac- count of Moses seems wholly confined. Here, too, we have the Life as well as the Light. " In Him was hfe, and the life was the light of men." In Genesis, the going forth of the Word, or Logos, is ever the origin of physical life, but here is something higher. It is the identification of the Light and Life — the Life was the Light of men. The Logos in nature^ is certainly a pro- minent, though much neglected doctrine of the Bible ; but here is something that we must receive as a still greater mystery. It passeth understanding, and yet it is not on that account to be denied, or lowered to some- thing clearly within our comprehension. The Zw^i must be more than a moral influence, or moral teaching, how- ever high the truths thus taught. Writers called evan- gelical have maintained this moral-suasion ground ; but if they take no other, we see not how they are to defend themselves against the more consistent Socinian argu- ment, or deny the interpretation which would make the Logos here but another name for the impersonal Reason. " Without Sim there ivas nothing made which ivas made.^^ There is a different division of this third verse, adopted by some of the Fathers, and having support in some of the old versions. If it can be philologically jus- tified, it is entitled to respectful attention for the mean- ing which it would seem to bring out. They took the yg/ovsv of the third verse, as the begmning of the next clause — " That which Avas made, in Him was life." 300 THE INEFFABLE TRUTH. The proposition, then, would seem to be, not simply that life was in the Logos, but that the natural creation had its life in Him who was also, in a spiritual sense, both the light and the life of men. Between the First of Genesis and the First of John there is not only a parallel but a contrast. One is wholly pictorial, yet none the less real. It is true as a picture. Its truthfulness is according to the vividness with which the ineffable causalities are represented, as they appear, and in the order in which they appear, on the canvas of the mind's conception. The other, transcending all con- ceptions, gives us only the most general names for pri- mary ideas, — the Word, the Life, the Light, the Univer- sal Origination. Its truthfulness is according to its uni- versahty. The aim of science, in distinction from both these, would be to give us the particular and linked causalities. It has been shown that, however correct in itself, or for the very short distance it goes, it must ever fail in respect to primal powers. The falsehood of its ambitious attempt consists in its unmeasurably short-fall- ing ; paradox as it may seem, its inadequacy here is in the ratio of the accuracy and minuteness of its details. From such a view one reflection presents itself strongly to the mind. There is an ineffable truth in creation, even in the physical creation. At some period of our existence that ineffable truth may be brought nearer to our minds. Who will then be found, though far below, to have had his eye in the right direction ? The man who has taken the simple pictorial Bible account, or he who has sought for something better in the ambitious path of science ? If infinite wisdom is, indeed, the author of the Scriptures, there can bo but one answer to the question. ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. ~ 301 CHAPTER X. ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH. Geology claims the Sole Credit of the Idea — What may be fairly Conceded to her — One who is not a Geologist may Reason about Geology — The Geologist himself may be un- fitted for Cosmical Questions — A little Science ivakes up Thought in Thoughtful Minds — The Idea once aroused is seen every tohere — Antiquity of the Earth seen in the most Common Fhenamena — Nature^ in general, Honest and Truthful — Geological Changes referred to in Job xiv The Ancient Philosophy Tlie World-Problem Hie Schoolmen and the Galileos — TJie ^' Students of Nature'''' The Epicureans the Ancient Scientific Boasters — Natural TJieology. Aside from the supernatural fact, the hexameral divi- sion, as has been ah*eady remarked, is the principal fea- ture in the Mosaic account. The length of the days is a subordinate question. K thoughtful mind -would, in- deed, feel that there was something extraordinary about them in the manner of their division, in their mysterious mornings and evenings made -without a sun or any astro- nomical changes, and their strange commencement in each case by the intervention of a supernatural Word. Such thoughtful mind would carry this sense of the ex- traordinary into the duration. As long, however, as there was nothing outward, that is, no outward knowledge 26 302 CREDIT DUE GEOLOGY. associating itself with the length or shortness of the times, the idea of such extraordinary duration might remain undeveloped ; especially since in itself it is entirely inde- finite, — a long or a short time satisfying the philological conception, although the general mysteriousness that per- vades the whole remarkable history favors the wider no- tion. Still, the ante-solar day might be of any length* ; and there was little to disturb the view that had become in a great measure constant in modem times, until Geo- logy began to proclaim its discoveries. This is its merit, and it is wilhngly conceded to it. It waked up the com- mon mind to a thought, which, although slumbering in the masses, had been entertained by meditative souls as perfectly consistent with the language, — a thought that when fully aroused is found to be in beautiful harmony . with the greater analogies of Scripture, as they direct our minds to the prophetic destinies of this world and God's apparently slow working therein. This credit, then, may be cheerfully conceded to Geo- logy. It has made common this idea of the antiquity of the earth. And yet nothing can be more false than the notion that any great amount of natural science, or geo- logical science, is necessary for the satisfactory appre- hension and holding of such an idea. There may be given to the remark a wider application. In nothing, perhaps, do our more boasting class of scientific men show a more unphilosophical blindness, than in the evident conceit, they so often manifest, that the man who does "There is something striking in the view of Professor Pierce, thut this Lexamei-al division denotes an order rather than any particular times long or short. It is well worthy of attention, and we should prefer it to either the twenty four hoar, or the nebular scheme. Still we can not divest ourselves of the idea of a chronology. " STUDENTS OF NATURE." 303 not profess to understand conchology, and mineralogy, or even geology, in their scientific order, is, therefore, unqualified to reason about them, or any of the great physical questions connected with creation and origin. Now this is narrow — very narrow. There is, indeed, required some knowledge of these sciences, as sciences, that a man may estimate correctly their true position ; but such knowledge need not be extensive nor minute. He may make blunders occasionally ; and he can afford to do so, without mortification, if the higher result of his argument is unaffected by them. There are beyond these, and above these, other departments of knowledge, of higher interest, and demanding severer thought. There are students of God's Word who can well afford to be ignorant of many things esteemed highest by these " Students of Nature." But even in geology, it requires no great amount of technical geological science to rea- son, and reason correctly, — not on the numerous ques- tions of fact and inference disputed among professional geologists them.selves, — but upon the bearing of the sci- ence and its discoveries on the great fields, both of in- ductive and revealed truth. There is some reason to think, that the man who looks at the universe as repre- sented in his scientific cabinet, is, in fact, thereby less qualified for such an argument. He is too fond of show- ing off his science in its partial aspects ; there are cer- tain cherished views, or scientific hobbies, we might call them, certain narrow niches and corners of truth, which have become special favorites ; these are hostile even to the wider cosmical survey in its physical aspect, and much more so as such survey connects itself with the spiritual mundane destiny. 304 SCIENCE WAKES UP THOUGHT. Science, as we have said, vralces up thought, — thought beyond her own discoveries, or the strictly scientific do- main. And this is the main use of her. But she does so only in thoughtful souls ; and such is far from being the character of all scientific men. To many she imparts only dry knowledge, very scientific it may be, but of very inferior value. The thinking of men had not been much turned to the antiquity of the earth, — we say again, in comparatively modern times, for it has been ;shown that it was an ancient speculation, philosophical as well as traditional and poetical, — but in modern times, for certain reasons, the thought had slumbered, until Geology again awoke it ; just as in other cases, that might be mentioned, we are sometimes startled by the fact of modern research calling out an old, sometimes a very old, idea. Now give Geology all credit for this, and yet it requires no great amount of exact geological knowledge to reach out to the great conclusion. In fact, a man's common every day observations, if he be at all what we have called a thoughtful man, are sufficient for this. Let the mind be once upon the track, and he need not, for this purpose, study Buckland or Lyell. The ideas of great times, great spaces, — those old native ideas that had been haunting the soul's dreams — start up and carry him through without the- aid of diagrams or fossil drawings. Let something fairly arouse the thought within him, and he sees it represented every where. He can not ride through the Hudson Highlands, even in the rapid flight of the rail road car, without seeing how the earth shows growth — that is, the evidence o^ gradual* or * It may seem hardly necessary to remind the iutelliger.t reader, that this word is here used in its etymological strictness, of a proceeding prr NATURE HONEST AND TRUTHFUL. 305 serial succession. He sees this just as clearly as lie sees a similar though shorter growth in his woods and gardens. The appearance of time, succession, dependence, of one step waiting for another, is as significantly and as sug- gestively marked in the one as in the other. He must, also, regard them as equally truthful — that is, as much indicating what they appear to indicate' — unless he is forbidden thus to think by a clear, positive revelation. Such a reserve proviso he must ever have ; for Scripture has intimated that there may be, sometimes, a false face on nature. She is a cx^m-^-) ^ shotv, or outside figure, ever passing away ; and this may be in fact very rapid as measured on one scale when it may seem to be slow, very slow, as graduated on another. She works irregu- larly, too, in a fallen world, where it is part of her mis- sion to make the physical, in some measure, a picture of the moral deformity. Hence, nature may be more full of paradoxes here than in other spheres, whether her irregular workings, her deformities, her catastrophes, her noxious births, are to be viewed as current retributions, or ancient adaptations to a world foreordained to be the birth place, and the long abode of falUble and actually fallen beings. But, in general, she is to be regarded as honest, so that her appearances* so far as they seem to •^radum, which we can not separate from some correspoiiding duration having as many distinct times as there are appearances of distinct steps. Growth, also, is taken in the general sense of successive addition. •Throughout the two long articles of Professor Dana in the Andover Bibliotheca, there is nothing more absurd than the misapprehension he has everywhere manifested in respect to the author's use of this word ap- pearance. In the Six Days of Creation, it is employed uniformlj-, and with studied consistency, as representative of a high reality — that real, substantial, powerful, though in itself unseen, thing that appears in it, or through it. The author makes just the distinction that the most perfect ot languages so easily suggests between the iking that appears (that is, makes 26* 306 EFFECTS, CAUSES — SUCCESSION, TIME. indicate her modes and steps of working, are not vain Ijing shows, but truly represent the unseen powers that lately, or long ago, have left their marks upon her face. She does not show apparent effects that had no causes, nor steps that had no succession, nor succession that had no corresponding times. Whether God ever makes im- mediately products apparently organic, having the appear- ances of succession, and yet no succession in reahty, no movement per gradus, — it is hard for us to say. We can not affirm it or deny it. It is so difficult for us to know how time and space, succession and motion, enter into the essence of his working in distinction from its man- ifestation to finite beings, that, in such cases, our only safety consists in clinging close to the language of Scrip- ture and its fair exegesis. In the record of such facts as the creation of the first human body, and the forma- tion of the female organism therefrom, we have a special •the appearance) in the active or middle sense, and that which appears, or the appearance, in the passive. This one remark is a suflicient answer to all the places in which Professor Dana has used the word as a bugbear, in Jiis charge of Platonism, or otherwise. He has ever confounded qjarffjLa, . n- (pavrarff^a, a subjective apparition, with (paivojxevov, a real appear- :ance of a real thing. No other philosophy, we may remark, makes so real a world as the Platonic, or is farther removed ,from that subjectivism whose ghosts are the ghosts of nothing, whose (parffJiaTa are the fantasies of nothing, and which is, therefore, a system of nothingness from beginning :to end, as unsubstantial on the one side, as dead materialism on the other. Mr. Lord makes the same charge, but we would only say of him, as civ- illy as we can, that his utter want of knowledge of the philosophy he so ferociously assails, makes it unworthy of notice. He has something which he calls mind, or spiritual entity ; all other reality, to his thinking, is found in hard matter. An immaterial entity which is not mind, he holds to be nonsense. Of course, whether he sees it or not, there being between this .mind and this hard matter, no intermediate reality of any kind, the latter is the direct pantheistic image of the former, or it is the veriest ghost of nothing, or else, however unintelligible and irrational the thought, it is t'tcmal and self subsistent. BODY OF ADAM — DID IT SHOW GROWTH? 307 revelation to which " we do well to take heed," and study it deeply, without being overwise, either in our literalism, or our symbolism, or our philosophy. And yet it would be not a proud, but a reverent thought to be humbly en- tertained, that the best and most honest interpretation we can put upon it, may, after all, have much remaining still of the ineffable and the unknown. In such cases, however, we are fairly warned of the exception, and have a caution not to go by appearances, or, at least, not to draw from them the same conclusions that we derive from the common or ordinary manifestations. The human body of Adam, when first made, may have presented the same appearances in the bone, the flesh, the blood, that exist in the present adult healthful human organism, and Avhich indicate growth, and maturity as the result of growth. It may have presented such an appearance, it probably did present such an appearance — we can hardly conceive of it otherwise whilst thinking of it as a human body at all, or as representative of other human bodies — and yet in the peculiar circumstances of that extraordi- nary case, we would have no right to adopt either of the two conclusions that would present themselves to some minds as the only ones. It would be very rash in us to hold, either that the appearances, in such case, must be the appearances of nothing, in other words, mere (pao'ju-a-Ta, or that they necessarily indicate the same outward astro- nomical time, and the same mode of generative working, as is now required for such an organic result. If there were appearances of growth, succession, maturity, then would there be a reverent warrant for concluding that even in this extraordinary creation, there were realities in the working corresponding to them, in other words, a 308 THE MEDITATIVE SPIRIT. growth, a succession, a maturity, but in their time, and their modal causality, ineffable, that is, altogether trans- cending, and not to be measured on the scale to which the present appearances are to be brought as their only intelligible standard. These remarks apply to what may be called the extra- ordinary creations among creations, — for such there are on the very face of Scripture — but in other cases, and especially where the inspired writer uses the very lan- guage of natural causality, the appearances of nature may fairly enter in our reasoning as determinative of the great facts of succession, if not of their precise chrono- logy- We may say, then, that in general, and when we have no positive revelation to the contrary, nature is to be trusted, with all allowance for our exceeding ignorance of her immensely varied laws, and for what, for all we know to the contrary, may have been their immensely varied, and frequently varied, rates of energising. In thus trusting nature, the meditative man who has but the rudiments of exact science may be on a par with the most boasting savan. Nay, for reasons to which we have elsewhere alluded, he may even have the advantage of him. In his broader thinking, there is less disturbance arising from any cherished partial views ; in the absence of a blinding scientific interest, there is less in the way of those great conclusions, which the broad face of nature suggests as promptly and as strongly as the more minute discoveries. Such a meditative spirit can not, for exam- ple, walk on the lake beach, and see the smooth, round stones as they are worn into ovals by the long action of the waters, and then their exact resemblances on the distant GEOLOGICAL CHANGES MENTIONED IN JOB XIV. 309 hills, without feeling that the appearance of time in the one case is just as truthful as that in the other. Nature renders the same verdict of facts in both, and if there be no arrest of judgment on the higher written evidence, superseding such parol testimony, as we may call it, he takes her verdict as she honestly gives it in. He draws from it the most natural and obvious inferences. If it took ages to form these smooth ovals in one spot, it took ages to form them in the other. And yet, on other good and satisfying evidence, he knows that ages, historical ages at least, have intervened since the causality that there once energized has been quiescent. Troy has been taken, yea, the Pyramids have been built, since any important geographical change took place in those regions. The most ancient of known historical events have passed away since there " tlie water washed those stones,''^ — to use the clear language of Job (xiv) describing the same phenomenon. To a thinking man how full of thought this very ancient allusion, together with similar accompany- ing words in the same remarkable chapter of inspiration ! " The crumbling mountain falleth into ruin ; the rock is removed froon its place ; the dust of the earth covereth over the things that grow out of it* The sea (the lake) faileth and drieth up ; yet man lies still ;f he waheth not from his sleep until the Heavens groiv oldP All the verses we have gathered from this ejaculating, sigh- * Its long buried fossil plants, as tlie Geologist would style them. t Tlie Hebrew SSt:?, hei"e employed, is the word used so frequently for lying down to sleep. This is its main sense, too, in the old Phoenician, as is evident from its frequent use in -the inscriptions that have been discover- ed in that earliest form of the Hebrew. Especially is it the case with the very remarkable one lately discovered near old Sidou, and which has been so carefully studied by the scholars of Germany and the United States. 310 " COME AGAIN, YE SONS OF ADAM." ing chapter, express, in their connection, the'same sombre thought, SO mournful, yet so full of interest in respect to our physical as well as spiritual destiny. Throughout the passage the contrast is between the transitoriness of man, and the long, slow changes of nature, so steadily yet irresistibly going on while he is sleeping in the bosom of his mother earth, awaiting his own great supernatural change that shall surely come in the latter day.* * The Arabians have a formula highly suggestive when considered in connection with that idea of reviviscence whicli we think is found in this chapter — "To God is the return,'' or to God belongs the return ("T^irtt—VN al-ma-si-rn). It is one of the solemn cadences of the Koran, so often em- ployed at the close of verses, and has every appearance, like others of those cadences, of being a very ancent form of speech. There are otherexpres- sious in the Koran of a similar kind, and used in connection with it as exe- getical of its meaning, — such as "God kiUcth and He maketli alive again," "He bringcth to death, and He hringeth bach from death." The manner in which these are employed leave no doubt of their reference to the re- surrection, and thus considered, they may greatly aid us in getting a right stand-point for interpreting very similar language in the Old Testament. Compare Deut. xxxii, 39, and especially 1 Sam. ii, 8. "The Lord killeth and He maketk alive ; He bringctk down to ISkcol, and He bringefh up again'' — Dominus inoHiJicat et vivijicat, deducit ad inferos el rcdvcit. It "is easy to give this another sense ; and yet there is a view whicli greatly' favors the more impressive thought, and makes it seem not only possible, but probable and easy as coming in connection with such ejaculatory lan- guage, and even along witli expressions referring to the present state. We refer to the undoubted Oriental belief in what may be called the hu- man cycle, or the doctrine that the human life would come over again on this earth. Carry this along, and we have a stand-point for the interpreta- tion of some of the most striking passages in Job and the Psalms. It was not exactly the Christian idea of the resurrection, but it was the germ ( f the doctrine as held by the Pharisees, and Jews generally, in our Savior's time, as well as by the Arabian tribes before the days of Mohammed. In connection with this, we may refer to the rendering of Psahnxc, 3, as given in the Prayer Book Psalter — "Come again, ye Sons of Adam'' — and Luther's touching translation — Kommt wieder Menschen -Kinder, '^Cow!« back, yccluldren of men — which are also countenanced, to some extent, in the ancient versions. The common rendering is strongly supported by tb.e seeming reference to Gen. iii, 19 ; but it is certain that the word aiip freely and equally admits both senses, a turning, n returning to, or a returning THE HUMAN CYCLE. 311 In tins true view of the passage, how suggestive is it of our leading thought — an early credited antiquity of fram So it is applied to the Children of Israel, both ia their backsliding. and their repentance, or conversion. Compare Jeremiah iii, 1, where it is so affectiagly addressed to the adulterous wik~tamen rcvcrtere ad me and Luther again, dock Jcomm u-ieder zu mb—yet still come hack to me. The use of the same word iu both clauses of Psalm xc, 3, would also seem to show that there was intended a special significance in the contrast of its Gouble, yet equally easy and equally prominent senses. It may be said too, that the other view which makes them both refer to the same event' wea,iens the parallelism by making the command come after the act. ' _ 1 here is a confirmation of the reviviscent sense in the fact that it seems to explain the train of thought which otherwise might appear abrupt, or without clear tran.sition. The first thought is, that God is " our dwellinc. place," or his peoples' dwelling place, "in all generations.'' He is yet the God of the dead, as well as of the living. Then we have the Divine Eternity V\ ith this connects most naturally the mention of " the thousand years " as a " watch in the nigU- suggestive of the long sleep in the grave,-s'o ong to our conception, so short to Him. " Thor^ overwhelmest, or hvriest them ; they are as a sleep, or they sleep.- The Syriac here has a para- phrastic rendering jn some way suggested by the Hebrew E=3n5a-ir ' ' Their generations are asleep," or they sleep through generations. Next we oave mention of the morning, when there shall bloom again that which m the evening was cufdown and withered. Is the greater morning meant here the morning and evening of the cycle ? It would not do for us to say rashly or confidently that this is the most obvious meaning, although we may feel strong in the thought that it is suggestive, and may have been so intended, of the wider sense,-the longer sleep, the] greater reviving, or springing again, such as is almost ever denoted by the Hebrew bVh We would not rashly affirm this, but let the reader compare Psalm xlix lo,— "The upnght shall have dominion in the morning,"— the same word' and iQ connections remarkably similar, yet leaving no doubt of the refei- euce being to the great day and the greater morning of the world when as IS so clearly expressed in the next verse, God shall "redeem the soul irom the power of Sheol." " Unto Him shall be theVeturn." Slow, immensely slow, arelthe changes 01 nature while man is sleeping in the dust; long is she preparing for the catastrophies that attend or precede the greater cycle, but "the mom- mg Cometh as well as the night." Whether primarily intended in this passage, or only suggested by it, still the doctrine of the great human change, or n2^Vh, may be supported, even from the older Scripture, if we seek to study it in the spirit of the Great Interpreter, rather than that of the old Sadduceism he so triumphantly refuted. 312 " THE WATERS WEAR SMOOTH THE STONES." the earth as something immensely older than the human race, who are said to be "but of yesterday" in compar- ison with its longer duration. Especially is this language remarkable as we remember its place in that most ancient Idumean Drama. How old the earth as compared with man ! What marks of age, as shown by slow physical changes, does it exhibit in contrast with the brief human cycle, whether regarded as of the individual or of the race ! No other or less thought would have had the force or interest demanded by the comparison. " The ivaters wear smooth the stones ^ The Hebrew verb, phw, as we have remarked elsewhere, means to attenuate, (Greek of the LXX, Xsai'vw,) to reduce to fine dust. Had the Hebrews or Arabians been scientific geologists, they would have made from it their scientific word correspond- ing to the modern term detritus. It is the same pheno- menon now so frequently witnessed, and which presented the same old look in the early age of Job. " The iva- ters wear smooth the stones.'' The flood could not have done this work of shaping and detrition. We know ex- actly how that fearful event took place. It is presented to us in a picture which in grandeur and vividness is se- cond only to that of creation. We know from the same source, how brief the time it occupied. We know the very days of the month on which it began, in which it reached its hight, and when it terminated. The changes it wrought were mighty, doubtless ; but very different they must have been from the appearances we are now contemplating. Eflects must correspond to causes. The effects as seen in those smooth ovals, so undisturbed in their regularity and in their exact likeness of each other, and their exact correspondence to the contiguous, or once COMMON THINGS TELL US OF THE REMOTE PAST. 313 contiguous, Tvorking power, must have been very slow and gradual effects, unless nature lies to us, and lies, too, ■ffitliout a reason, that is, any apparent reason. They are gradual and regular eflfects, and, therefore, whether natural or supernatural, they could not have come, we venture cautiously to assert, from a sudden, abrupt and violent cause. But our unscientific man whose meditations we have been endeavoring to follow, need not travel to the lake shore or the mountain top. He need not climb the Chimborazo with Humboldt, or trace the wilds of Supe- rior with our equally adventurous American Geologists. In the evening quiet of his parlor fire-side, he may muse on the lump of coal with its suggestive layers, or the marble mantle-piece with each point and shade significant of effects, as these of causes or activities now restino* but once at work, and these again of times or intervals of duration, which, however regarded absolutely or in themselves, must be pronounced long if measured by the countless stepping places presented to the eye in these dead yet still speaking tablets of a causation that has passed away. Yes — even these common objects com- mune with us of the mysterious past. They tell the same story. It is change, if we may not call it growth,, slow change as measured by its visible lines and points. It is time, succession, — long succession, apparentlv, — just as truthfully indicating what it seems to indicate as the worn channels of the streams or the century-formed rings of the oak. Aside from the nearer or more obvious deductions,, there is also another class of questions — yes, questions- in nature, — that lie beyond the track of inductive sci- 27 314 THE OLD THINKERS. ence, and yet belong to the common thinking if it be vigorous, if it be truthful even, though wholly unscientific. They are beyond science ; but the road to them does not lie through her provmce. They were discussed by the ancient mind with a keenness that modern philosophy fails to equal. No modern school ever entered more profoundly into the questions of origin, first matter, first motion, first form, first unity, first diversity, first organ- ism, first laws, ideas, types, and which was first respec- tively, things, outward things themselves, or ^q principles of things, — that without which they could not be things or have in any sense a self-hood or ipseity — no modern school, we say, ever entered more profoundly into ques- tions like these than some of the earliest thinkers. Bacon and Leibnitz may be ransacked for anything on these subjects more acute, and we may confidently say, more satisfactory than the reasonings of Aristotle in his Physica and Metaphysica. We might extend the remark to other thinkers of that remarkable period in the world's intellectual history. We might safely go farther up the stream of time, or we miglit come nearer to our own age, and still find evidence of the position, that Avhat is called science is not the only, not even the best preparation of the soul for the examination of the higher cosmological questions, — if we ivill discuss them aside from revela- tion. All the Galileos of later times never went so deeply into these world-problems, as the Schoolmen who have been so foolishly contemned in the common comparison. It requires no great amount of faithful reading for an in- telligent mind to be convinced that there are truly won- ders in some of those forgotten tomes. It requires no great erudition to read Anselm, or to study occasionally THE SCnOOL-MEN AND THE GALILEOS. 315 a chapter of Aquinas, but no thoughtful man can do so without feehng that the modern world, the very modern world, we mean, does not, and perhaps can not, supply their places. As one contemplates with astonishment the profound speculations of these men of the cell, the thought fairly arises whether the exact and exacting detail of certain forms of mode rn physical or experimen- tal science, and the piece-meal views they give us of the universe, may not have actually narrowed the minds of some of its votaries, — so that, strange as it may seem, there may have been actually more trne freedom of soul in the cloister, than among many of these boasting " stu- dents of nature" who roam the sea shore in search of shells, or penetrate the depths of the mine to find, if possible, the age of the earth. We Avould not speak sweepingly, or even generally. The tendency to which we allude is most evident in certain quarters, and in cer- tain aspects of this " scientific age," but there we those who unite the character of the scientific man and the philosopher. These may be known, however, not more by the deep value of their studies, than by the entire absence of that absurd boasting which is becoming so of- fensive in the lectures and inaugural speeches of the times. ' ' History is ever giving us cycles. They may present a wider spiral, (as they do sometimes a narrower,) but however magnified in some aspects, and diminished in others, they hold similarities of feature that the observing student can hardlj'' fail to recognize. How strikingly is this truth confirmed when we call to mind that the shal- low Epicureans were the scientific boasters of their day. There is no trace of such a spirit in the humble and 316 THE EPICUKEANS THE ANCIENT BOASTERS. reverent Socrates ; Plato ever lived in a region of thought too lofty to allow its utterance ; Aristotle's " stream of flowing gold," as Cicero stjdcs it, v^as too gravely solid for such froth to rise and float upon its majestically moving surface. It is only as we ap];)roach a somewhat later time, that we begin to hear a sound reminding us of our own most modern age. It comes from " the herd of Epicurus," magnifying their master as the ■^' Father of the then modern philosophy," and filhng the age with their clamor about physical knowledge, and the wonders it was achieving, and the still greater wonders it was going to achieve. Styx and Acheron, with all their ghosts, were paling in its presence, as the myths of Christianity flee before some of our modern savans who live and write under other influences than those of our New-Haven and Andover orthodoxy. There was the same proud talk, too, about what mind had done and what it would do ; Omne imracnsum peragrans — Unde refeit nobis Victor, quid possit oriri. Quid noqucnt; finita potestas deuique quoique Qua nam eit ratione, atque alte terminus haerens. It would roam through all space ; it would tell us of ori- gin, of all that could be, and of all that could not be ; it would go to the very bottom of nature ; it would give the reason of all things ; it would make immovable land- marks, and fix the deep, permanent bound of an unchang- ing causality. Such wonders had it begun to perform ; such still greater wonders would it yet perform. We could almost translate it in the deep irony of the Scrip- tures — " It would put an end to the darkness and search out all perfection ; its eye would see every precious thing and that which was hidden would it bring to light ; it THE SCRIPTURES REVEAL THE TRUE PROFOUND. 317 would enter the gates of Hades," and heal the terrors of " the valley of the shadow of death ;" it would solve the problem of life ; " it would find the place of wisdom and assay the value thereof." VitK ipsam rationcm, earn qus Nunc adpellatur SAPIENTIA ; quaeque per artem Fluctibus e tantis vitam, tantisque tenebris, In tarn tranquilla, et tain clara luce, locabit. It would discovep the long sought means by which the human race would be at last rescued from " the mighty billows of darkness," and brought to repose " in clear and tranquil light." It had much to say, too, of its utilities, its boasted Commoda vitse. But alas for ancient or modern science ! What a con- trast does all this present to that view the Bible gives us of the mysteries that surround our existence, and of the evils, the physically incurable evils, in which it is so deeply sunk. Even in the merely natural aspect, how poor a thing it really is ! But compare with this empty prating the true profound of the Scriptures — even the true physical profound — compare with it those solemn, searching interrogatories in the xxviiith and xxxviiith chapters of Job, consider, moreover, the age of the world, keep in mind all of literature, science, or philoso- phy, that was outside of this " enclosed garden, this foun- tain sealed" of Jewish wisdom, and we have an evidence for the superhuman character of the Scriptures which it would seem almost impossible for any sane mind to resist. It is indeed the true profound, revealed to us not in at- tempted explanations, but in the awful disclosure of its unfathomable depths. 27* 318 ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE. But what of those ancient pretensions, some one may sayT What comparison between the science of those times and the splendid structure that has been reared since Bacon showed the right way ! Be the difference, in other respects, what it may, the boasting is certainly very much the same in both cases. What is there — it is a question that may well be asked — what is there in this kind of knowledge, be it great or small, that ever tends to the exhibition of such a spirit ? The language, too, is so very similar. In this respect, at least, the warp and woof of many a modern lecture, or modern in- augural, might be taken, almost verbatim, from Lucre- tius and the ^Fragments of Epicurus. The very cant ^vas the same. Atoms, molecules, dexlinationes — it comes near enough to affinities — were their favorite words; ideas were bugbears (Ts-^aTW(5-/5,) as they are even now to "the sciolist. Contemptible, too, as may seem this ancient science, the positions, we say it boldly, were the same ; we mean the relative positions which render the boasting in both cases equally trifling and inane. It was not the -small amount which gave it this aspect — for it looked to rthe future, and drew upon the future, even as we do now — but it was the vain assumption that it, or any amount < of experimental science, so called, could ever solve the • deep problem of humanity, — we might say, even the deep physical problem of our world and race. But in the pre- sence of the still higher questions, how contemptible its boasting figure ! its inane prattling aliout Styx and Tar- tarus, and the lux clara, et tranquilla, the " serene and •tranquil light," fluctibus a tantis oriens tantiaque tenebrifl — :n\v\ the finita jxitc^itar^^ and tlie alte tcrntiivas haeroi^, STYX AND ACHERON, HOMER AND EPICURUS. 319 and the comrnoda vitce, and all the other great things it had begun to do, and would still more perfectly do for our poor priest-ridden, religion-haunted world! — in all of which, bj the way, we can not help remarking how the terrors of Hades ever revealed themselves in the so frequent mention of the victories that science was going to achieve over them. How much profounder the truth involved in those fables of Styx and Acheron, than in all their physical discovery ! how much deeper the mine of thought, even in Homer and the Greek dramatic poetry, than was laid open in all their science had taught or would ever teach ! and yet how pitiably unconscious do these old braggarts seem to be of it ! Now this is the thought that renders true and just the parallel we have drawn between the ancient and the modern science, — we mean, as we need hardly tell our readers, the boasting aspect of it, and the schools by which such aspect is mainly re- presented. It is not a question of quantity, but of a re- lation. The science of Epicurus was certainly a very small affair ; though of considerable value when compared with the lack of it. It was not, however, its quantity, we say again, which gave it this appearance, but the fear- ful problem with which it stood confronted, and which, in its empty insolence, it had dared to face. Now, mo- dern science has vastly grown, and therefore, it may be said, has some right to use this vaunting language that sounds so preposterous in the mouth of its elder brother. It has vastly grown, indeed, and yet it may be in fact, a very small affair in its relation to the darkness that still rests as dense as ever, even on the great ultimate, or more interior, truths of nature herself. The physical