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revealing the truths which are its object, but he has not done so."

"The disappointment of those," says the English geologist Buckland, "who look for a detailed account of geological phenomena in the Bible, rests on a gratuitous expectation of finding therein historical information respecting all the operations of the Creator in times and places with which the human race has no concern; as reasonably might we object that the Mosaic history is imperfect, because it makes no specific mention of the satellites of Jupiter or the ring of Saturn, as feel disappointment at not finding in it the history of geological phenomena, the details of which may be fit matter for an encyclopædia of science, but are foreign to the objects of a volume intended only to be a guide of religious belief and moral conduct." 1

"The Bible," says Kurtz, "preserves its religious character, in that it in no case anticipates human science, in no case treats of problems, the solution of which belongs to empirical inquiry. Therefore none of the conclusions of the latter can contradict the Bible, or come into conflict with revealed truth. Revelation gives carte blanche for the conclusions of natural science. It favours neither Plutonism nor Neptunism, it only judges matters which concern religion. It no more decides between Neptunists and Plutonists, than between homœopaths and allopaths."

You see from what has been said that to attempt to extract a system of astronomy, geology, or any natural science from the Bible, and point it out as being

1 Geology and Mineralogy cons. with ref. to Natural Theology. London

vouched for by revelation, would be vain and indeed blameworthy.' The Bible gives us a system of faith and morality; in order to draw up a system of natural philosophy, man must have recourse to nature and to his natural reasoning powers.

To this first truth, that it is not the object of the Bible to enlighten us on scientific as well as on religious subjects, must be added another. The Biblical writers received supernatural enlightenment from God, but the object of this enlightenment and of the divine revelation altogether was only to impart religious truths, not profane knowledge; and we may therefore, without diminishing from the respect due to the holy writers, or in any way weakening the doctrine of inspiration, safely allow that the Biblical writers were not in advance of their age in the matter of profane knowledge, and consequently of natural science. The praises given by certain French savants to the genius or the scientific knowledge of the Jewish lawgiver, because of the supposed anticipation in Genesis of modern scientific discoveries, are therefore not to the purpose. As regards profane knowledge Moses was not raised above his contemporaries by divine revelation, and there is no proof whatever of his being in a position to raise himself above them by his own thought and inquiry.

How far the physical views of Moses were right or wrong is, however, a matter of tolerable indifference to

1 Even in recent times some theologians have made this mistake, or at least they have attempted to find far too many scientific truths and doctrines in the Bible. See an American clergyman in Creation a Recent Work of God (cf. Theol. Lit.-Bl. 1870, 747), and Abbé Choyer, La Théorie géogonique, p. 79 (cf. Theol. Lit.-Bl. 1872, 357).

us; it is only important to discover what physical views are expressed in the Book of Genesis which are not to be ascribed to Moses, but bear both a divine and human character.

Although the teaching of divine things in the widest sense of the word is the sole object of revelation in the Bible, it is impossible to speak much of the things of God without also touching on the things of nature; and it is especially in the first chapters of Genesis that physical elements of all kinds are in this way interwoven with dogmatic truths of the creation of the world. It is true that the Bible directly imparts only religious truths, but it cannot do this without touching indirectly and incidentally on the things of nature. How does the matter stand in this case?

First of all, we have no ground for assuming that in such indirect or casual references to natural things, the Biblical writers intended to give their readers more accurate views, or more complete explanations of these natural things, than they could obtain or had already obtained in a merely human way; nor could this have been the result of their writings. When the preacher says, "All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place from which the rivers come, thither they return again," he does not mean to explain to us how the mists rise out of the sea and form the rain by which the springs are fed; his sole object is to show in the course of his book the constant change and circulation of earthly things, and he illustrates them by a comparison with one of the phenomena of nature which he had himself observed, and which he

.1 Eccles. i. 7.
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assumed that his readers would know or at any rate understand.

Secondly, it is immaterial if a Biblical writer, especially a poetical writer, states or assumes a view of natural things and phenomena which is pronounced by science to be erroneous, but which may be in a measure justified as not being out of place where it is a question of the apparent and popular expression, and not of the real and scientific fact. Few people doubt now-a-days that the earth revolves round the sun, and round its own axis, and think that the sun revolves round the earth; and yet in everyday life, and indeed on every occasion when it is not important, no one would think of using the scientifically correct expression instead of the common and apparent one; or would say anything but, "The sun rises and sets," "The sun has run a third of its course," etc. Why should the poet of the Old Testament express himself differently? Why should he not say, "The sun is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, and his circuit unto the ends of it."1 And what reasonable man would take exception to the words in which Joshua expresses the wish that the daylight might last till the enemy was completely conquered: "Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou moon in the valley of Ajalon;" or to those in which the author of the Book of Joshua describes the fulfilling of this wish through the Almighty Power of God: "And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed until the people had avenged themselves upon their

1 Ps. xix. 5, 6,

enemies." 1 It matters very little to us what the personal views of Joshua and the Biblical writers were as to the relation of the sun and the earth to each other, and as to their respective revolutions; probably they never thought about the subject when they used the words, and if they did think about it, no doubt they held the opinions which obtained up to the time of Copernicus and Galileo. The Holy Spirit, Who inspired the Biblical writer, knew the true conditions; but, if you will permit the somewhat profane expression, it would have been acting out of character to have at this juncture. revealed to the Biblical historian the error of the prevailing opinion as to the motion of the sun, and to have caused him to make use of expressions which Galileo would have allowed to be correct. The Bible wishes to make known to us that the daylight that day was unusually prolonged in consequence of a divine miracle, every one may learn this from the account given; there was no intention of imparting further astronomical information, therefore that account was clothed in words which could be understood at every period, and which are so far, if only so far, correct, that in the opinion of the natural and uneducated man the sun does move daily from east to west.

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In consequence of this same popular belief, Moses mentions the sun and moon in the first chapters of Genesis as the two great lights of heaven, beside the other stars. They are so to the eye of man, although astronomers know that it is not the case; and although it would be absurd on the strength of Gen. i. 10 to state as the teaching of the Bible that the sun is the 1 Josh. x. 12, 13.

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