The agreement of science and revelation

Front matter

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THE

Preface

The present work is designed to supply a want long felt, not only by the readers of scientific books, but also by Christian ministers and people. It is an attempt to exhibit in brief compass the true relations and harmony of Nature and Revelation, by presenting some of the analogies between the truths of the supernatural world and the researches of history, astronomy, geology, and physiology. It claims that Science and Faith mutually support each other, — that the many-colored coat of infidelity is a patchwork taken from an effete and unscientific heathenism, —that the Bible is a record of the original faith of mankind and of its development in history, — that the principles of biblical interpretation must be based on the modes of Divine revelation, — and that the biblical doctrines concerning God, the creation, the human soul, the need of a Mediator, the faith-faculty, and the resurrection of the dead, are in perfect accordance with true science.

A terse, simple style has been attempted, in hope

Preface.

of rendering the work useful both as a text-book for the student and as a collection of essays on topics of more than ordinary interest at the present day. A few technicalities were unavoidable: hence a Glossary of Scientific and Theological Terms has been appended. The analyses of the chapters, and a copious Index, also, will be found useful.

As to the doctrinal statements or scientific facts and principles referred to, information has been sought from reliable sources and is presented with the freshness of thorough conviction. Where practicable, indebtedness to others has been acknowledged, either in the text or the margin.

By an exhibition of the harmony and essential unity of plan in all God’s works, natural and supernatural, we seek to add to the living stream of Christian evidences, whose volume increases from age to age.

Preface To The Second Edition

The sale of more than two thousand copies of the first edition, the introduction of the work into the course of study for junior ministers of the M. E. Church, and the many favorable notices from the press of different denominations of Christians, are sufficient evidences of the utility of this book. The author desires to record here his sense of gratitude to the Giver of all good, who has enabled him in some degree to serve the cause of religious truth. Some additional matter has been added to the present edition, chiefly relating to the antiquity of man, the theory of evolution, and the doctrine of a Mediator.

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CONTENTS,

Chapter I. The Relation Of Science And Faith

Faith is . . . the evidence of things not seen.” — St. Paul.

CONTENTS.

Definitions — General Relation of Faith and Science — Different Reception of Religious Faith and Hypothetical Speculations of Science — Pantheistic Objections to the Supernatural examined — Arguments against Pantheism from Physical, Mental, and Moral Science — Deistic Objection to the Possibility of Miracles examined — Evidence of Christian Truth various — Character of Modern Infidelity — The Materials for settling the Question of the Harmony of Nature and Revelation are complete.

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CHAPTER I.

RELATION OF SCIENCE AND FAITH.

A definition is not only a stepping-stone to truth, but also a revealer of fallacies. Like the spear of Ithuriel, it has caused many a concealed temptation or doubt to assume its true shape and proportions. In the investigation of religious truth it is especially necessary to define the leading terms employed, in order to insure clearness of mental vision. What, then, is the meaning of Science, and what of Faith ? — terms often used, and essential to our present inquiry.

Lexicographers define Science as certain knowledge, or, in a more particular sense, as a collection of the general principles or leading truths relating to any subject, arranged in systematic order. This term, though often loosely applied, is seldom misunderstood. It is different, however, with the term Faith. Sometimes it is used as a synonym for the word Belief, meaning a persuasion of the truth of a declaration, proposition, or alleged fact, on the ground of evidence. At other times, and chiefly by theologians, it is used to express confidence, or such trust as influences the affections and conduct. Both senses seem to be derived from the primary meaning of the original word, which, according to Webster, is to strain, to draw, and thus to bind or make fast.

Faith necessary to Science .

The Apostle Paul says, “Faith is the substance ( uizoffzaat: ; — a being set under, a realizing) of things hoped for, the evidence (eAev/«c- — persuasion, conviction) of things not seen.”

From the definition it is evident that the spheres of Faith and Science differ. Science relates to the known, Faith may refer either to the known or the unknown. If we use the term Faith in the sense of either belief or trust, it will apply to known or scientific truths as well as to those based on testimony or revelation. Indeed, there can be no science without faith. Deduction, induction, and testimony, the very pillars of science, appeal to faith, and are impossible without it. Mathematical axioms are called self-evident propositions, but they are so because with the present structure of our minds they compel our faith. The objects of faith may be also the objects of science, or they may be things unknown to science. These latter, again, may become objects of science without ceasing thereby to be objects of faith. “ Science has in many things altered the standpoint or extended the domain of faith, but has never rendered faith unnecessary. It has enlarged the faith of childhood into the faith of manhood, but every hint of light which it has discovered has pointed out a great gloom beyond.”* Into that gloom of the unknown the eye of faith pierces, from thence it hears voices of truth which are as yet inaudible to science. The

* Ecce Deus.

Faith a Necessity for Man. 13

spirit of science may incline a man to doubt, but not necessarily to unbelief. It weighs, disputes, examines, deduces, experiments; but its generalizations are all inferences of faith. The majority of scientific truths are accepted by‘ faith in the testimony of others ; few, comparatively, are verified by personal experiment. It is usually a sufficient authentication of a scientific fact if it be published by recognized authority and is consistent with other known facts. In this manner science is propagated by faith. It is the nature of faith to be constructive; it educates or draws on the mind to the knowledge of truth. First faith, then science, then understanding; such is the progress of the mind towards a knowledge of the truths of nature or religion. To lose faith in sight is the constant hope of the instructed Christian. “ For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” Unbelief is essentially destructive. Its object is to pull down, not to build up, and it is really as much opposed to science as to religion. Few, if any, minds have been possessed with the full spirit of unbelief. It is too unsatisfactory, as well as too malignant. Man must have belief of some kind, or existence would be insupportable. It would be useless to attempt to argue with unbelief; we address ourselves, therefore, to the spirit of inquiry and examination, — to the scientific spirit; we desire an investigation of the consistency of the leading doctrines of Christianity with what we know of the world around us. We would bring Faith, as taught by the 2 "

Opposition to Faith unscientific.

Bible, and Science, as instructed by deduction and experiment, face to face. We would interrogate the witnesses, and see if, while preserving their individuality, they do not agree to the same facts.

Faith in axiomatic truths is readily admitted, because of their necessity to explain the phenomena of the natural world. The demonstrations of mathematics and the experiments of physical science are impossible without it. In like manner, faith in spiritual things is necessary to explain the phenomena of mind.

The faith which relates to the external world, even if hypothetical, finds no special opposition from the votaries of modern science; on the contrary, their works abound with deductions and theories which have nothing but a problematical basis. Thus the speculations grounded on the supposition of a universal ether, the unity of force, the atomic theory of chemistry, the inhabitability of the planets, etc., are very far from being demonstrations, yet the faith of philosophers remains unshaken, and, generally, unopposed.

It is very different with respect to religious faith, or faith in the reality of the supernatural. For this the naturalistic school of philosophers can find nothing but contempt. With a blind and unscientific adherence to preconceived opinion, they exhibit, under the false pretense of science, the same vulgar prejudice which so long hindered the progress and acceptance of physical discovery. With them the supernatural and the imaginative are synonymous, and are set aside with an ill-disguised sneer. Their philosophic structure rests upon the theory that the whole nature of things

Pantheism.

is fixed and unalterable ; the opposite of the Platonic theory that nature is in constant flow; hence their negation of the supernatural.

“Men,” says the Duke of Argyll, “who denounce any particular field of thought are always to be suspected. The presumption is that valuable things which these men do not like are to be found there. There are many forms of priestcraft. The same arts, and the same delusions, have been practiced in many causes. Sometimes, though perhaps not so often as is popularly supposed, men have been warned off particular branches of physical inquiry, in the supposed interests of religion. But constantly and habitually men are now warned from many branches of inquiry, both physical and psychological, in the interests— real enough — of the Positive Philosophy! ‘Whatever,’ says Mr. Lewes, ‘is inaccessible to reason should be strictly interdicted to research.’ Here we have the true ring of the old sacerdotal interdicts.”*

At the present day, faith in the supernatural is rejected by the pantheists, who regard the universe as the evolution of absolute being, and by the deists, who consider the order of nature so perfect as to imply immutability and inviolability. Let us examine these theories by the test of reason and an appeal to facts.

By what process of reasoning do any persuade themselves that nature is self-evolved, and- not the product of a Supreme Intelligence ? How comes it

* Primeval Man.

1 6 Faith welcomes Science.

to pass that any human intellect can conceive that contrivance, and thought, and feeling are the product of unintelligent, insensible matter ?

The principal, if not the only, argument on which such theorists rely, is drawn from the advance of science. Day by day science contracts the sphere of the unknown in the world around us, and enlarges that which is known. Imaginary theories are exploded, as the forces which act upon matter and their modes of action are brought to light. Our philosopher deems it therefore reasonable to suppose that when our knowledge of nature is perfected we shall see sufficient reason for the existence and development of all things in the universe itself, without resorting to the idea of a cause separate and apart from the universe.

But is this true, or even rational ? If our knowledge of nature were perfect, would it disprove an order beyond and above nature? The very idea of the supernatural presupposes natural order and laws. Nature and the supernatural might coexist, and our knowledge of one be perfect while we know nothing of the other. That we may know the supernatural, it must reveal itself in the sphere of the natural. The reality of such revelation is a subject to be examined in a true spirit of scientific inquiry. Faith in the supernatural has nothing to fear from the enlargement of the domain of science. It can afford to welcome every improvement of the faculties of the human mind, as tending to that perfection of reason which will fully qualify us for examining the foundation of

Natural Science against Pantheism.

eternal truth on which it rests. As to the revelation of the supernatural, we shall inquire hereafter; it is sufficient here to show that the ground of pantheism is untenable and unscientific.

It is the intoxication of scientific pursuit which so strongly attracts its votaries to the exclusive study of nature as to limit human faculties to a narrow sphere, — one which excludes as unworthy all investigation outside its own limits. The dignity of reason should lead to broader views. Yet, forsooth, these are the men who give the name of narrow-mindedness to the generalization which includes heaven as well as earth, and regard themselves as perfect just in proportion to the specialty of their pursuit. Such infatuation is as unscientific as it is foolish. It is not science which teaches pantheism, but ignorance and pride.

Arguments against pantheism, and in favor of the supernatural, may be drawn from every branch of science, — physical, mental, and moral; although the reality of the supernatural must be learned by its revelations.

Physical science exhibits the universe to us as a series of existences, arranged in such a manner, rank above rank, that one species is never witnessed transforming itself into another. No such development as pantheism pretends is ever seen in nature. The theories of spontaneous generation and of natural selection have not a shadow of experimental proof, while the general arrangement of nature presents a plan full of unity and intelligence, exhibiting the hand of a contriver in each of its parts. Life and organi- 2* zation can never be explained by the development of material atoms, much less can intelligence. “ How should spirit be born of matter ? The appearance of life in the organic world was a new fact, or, to speak more correctly, an act of creation, for it could not leap from the insensate stone like the spark from fretted pebbles. The appearance of animal life was equally a new act, for plant never gave other than vegetable life. Surely from the life of the animal to that of the spirit the leap is more wide and sudden still, and creative energy must have manifested itself with greater glory to produce this higher form of life.” We shall examine the theory of development more closely hereafter ; at present we only refer to the verdict of not proved , which science has rendered against it, bringing us to the only alternative of a Great First Cause.

Metaphysics repudiates pantheism ; for “ reason refuses to admit that the perfect and infinite of which it has the conception, can be inseparably bound to the imperfect and the finite ; that the imperfect and finite form part of God himself.” Again, the only element of pantheistic philosophy is inflexible, absolute fate. This is seen in all its forms, — in atheism and positivism, in the romancing of Renan, the statistics of Buckle, and the speculations of the materialistic physiologists. The consciousness of freedom in the mind of man is an ever-living testimony against all such folly.

The Freedom of the Will is the central point of attack by modern skeptics, yet “ the passionate obstinacy with which the declarations of the common sense of mankind are contested and every fragment of free self-determining power denied, serves to bring out more emphatically than before the marvelous and isolated character of that power of choice which all unprejudiced men know that they possess. When it comes to be fully appreciated, amongst the many, how rigid law rules not only all living as well as inanimate irrational creatures, but how even the immense majority of our own actions are simply automatic, the wonderful character of our power of (in certain cases) voluntarily choosing the less attractive of two competing objects will be less inadequately estimated. Moreover, the recognition in our own being of this power, beyond anything else in nature, renders supernatural action external to us not only credible, but to be anticipated a priori. . . . The bitter hostility which exists to the doctrine of man’s free-will is not difficult to understand. It is impossible to assert it without implicitly asserting religion ; and it is, in one aspect at least, a trial to pride. It is, indeed, no small trial to the pride of a highly-cultured man of powerful intellect to feel that the poorest peasant is fully as capable as himself of performing the highest actions — those which are the special prerogative of man — namely, the exercise of rational meritorious volition and choice. If there is such a thing as morality, it is beyond comparison as to value with mere intellectual culture or capacity, and it necessarily follows that a poor paralyzed old woman sitting in a chimney-corner may, by her good aspirations and volitions, be repeatedly performing mental acts compared with which the discovery by Newton of the law of gravitation is as nothing. Again, in free-will and morality, we have that which cannot be the result of mere brute inheritance. Conceptions of time and space may be plausibly represented as structural results of a practically infinite brute ancestry which has been submitted to conditions of time and space, but at any rate such ancestry was never submitted to conditions of moral responsibility. Thus the recognition of the human will renders absurd the conception that man can have developed from a brute.” *

President Edwards’s treatise on the Will has long been regarded as a most masterly presentation of the predestinarian argument. Dr. Whedon, however, in his work entitled “ The Freedom of the Will,” has thoroughly answered the sophism that the will is swayed by the strongest motives, as well as other arguments of Edwards. In the chapter entitled “ Freedom involves not Atheism,” he remarks, “that it will be very difficult to find exceptions to the rule that all atheists, pantheists, materialists, and professed fatalists are necessitarians.” Again : “ The doctrine that there is no soul and no will exempt from that same invariable sequency which rules the domains of physics, that there is no God who does not come under the same inflexible inalternative law with matter, levels the whole into one system of fatalistic materialism. The subjection of human volitions to the same law eliminates responsibility, dispenses

* Mivart’s Lessons from Nature, p. 380.

with retribution, divine government, and human immortality.”

Dr. Whedon shows that freedom must be held to exist until an unanswerable argument has proved its non-existence; that the common consciousness of mankind affirms it ; and that moral responsibility requires it.

Thus the consciousness of free-will, uncontradicted by facts of physical science or by metaphysical reasoning, protests against Pantheism, and proclaims that the personality of a Supreme God, and not fate, is the true fountain of force.

“ The moral consciousness,” says Pressense,* to whom we are indebted for our train of thought, “protests yet more loudly ; it could not survive the suppression of Divine order. It affirms it with authority every time that it enjoins the right on us and upbraids us for the wrong ; for what it commands is often that which we have no will to do, and what it condemns is that which our inclination has prompted. It is not, then, the simple echo of our hearts ; it speaks in the name of a law, which is neither that of our senses nor of our mobile and impassioned soul ; it brings us into the presence of another than ourselves, of one greater than ourselves, who has an absolute right over us, and its ‘ Thou shalf sounds yet above the wrecks of all our other convictions,' establishing in us an immovable certitude. . . . Yes, the human soul believes in liberty, in responsibility, in

* “ The Life and Times of Jesus Christ,” by E. de PressensS, D.D»

law and its sanction; man believes that there is something which is the good, the true, the right, and some one who enjoins this upon him, renders it possible to him, and watches over its accomplishment. Pantheism, applied truly and upon a large scale, even by its best representatives, would cover with a plenary indulgence all infamies, would unchain wholly the powers of evil, and render life impossible.”

The author just quoted exhibits the unreasoning inconsistency of pantheism in recognizing no cause free and transcendent to the world by referring to its fundamental principles. “ For it,” he says, “ there is no other absolute than the universe arriving at the consciousness of itself in our own reason. But evidently universal life does not begin with this highest form; it does not open with thought, which is rather like the flower of this vast development, for it is not the cause of it, but the product. That which is at the starting-point, at the origin of things, is not the idea, not mind, but abstract being, — an existence so vague as to be akin to non-existence. Thus the greater results from the less, life from death or from inertia ; the immense column of universal existence springs from sheer nonentity. For what, in definite terms, is the abstract Being of Hegelianism, or that fathomless abyss whence the universe is made to arise, if it is not nonentity? Thus the famous axiom, ex nihilo nihil , cannot be applied 4o Christians, or to the spiritualistic philosophers who place absolute being before the world, but it falls with its whole weight on the systems of

Deism.

pantheism. It is idle to suppose myriads of centuries bringing forms of existence out of this nonentity; time, as has been well said, has nothing to do with the question. Millions of years cannot make fruitful that which has itself no existence. Behold, then, a grand and gorgeous effect, — the world with its harmonies, humanity with its highest life, born not even of Thales’s drop of water, but of a void! Reason protests against such a doctrine, and to accept it she must deny the principle of causality, which is one of her essential elements.”

The system of deism, in contrast with that of pantheism, admits a Great First Cause, intelligent and wise and powerful, the Author of the universe and its laws. It objects to religious faith, however, so far as it relates to a supernatural intervention into the established order of nature. In other words, the deist admits the existence of a Creator, but denies the possibility of miracles. Two arguments have been adduced to sustain this position: 1st. That the perfection and order of the universe imply the immutability of the laws of nature. 2d. That the very perfection of Divine wisdom forbids the idea that it is necessary for God to interfere with his own laws or retouch his own work. In both these arguments there is an implied supremacy given to the laws of nature, as if something more was meant by the term law than a mode of being or order of sequence; — as if, indeed, the laws of nature were superior to the Lawgiver who ordained them. As to the first, it is evident, upon the principle of deism, that before the

24 Divine Freedom against Immutable Lazo.

creation of the world there was law or condition in the Divine existence itself. God was sovereign, free, and independent. The free personality of the Divine mind was governed by essential Holiness and Wisdom. If in creating the world God has alienated his own liberty or enchained his own independence, the Divine order has been changed, and law is not immutable. If the laws of the creation are immutable laws of necessity, and not the ordinary exercise of creative freedom, then the independence of the Divine existence has been destroyed by the act of creation, and that which was the law of nature is not now the law. The truth is, that the phrase “immutable laws of nature” is wholly incongruous when applied to the subject of supernatural interventions of Divine power. Such a phrase may suit an atheist, but not one who believes in a personal and fatherly God. The veiy beginning of nature, or creation itself, was a miracle. Each successive step of the world’s progress, as revealed to us in the rocks, or in the Bible, was miraculous. Life itself is continued in absolute dependence on Divine sovereignty. Besides, all the so-called laws of nature are not only reciprocal and interdependent, but have a certain rank or subordination, one to the other, and all are under the rule of Divine free agency. Thus the law of gravity acts upon a' stone in my hand, but the law of freedom in my will resists gravitation, and may cause the stone to mount high in the air, in opposition to the law of gravity It would be childish folly to argue against the reality of such a phenomenon that the order of the universe implies

Creation not originally Complete . 25

immutable law! Then my own volition is exerted under Divine supervision, and I am accountable for its exercise. “ The supernatural is the freedom of God, and it can only be abandoned, or at least its possibility contested, by abandoning the idea of a personal God.”

Respecting the argument that God’s wisdom forbids the necessity of interference, as if to retouch his own work, Pressense remarks, “The objection would hold good if we belonged to the world of necessity instead of to that of freedom.” But creation was not complete from the beginning. Successive interpositions of creative power manifestly point to the development of some plan not fully completed, and the appearance of man in the last geologic age elevates that plan to the sphere of moral and spiritual life. The deistic argument is as much opposed by the teaching of science as by the Scripture history. The latter shows us that the free creature had to determine his own destiny, — a fact which implies the possibility of evil. It is not God’s own work which He corrects when He miraculously interferes in redemption, but a helping hand which He holds out to the creature made miserable by his own fault. “ If the fall is but a delusion, if evil is only the imperfection necessary to the harmony of the whole, I can understand the objections of the deist to miracles. But if it is true that God’s free creature is unhappy through his own fault, and has placed himself under the yoke of a calamity as tremendous as it is terrible, in the name of what principle can those who 3

2 6 The Freedom of God a Reality .

recognize a sovereign Deity set aside the supernatural? After all, miracle, which must not be regarded exclusively in its secondary manifestations, is nothing else than the intervention of the Divine freedom to save man, conformably with the laws of moral order. What? You admit that God is free, is master of the creation which He called out of nothing, and yet to this free God you deny the right to arise from his rest to restore his fallen creature, because, to this end, He must needs break the chain of cause and effect, and introduce a novel fact in history? But if He cannot save, how could He, then, create? Creation is apparently an act of love, which reveals the depth of his being. If you question his sovereign right to save his creature when fallen from happiness, you refuse Him that which is the very essence of his being; you impugn his moral immutability, which must be in no wise confounded with immobility or inertia. The supernatural is, then, not only the freedom of God, it is also his love. I know no other definition of it more rigorously exact. Of what avail would his freedom be to God, in the sense in which it is accorded by theism, if he were unable to use that freedom for good?”

In the estimation of true science, one fact is worth a thousand theories, and the revelation of the supernatural is, and must be, a question of fact, to be judged of in the same manner as other facts, by historical testimony or experimental verification. If intercourse with heaven may be realized consciously by the devout and prayerful spirit, as the Bible

Christian Evidence various .

teaches, then experience is the quickest as well as the surest test. If it can be proved that God has made a communication of spiritual ideas and principles, all our theorizing respecting the possibility of such a communication is at an end.

The evidences of Christian truth upon which faith is based, are regarded by many as among the trials of our state of probation. With such a view of them they can never be considered as complete or final. Each age must review them from its own standpoint, every individual must examine them for himself. What will produce conviction with one mind will not with another. To one, the external authentication of miracles and prophecy is all-sufficient to lead to his submission to the authority of Holy Writ. To another, the supernatural grandeur and moral excellence of the doctrines themselves, or of the life of Jesus, are all -convincing. Another regards the actual results as demonstrative of Divine power. With many, perhaps the most, the authority and influence of others — parents, teachers, legislators — lead to a ready acceptance of the truth. The Bible itself, whatever theologians may have done, rests its claims on no single evidence, or class of evidences, besides the saving influence of the truth it reveal^ upon the hearts and lives of those whe receive it. Jesus said, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” St. Paul declared the gospel to be the power of God unto salvation. And St. Peter addressed his fellow- Christians as those who had received the end of their faith, even the salvation of their souls. Throughout