The two books of nature and revelation collated

Front matter

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Preface

It is sometimes said that scientific questions can be intelligently decided by scientists alone ; and for this reason people of ordinary intelligence and education must take these decisions on trust. This is true respecting certain questions ; but, at the same time, it is true that the great body of our modern science, the science involved in the decision of such questions as those discussed in the present volume, can be brought fully within the reach of the understanding of any well-informed man of average intelligence, if an honest effort is made to do it. Such a man might not be able to construct the argument for himself, but when it is fairly presented he can judge and reach his conclusions for himself as safely as the scientist can.

Edward Clodd, F.R.A.S., must have believed this in so far as the questions concerning primeval man are concerned, for he wrote his " Childhood of the World " for the use of youth in a course of education. Professor Huxley must have believed this in so far as evolution is concerned, for most of his " Lay Sermons and Addresses" and his New York " Lectures on Evolution" were originally addressed to popular audiences. Professor Robertson Smith and Dr. Toy must have believed this in so far as the authenticity and genuineness of the Pentateuch are concerned, for the first-named addressed his " Lectures on the Old Testament in the Jewish Church" to a popular audience, and Dr. Toy wrote his

IV PREFACE.

' ' History of the Eeligion of Israel ' ' for the use of the advanced classes in Sabbath-schools.

In the present volume the author has sought : (1) To popularize the discussion of the matters treated of, avoiding as far as possible the use of technical terms, or, where such terms were, for any reason, used, adding immediately an explanation thereof ; and (2) to bring the discussion within the limits of a single volume of moderate size, by taking no notice of irrelevant matters and matters of little importance, and confining his attention to the strong points alone — the points upon which a correct decision of the questions at issue must turn. How far he has succeeded in this he must leave the reader to judge.

Contents

I.— NATURE AND REVELATION.

PAGE

§ 1. The Border-land. § 2. Science as yet Incomplete. § 3. Premature Announcements. § 4. The Language of Scripture. § 5. The Author's Object in Writing 7

I. Nature And Revelation"

§ 1. " The Border-land."

" The border-land between science and religion is one which men cannot be prevented from entering ; but what they may find there depends very much on themselves. Under wise guidance it may prove to us an Eden, the very gate of heaven, and we may acquire in it larger and more harmonious views of both the seen and the unseen, of science and religion. But, on the other hand, it may be found to be a battle-field or a bedlam, a place of confused cries and incoherent ravings, and strewn with the wrecks of human hopes and aspirations." (Dawson's " Facts and Fancies of Modern Science," p. 14.)

What Principal Dawson here remarks as true of science and religion is, of necessity, true of science and the revelation of the one only true religion contained in the Scriptures. In making a revelation of religious truth in such a form as to be easily intelligible to man, especially " the common people," the Scriptures very wisely present us with, not a " Confession of Faith," not a treatise on " Systematic Theology," but with that truth as it is incorporated in the history of the Church and the life and experience of God's people in the world. The Bible contains very little didactic discussion or logical exhibition of the truth it teaches, but is largely made up of history, the biographies of saints and sinners, of psalms and proverbs and prophecies, and the story of the life and teachings of the God-man during His brief sojourn among men. Admitting, then, as every thoughtful reader must, that there is no intention on the part of the sacred writers to teach us science, in the distinctive sense of that term, in the Scriptures, it will be seen at once that the Scriptures, on the one hand, and geography, history, chronology, and science, physical and metaphysical, on the other, must often cover the same ground, not for the same purpose, it is true, but yet must often cover the same ground ; that there is a border-land in which the students of Scripture and science must meet, and will have occasion to examine the same subjects, and deal with the same facts. As Principal Dawson remarks, " Man cannot be prevented from entering this border-land ;" nor is it desirable, in the interest either of religion or science, that he should be. The Christian believes that the Bible and nature are both alike from God — a God of truth ; and from this it necessarily follows that when rightly interpreted they will harmonize and illustrate each other. Yet, as a matter of fact, nothing is more certain than that divines and scientists have often been in conflict ; and at the present day the most persistent attacks upon Christianity are from the side of science, thus illustrating the truth of the remark " that what men may find in this border-land depends very much upon themselves" — the purpose with which they enter that land, and the spirit in which they pursue their investigations.

"At the time of the meeting of the British Association in 1865, some six hundred and seventeen scientific men signed a paper containing the following declaration — viz. : ' We conceive that it is impossible for the Word of God, as written in the book of nature, and God's word, written in Holy Scripture, to contradict one another, however much they may appear to differ. We are not forgetful that physical science is not complete, but is only in a condition of progress, and that at present our finite reason enables us to see as through a glass darkly, and we confidently believe that a time will come when the two records will be seen to agree in every particular.'" ("Current Discussions in Theology for 1883," pp. 7, 8.)

§ 2. Science as yet Incomplete.

There is and there can be no conflict between science and revelation ; but there is and there has long been conflict between scientists and divines ; and a fruitful source of this conflict is, as intimated in the paper of the British scientists, quoted above, the present incompleteness of science. Taking science as it is set forth in the popular writings of the day, we will find it consisting of two distinct and separable portions — viz. : (1) a body of well-ascertained facts and principles, which make up the science itself ; and (2) a body of hypotheses and conjectures, more or less probable, by means of which men are endeavoring to enlarge the domain of science. It would be a great mistake to reject the use of all hypotheses simply because they were unproven. The history of science furnishes abundant evidence that hypotheses, even such as have afterward turned out to be incorrect, have been of great use in directing the course of investigation and experiment on the part of those who were laboring for the enlargement of human knowledge. Like the scaffold used in the erection of a building, they have been of great service while the building is going up, though removed as of no value after the building is completed. But we should never forget that unproved hypotheses are not an integral part of science itself. Much of the seeming discrepancy between science and revelation to-day arises out of a disregard of this distinction, and a consequent declaration that science testifies to this, and science testifies to that, when, in fact, the testimony is not that of science, but that of some unproved hypothesis. Prof. Huxley never wrote a truer thing than when he wrote : u Men of science, like young colts in a fresh pasture, are apt to be exhilarated on being turned into a new field of inquiry, and to go off at a hand gallop, in total disregard of hedges and ditches, losing sight of the real limitation of their inquiries, and to forget the extreme imperfection of what is known." (" Origin of Species," Lecture I.)

§ 3. Premature Announcements.

In the early part of the present century a great excitement was created in the scientific world by the discovery of " the zodiacs of Dendera and Esne in Egypt." The zodiac painted upon the ceiling of the temple at Dendera ' ' is headed by the sign of the Lion, followed by the Yirgin, the Balance, the Scorpion, the Archer, and Capricorn in the same line. The peculiar arrangement of these figures represented, it was said, the exact position of the constellations when the zodiac was constructed, and it was ascertained by appropriate calculations that it was much older than the beginning of the period embraced in the Christian chronology." In 1821 the zodiac of Dendera, having been carefully detached from the ceiling of the temple, was brought safely to Paris. si M. Greppo describes the interest which it awakened : an object of interest to educated men, and of vanity to those who thought themselves such, it could not remain unnoticed by the multitude ; and classes of society who knew not even the significance of the term zodiac rushed in crowds to behold it. In the journals, in the saloons, the zodiac was the only topic of discussion. Have you seen the zodiac ? What do you think of the zodiac ? were questions to which every one was seemingly compelled to give a well-informed answer, or to be degraded from a place in polished society. Tracts were circulated in Paris to disseminate the fact that the Christian chronology was set aside." (Southall's " Eecent Origin of Man, ' ' pp. 76, 77. ) Subsequent and more thorough investigation, especially that of the younger Champollion in Egypt, has shown, beyond all question, that this announcement was premature, that " these zodiacs belonged to the first and second centuries of the Christian era, and were ' schemes of nativity, ' and had reference to ' judicial astrology. 5 "

In his admirable lecture on " The Education of the Judgment," Professor Faraday dwells upon the importance of " reserving judgment" in matters imperfectly known. Had scientists generally learned this lesson, the history of modern science would have furnished no occasion for such a chapter as Chapter Y. in Southall's " Recent Origin of Man" on " The Fickleness of Science."

§ 4. The Language of Scripture.

The language of common life is very different from that of science. In common life we speak of things as they appear, as they become known to us directly through the use of our senses. In science we seek to represent things as they really are, and to do this with accuracy and completeness ; and as science has especially to do with the relation of cause and effect, we speak of phenomena with the purpose of expressing this relation. In the language of common life we say the sun rises ; and this, although we know perfectly well that the motion of the sun is apparent and not real — produced by the turning of the earth upon its axis. In the language of astronomy we would say the sun appeared above the horizon in consequence of the revolution of the earth upon its axis ; or, if we wished to be particularly accurate, we would add, and the earth's motion in its orbit, and the refraction of light in passing through the earth's atmosphere ; for both of these last-mentioned causes has something to do with the time of the sun's appearance above the horizon.

To the use of scientific language in common life there are two objections — viz. :

(1) Such language is, to a large extent, unintelligible to the mass of the people. Even among the learned, in one department of science, the language of another department may be unintelligible. Many an able mathematician cannot read understanding^ a page of modern chemistry ; and many an accomplished chemist would find himself completely at a loss in attempting to get at the meaning of a page of the best treatise we have on analytical geometry.

(2) Scientific language, especially that of w r hat are called, distinctively, the natural sciences, generally incorporates in itself so much of current hypothesis — often of hypothesis afterward abandoned — that the writings of the men of one age are unintelligible to those of another, unless read in the light which the history of the science casts upon their meaning. In illustration of this remark, take a brief extract from Nicholson's " Philosophy," a standard work in its department a century ago.

In his chapter on " The Marine Acid, and the Combinations in which it is a Principal Part," Nicholson writes : " Black manganese is the calx of a semi-metal, which has a strong tendency to combine with phlogiston. If four ounces of marine acid, with one ounce of this calx, be put into a retort, to which the apparatus used in distilling the marine acid has been previously adapted, yellow vapors are abundantly disengaged, at first without the assistance of fire, and afterward by means of heat. . . . This vapor is found to consist of marine acid deprived of one of its constituent parts — namely, phlogiston (according to Scheele ; but JBerthollet has rendered it probable that it consists of dephlogisticated air, combined with marine acid). It attacks phlogistic bodies with great vehemence, and dissolves all the metals directly, affording the same salts as the entire acid does, but without disengaging any inflammable air." This passage will be utterly unintelligible to the common reader ; and even to many a young chemist of the present day ; and this for the reason that Nicholson, in stating a fact, has incorporated in his statement the exploded theory of phlogiston — a theory once universally accepted by chemists, and clung to even after the progress of discovery compelled them to suppose that phlogiston was lighter than nothing ; that instead of possessing weight, as other elements did, it possessed the opposite of weight — i.e., levity, as they styled it.

For such reasons as these, the use of scientific language is limited to treatises on science ; while the language of common life is that used in all other writings ; and this, even where the greatest accuracy is desired. The carefully written laws of the land speak of the sun's rising and setting as familiarly as men do in common conversation. Indeed, in so far as the truth intended to be expressed is concerned, the language of common life is as accurate as the language of science. When I say the sun rises I mean to tell of a certain phenomenon — i.e., a certain thing as it appears, as it is made known to my senses, and not that event in relation to its cause, as the astronomer does. For the same reasons that the language of common life is that used by all men in writing history, geography, chronology, and even the laws of the land, that language has been used, under the Divine direction, in writing the Holy Scriptures. Ignorance of this truth, so reasonable in itself, or a wilful disregard of it in interpreting the Scriptures, has been the cause of much of the conflict between scientists and divines since the revival of learning in these modern times.

§ 5. The Author's Object in Writing.

Bearing in mind " the incompleteness of science," the author, in the following papers, has not attempted to work out a harmony of science and revelation — that is, a work belonging to the future. What he has attempted, as the general title of the work indicates, is to collate the two books of nature and revelation ; and this with the design (1) of directing the reader's attention to the points in which the latest results of scientific investigation and the statements of revelation, put on record many centuries ago, are at one ; and (2) to show that, even on points in which, at present, there is apparent discrepancy, there is no necessary contradiction. Having been a student of science for half a century, and for some of the best years of his life a teacher of science also, and through all these years a devout student of Scripture, he can heartily indorse the declaration of the British scientists, quoted in § 1 — " We confidently believe that a time will come when the two records will be seen to agree in every particular."

The papers embraced in this volume have been written, and several of them given to the public, either through the press or from the platform, in the course of the last few years ; but all of them have now been carefully rewritten, so as to embody the latest results of scientific research and biblical criticism, and thus a true representation of the case as it stands to-day.

II

PKIMEVAL MAN.* § 6. The Question Stated.

HOW LONG AGO, AND IN WHAT CONDITION AS TO CIVILIZATION AND RE- LIGION, did the Race of Man begin its Couese in the Would ?

Until very recently the opinion entertained by those who thought upon the subject at all was, that man was created some six or seven thousand years ago,f and that he commenced his course as a civilized being, believing in the one only living and true God.

A far greater antiquity has been claimed for him by some of late years ; and we are told that man, beginning his course as a savage, has gradually raised himself through what are termed the paleolithic, the neolithic, the bronze, and the iron ages, each of which lasted for many thousands of years, until he reached the begin-

* The substance of this paper was originally delivered as a lecture at the Summer School of the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, at Key East, N. J., July 29th, 1885, and subsequently published in Christian Thought.

f "A world's era, dating from the creation, and constructed out of the Old Testament, was in use among the Jews at the time of Christ. The Jewish historian Josephus employs it in his work on archaeology. Such an era seems to recommend itself in several respects, but its construction presents difficulties which can hardly ever be overcome. Every scholar who tries it comes to a different result. Julius Africanus counts from the creation to Christ 5500 years ; Eusebius, Bede, and the Koman Martyrologum, 5199 ; Scaliger and Calvisius, 3950 ; Kepler and Petarius, 3984 ; Usher, followed by our English Bibles, 4004. " — Schaff-Herzog's Encyclopcedia, art. "Era."

nings of our modern civilization. This opinion has been supported with especial zeal by those who adopt the hypothesis of man's evolution from the brute ; indeed, it would seem to be a necessary consequence of such an origin for him, even though evolution be regarded but as ' ' a mode of creation. " To an examination of the problem thus presented we will now turn our attention.

§ 7. Advance and Degradation alike Common.

Beginning our examination, where all examination of such a subject must begin, if we would arrive at the truth, with the present condition of man, we find him in every possible stage of civilization, from the utter savagery of the Digger Indians of North America and the Weddas of Ceylon to the advanced civilization of the English-speaking nations, who dominate the world. And comparing the present condition of the nations with what authentic history tells us it was a few centuries ago, we learn that while some nations have been steadily advancing in civilization, others have been stationary, and others, again, have retrograded. The American Encylopsedia, in its article on Ethnology, written by an evolutionist and an advocate of the great antiquity of man, marks only five of the thirteen great families into which it divides the human race as advancing in civilization at the present time, while four are stationary, and the remaining four are retrograding.

An instance of retrogradation is furnished us by the aborigines of our own country. " There are abundant remains," writes Sir John Lubbock, " of a very ancient American civilization, which was marked by the construction of great public works and by the development of an agriculture founded on the maize, which is a cereal indigenous to the continent of America. This civilization was subsequently lost, and then succeeded a period in which man relapsed into partial barbarism." (" Prehistoric Times," p. 234.)

An instance of the extreme degradation of a once highly civilized people we have in the Veddas, or Weddas, of Ceylon. Of this people Canon Eawlinson tells us that a careful study of their language proves them to be " the degenerate descendants of the Sanskrit Aryans who conquered India;" and he adds: "It is difficult to conceive of a degradation which could be more complete. The Sanskrit Aryans must, by their language and literature, have been at the time of their conquest in a fairly advanced stage of civilization. The Weddas are savages of a type than which it is scarcely possible to conceive anything more debased. Their language is limited to some few hundred vocables ; they cannot count beyond two or three ; they have, of course, no idea of letters ; they have in a domesticated condition no animal but the dog ; they have no arts beyond those of making bows and arrows, and constructing huts of a very rude kind ; they are said to have no idea of God, and scarcely any memory. They with difficulty obtain a subsistence by means of the bow, and are continually dwindling, and threaten to become extinct. " ( 4 k Origin of JSI ations,' ' pp. 6, 7.)

In view of such facts as these — and many more of like character might be cited — the Duke of Argyll writes : "Nothing in the natural history of man can be more certain than that, both morally and intellectually and physically, he can, and he often does, sink from a higher to a lower level. This is true of man both collectively and individually, of men and of societies of men. Some regions of the world are strewn with monuments of civilizations which have passed away. Rude and barbarous tribes stare with wonder on the remains of temples, of which they cannot conceive the purpose, and of cities which are the dens of beasts." (" Primeval Man," p. 156.) And the venerable professor of ancient history at Oxford comes to the conclusion that " savagery and civilization are the two opposite poles of our social condition, states between which men oscillate freely, passing from either to the other with almost equal ease, according to the external circumstances wherewith they are surrounded." (" Origin of Nations," p. 8.)

§ 8. True Significance of the " Ages"

The several ages — as they are called — of stone, bronze, iron, and a higher civilization are not, nor have they ever been, ages in the progress of the human race as a whole, but only in that of particular peoples or nations — peoples in all these stages of progress living not only at the same time, but often side by side, as did the English colonists, the Red Indians, and the Aztecs in this country two centuries ago.

Nor does the passage of a particular people through one of these ages — the Stone Age, for example — necessarily require thousands of years. Where a savage people are brought in contact with a civilized one they may pass through all these " ages" in the course of a generation or two. Such has been the case with the civilized Indians, now quietly settled in our " Indian Territory." As Dr. Southall remarks, " The Stone Age is not necessarily associated with antiquity. It is a stage of civilization, and not a measure of time." (" Recent Origin of Man," p. 388.)

Nor are these several ages always stages in the progress of a people. They may be stages in a course of degradation, as was the fact, according to Sir John Lubbock, with respect to the Stone Age, in which many tribes of our North American Indians were found living, at the first settlement of the country by Europeans. The Stone Age may mark the last stage in the decadence of a once highly civilized people, as well as the first stage in the advance of a savage people toward civilization.

The assumption by the advocates of a great antiquity for man that our existing civilization is a result wrought out by the human race as a whole, through long ages, the general course being one of advance from utter savagery at its beginning, is irreconcilable with the known facts in the case. The question under examination cannot be settled by any general reasoning upon what is assumed to be the nature of man and the necessary progress in civilization, nor can it be settled by a study of the existing condition of the nations of the earth, and their history for the few centuries which authentic history covers in the case of many of them. In seeking an answer to it, we must make use of written history, so far as that is available ; and when that fails us, we must turn to the " monuments" and tradition and every trace of himself of every kind which man has left behind him in the distant past. Geology, anthropology, and archaeology, as well as history, traditional, monumental, and written, have a right to be heard ; and to their testimony let us now turn our attention. The examination of each of these several kinds of testimony will be, necessarily, brief ; but not so brief, I hope, as to prevent our reaching a satisfactory conclusion.

I. The Testimony of Science. § 9. The Testimony of Geology.

On one point the testimony of geology respecting primeval man is definite and unquestionable, and that is, that man is " the latest born " of the inhabitants of our earth. From the fauna to which he belongs more than one species of animal has disappeared, but, in so far as is known, not one has been added since he came into being.

From time to time during the last half century the announcement has been made that human remains had been found in positions which demonstrated a much greater antiquity for man than had hitherto been allowed ; but in every instance a more careful examination has proved this claim to be unfounded. Among the most noted of these cases are the following — viz. :

1. " The fossil man of Guadeloupe" for which JSTott and Gliddon, in their " Types of Mankind," published in 1854, claimed a great antiquity. " There were two of these skeletons, which were found imbedded in the solid rock on the northern coast of Guadeloupe, in the West Indies. One of these is in the British Museum, and the other in the Royal Cabinet in Paris. ... A careful study of them has led to the conclusion that they are the remains of Indians killed in battle not more than two centuries ago. The rock is a limestone, which is forming daily on that coast. . . . And the skeletons still retain some of their animal matter, and all their phosphate of lime." (Southall's " Recent Origin of Man," pp. 77, 78.)

2. The fossil human hones found, as was reported, hy Count Pourtales, in the coral reefs of Florida, and which Professor L. Agassiz calculated to be ten thousand years old, basing his calculations upon what he considered the rate of growth in coral reefs. Respecting this case, the American Naturalist, vol. 1, p. 434, contains the following statement : " In regard to the alleged discovery of human bones in the coral formation of Florida, which was first published by Professor Agassiz in !Nott and Gliddon's ' Types of Mankind,' and has appeared in other works, including Ly ell's l Antiquity of Man,' we beg to give our readers the following statement, in his own words, of Count L. F. Pourtales, the original discoverer of these bones : ' The human jaw and other bones found in Florida by myself in 1848 were not in a coral formation, but in a fresh- water sandstone, on the shore of Lake Monroe, associated with fresh-water shells of species still living in the Lake (Paludina, Ampullaria, etc.). No date can be assigned to that deposit, at least from present observation.' "

3. kC The Natchez man," as it was called — a human pelvis found in the bottom of a ravine cut through the fluviatile deposit at Natchez, Miss. , which Sir Charles Lyell estimated to have an age of one hundred thousand years. On this case I remark : (1) Professor C. G. Forshey, who subsequently examined the spot where this bone was found, says : "It was probably not in situ, but this loam and the bone too had caved in from some point above and been washed thither. A dozen plantation burial-places and Indian mounds and camps had been exposed above for centuries. The probabilities are a hundred to one that this bone was not of the bluff formation. (2) The conclusion of Lyell respecting the age of this bone is based upon another conclusion of his, that the delta of the Mississippi has been one hundred thou-