Part 2 (2/2)
In approaching the close of our subject, we shall introduce a few lectures having a wider range, and deriving less elucidation from geology than from other sciences. One is a consideration of the physical effects of human actions upon the universe. And in conclusion of the whole subject, we shall endeavor to show that the bearings of all science, when rightly understood, are eminently favorable to religion, both in this world and the next.
With a few miscellaneous inferences from the principles advanced, I shall close this lecture.
In the first place, we see that the points of connection between geology and religion are numerous and important. A few years since, geology, instead of being appealed to for the ill.u.s.tration of religious truth, was regarded with great jealousy, as a repository of views favorable to infidelity, and even to atheism. But if the summary which I have exhibited of its religious relations be correct, from what other science can we obtain so many ill.u.s.trations of natural and revealed religion?
Distinguished Christian writers are beginning to gather fruit in this new field, and the cl.u.s.ters already presented us by such men as Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Pye Smith, Dr. Buckland, Dr. Harris, and Dr. King, are an earnest of an abundant harvest. I hazard the prediction that the time is not far distant when it will be said of this, as of another n.o.ble science, ”The undevout _geologist_ is mad.”
Secondly. I would bespeak the candid attention of those sceptical minds, that are ever ready to imagine discrepancies between science and religion, to the views which I am about to present. The number of such is indeed comparatively small; yet there are still some prepared to seize upon every new scientific fact, before it is fully developed, that can be made to a.s.sume the appearance of opposition to religion. It is strange that they should not ere this time despair of making any serious impression upon the citadel of Christianity. For of all the numerous a.s.saults of this kind that have been made, not one has destroyed even an outpost of religion.
Just so soon as the subject was fully understood, every one of them has been abandoned; and even the most violent unbeliever never thinks, at the present day, of arraying them against the Bible. One needs no prophetic inspiration to be confident that every geological objection to Christianity, which perhaps now and then an unbeliever of limited knowledge still employs, will pa.s.s into the same limbo of forgetfulness.
Finally. I would throw out a caution to those friends of religion who are very fearful that the discoveries of science will prove injurious to Christianity. Why should the enlightened Christian, who has a correct idea of the firm foundation on which the Bible rests, fear that any disclosures of the arcana of nature should shake its authority or weaken its influence? Is not the G.o.d of revelation the G.o.d of nature also? and must not his varied works tend to sustain and elucidate, instead of weakening and darkening, one another? Has Christianity suffered because the Copernican system of astronomy has proved true, or because chemistry has demonstrated that the earth is already for the most part oxidized, and therefore cannot literally be burned hereafter? Just as much as gold suffers by pa.s.sing through the furnace. Yet how many fears agitated the hearts of pious men when these scientific truths were first announced! The very men who felt so strong a conviction of the truth of the Bible, that they were ready to go to the stake in its defence, have trembled and uttered loud notes of warning when the votaries of science have brought out some new fact, that seemed perhaps at first, or when partially understood, to contravene some statement of revelation. The effect has been to make sceptical minds look with suspicion, and sometimes with contempt, upon Christianity itself. It has built up a wall of separation between science and religion, which is yet hardly broken down. For notwithstanding the instructive history of the past on this subject, although every supposed discrepancy between philosophy and religion has vanished as soon as both were thoroughly understood, yet so soon as geology began to develop her marvellous truths, the cry of danger to religion became again the watchword, and the precursor of a more extended and severe attack upon that science than any other has ever experienced, and the prelude, I am sorry to say, of severe personal charges of infidelity against many an honest friend of religion.
In contrast to the contracted views and groundless fears that have been described, it is refres.h.i.+ng to meet with such sentiments as the following, from men eminent for learning, and some of them veterans in theological science. With these I close this lecture.
”Those rocks which stand forth in the order of their formation,” says Dr.
Chalmers, ”and are each imprinted with their own peculiar fossil remains, have been termed the archives of nature, where she hath recorded the changes that have taken place in the history of the globe. They are made to serve the purpose of scrolls or inscriptions, on which we might read of those great steps and successions by which the earth has been brought into its present state; and should these archives of nature be but truly deciphered, we are not afraid of their being openly confronted with the archives of revelation. It is unmanly to blink the approach of light, from whatever quarter of observation it may fall upon us; and those are not the best friends of Christianity, who feel either dislike or alarm when the torch of science, or the torch of history, is held up to the Bible. For ourselves, we are not afraid when the eye of an intrepid, if it be only a sound philosophy, scrutinizes, however jealously, all its pages. We have no dread of any apprehended conflict between the doctrines of Scripture and the discoveries of science, persuaded, as we are, that whatever story the geologists of our day shall find engraven on the volume of nature, it will only accredit that story which is graven on the volume of revelation.”--_Chalmers's Works_, vol. ii. p. 227.
”For our own part,” says Rev. Henry Melville, ”we have no fears that any discoveries of science will really militate against the disclosures of Scripture. We remember how, in darker days, ecclesiastics set themselves against philosophers who were investigating the motions of the heavenly bodies, apprehensive that the new theories were at variance with the Bible, and therefore resolved to denounce them as heresies, and stop their spread by persecution. But truth triumphed; bigotry and ignorance could not long prevail to the hiding from the world the harmonious walkings of stars and planets; and ever since, the philosophy which laid open the wonders of the universe hath proved herself the handmaid of revelation, which divulged secrets far beyond her gaze. And thus, we are persuaded, shall it always be; science may scale new heights and explore new depths, but she shall bring back nothing from her daring and successful excursions which will not, when rightly understood, yield a fresh tribute of testimony to the Bible. Infidelity may watch her progress with eagerness, exulting in the thought that she is furnis.h.i.+ng facts with which the Christian system may be strongly a.s.sailed; but the champions of revelation may confidently attend her in every march, a.s.sured that she will find nothing which contradicts, if it do not actually confirm, the word which they know to be divine.”--_Sermons, 2d Am. edit._ vol. ii. p. 298.
”Shall it then any longer be said,” says Dr. Buckland, ”that a science, which unfolds such abundant evidence of the being and attributes of G.o.d, can reasonably be viewed in any other light than as the efficient auxiliary and handmaid of religion? Some few there still may be, whom timidity, or prejudice, or want of opportunity, allow not to examine its evidence; who are alarmed by the novelty, or surprised by the extent and magnitude, of the views which geology forces on their attention, and who would rather have kept closed the volume of witness, which has been sealed up for ages, beneath the surface of the earth, than impose upon the student in natural theology the duty of studying its contents;--a duty in which, for lack of experience, they may antic.i.p.ate a hazardous or a laborious task, but which, by those engaged in it, is found to afford a rational, and righteous, and delightful exercise of their highest faculties, in multiplying the evidences of the existence, and attributes, and providence of G.o.d.”
”It follows then,” says Dr. J. Pye Smith, ”as a universal truth, that the Bible, faithfully interpreted, erects no bar against the most free and extensive investigation, the most comprehensive and searching induction.
Let but the investigation be sufficient, and the induction honest; let observation take its farthest flight; let experiment penetrate into all the recesses of nature; let the veil of ages be lifted up from all that has been hitherto unknown,--if such a course were possible, religion need not fear; Christianity is secure, and true science will always pay homage to the divine Creator and Sovereign, _of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things; and unto whom be glory forever_.”--_Lectures on Scripture and Geology, 4th London edit._ p. 223.
LECTURE II.
THE EPOCH OF THE EARTH'S CREATION UNREVEALED.
The Mosaic account of the creation of the universe has always been celebrated for its sublime simplicity. Though the subject be one of unparalleled grandeur, the writer makes not the slightest effort at rhetorical embellishment, but employs language which a mere child cannot misapprehend. How different, in this respect, is this inspired record from all uninspired efforts that have been made to describe the origin of the world!
But notwithstanding the great simplicity and clearness of this description, its precise meaning has occasioned as much discussion as almost any pa.s.sage of Scripture. This results chiefly from its great brevity. Men with different views of inspiration, cosmogony, and philosophy, engage in its examination, not so much to ascertain its meaning, as to find out whether it teaches their favorite speculative views; and because it says nothing about them, they attempt to fasten those views upon it, and thus make it teach a great deal more than the mind of the Spirit. My simple object, at this time, is to ascertain whether the Bible fixes the time when the universe was created out of nothing.
The prevalent opinion, until recently, has been, that we are there taught that the world began to exist on the first of the six days of creation, or about six thousand years ago. Geologists, however, with one voice, declare that their science indicates the earth to have been of far higher antiquity. The question becomes, therefore, of deep interest, whether the common interpretation of the Mosaic record is correct.
Let us, in the first place, examine carefully the terms of that record; without reference to any of the conclusions of science.
A preliminary inquiry, however, will here demand attention, to which I have already given some thoughts in the first lecture. The inquiry relates to the mode in which the sacred writers describe natural phenomena.
Do they adapt their descriptions to the views and feelings of philosophers, or even the common people, in the nineteenth century, or to the state of knowledge and the prevalent opinions of a people but slightly removed from barbarism?
Do they write as if they meant to correct the notions of men on natural subjects, when they knew them to be wrong; or as if they did not mean to decide whether the popular opinion were true or false? These points have been examined with great skill and candor by a venerable clergyman of England, whose praise is in all the American churches, and whose skill in sacred philology, and profound acquaintance with the Bible, none will question, any more than they will his deep-toned piety and enlarged and liberal views of men and things. I refer to Dr. J. Pye Smith, lately at the head of the Homerton Divinity College, near London.[6]
He first examines the style in which the Old Testament describes the character and operations of Jehovah, and shows that it is done ”in language borrowed from the bodily and mental const.i.tution of man, and from those opinions concerning the works of G.o.d in the natural world, which were generally received by the people to whom the blessings of revelation were granted.” Constant reference is made to material images, and to human feelings and conduct, as if the people addressed were almost incapable of spiritual and abstract ideas. This, of course, gives a notion of G.o.d infinitely beneath the glories of his character; but to uncultivated minds it was the only representation of his character that would give them any idea of it. Nay, even in this enlightened age, such descriptions are far more impressive than any other upon the ma.s.s of mankind; while those, whose minds are more enlightened, find no difficulty in inculcating the pure truth respecting G.o.d from these comparatively gross descriptions.
Now, if, upon a point of such vast importance as the divine character, revelation, thus condescends to human weakness and ignorance, much more might we expect it, in regard to the less important subject of natural phenomena. We find, accordingly, that they are described as they appear to the common eye, and not in their real nature; or, in the language of Rosenmuller, the Scriptures speak ”according to optical, and not physical truth.” They make no effort to correct even the grossest errors, on these subjects, that then prevailed.
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