Fact and fiction in Holy Writ, or, Book and World wonders

Front matter

LIBRARY .OF CONGRESS.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

OR

Chapter I

THIS old book which lies open before me, a copy of which may be found in nearly all the homes of the civilized world, whatever may have been its origin, whether absolutely and in every part a revelation from God to man, inspired in every paragraph, line, or expression, and consequently a divine book in the fullest sense of the word ; or part divine and part human, as most people believe ; or entirely human — a sentiment with which we do not accord — the fact remains indisputable, the Bible is a wonderful creation.

It is more than mere rhetoric to compare it to the ocean on whose broad expanse the navies of the world are launched, whose hidden depths lie almost beyond the reach of the mariner's plummet, and yet into whose plashing surf a child may wade. This old book is an ocean ; it too has depths which cannot be measured by the fathom-line of human science and philosophy, and yet is so simple that the merest rustic, the child in either years or intelligence, may read it, find comfort and direction in its wholesome revelations, and be made strong by its spiritual truths. It requires a good deal of faith to believe all the Bible ; but that is no impeachment of the book any more than it is an impeachment of Nature that she has things too deep for our comprehension.

Faith, or belief in things above and beyond our sight, is the secret of all spiritual growth as well as of all true progress. No man grows strong in any direction in whose heart the faith-principle is not supreme. There is no conflict between faith and reason. In the development of a human life there is first the exercise of the senses, then rqason, and next faith. We touch, taste, hear, and see things before we reason about them. It is through our faith-faculty that we come into relationship with the invisible world. By faith we are enabled to reach the loftiest summits of human excellence; it is faith that supports us when we descend into the deepest recesses of life ; on the wings of faith we may sweep out into the spaces and mount up to the very throne of God. God has spoken to us in nature, through star and flower and worm, but who understands all his speech ? To the eye of Him who watches over a sparrow's fall there is nothing great, nothing insignificant. The man of science trains his eye to a similar impartiality in the study of nature. A little patch of moss to the common eye seems destitute of interest — to the eye of the accomplished botanist it is a little world in itself. Some one complained to the great Swedish naturalist, Linnaeus, that Sweden did not afford scope enough for the study of nature. The naturalist, pointing to a clump

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of moss, replied : "No man will live long enough to master the mosses on the rocks of Sweden."

One day, when lost in an African desert, Mungo Park came across a tuft of moss. This bit of green growing in an arid waste was a messenger from God to the desponding explorer. "If God cares for the moss," he said to himself, " surely he cares for me." And he went on his way, cheered by the sight of a bit of moss. Do we not remember the beautiful lines of Wordsworth ?

" To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."

There are some people who seem to think, judging from their speech, that the Bible should be reduced to the simplicity of an ordinary human volume. If such were the case, then who would believe it to be a divine book ? The natural world about us is made up of a few simple elements — sixty-four or live in number, so far as we know at present. Not only is the whole earth constituted of these, it is supposed, but possibly the entire material universe — their combinations are infinite. No man can ever hope to understand this great volume of nature. It has come from the mind of God, and to know all would be to know God. . So the Bible is made up of simple moral truths, variously combined and presented to us in scraps of history, biography, poetry, metaphor, incident, parable, hyperbole, and allegory, etc. And coming from God, like the earth, must it not necessarily partake of his thoughts ? And are not his thoughts too deep often for human thought ?

The facts of Scripture are at least as well attested as those of any history ; and though it may contain many figures of speech they are to be understood as such, for through them some of the sublimest truths are set forth. Hence we think it is not irreverent to speak of " Fact and Fiction in Holy "Writ." But of this we shall have more to say farther along.

All that is asked now is that the reader will follow us patiently and impartially. This is not a vindication — the Bible has reached beyond the need of any man's defense or apology. It is buttressed in the affections of millions of our race, and only Omnipotence

himself could banish it from human societv. It treats

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more of the supernatural than of the natural, for the supernatural is the natural of the universe. Many things are recorded upon its pages which all do not believe. These remarkable statements and occurrences belong either in the realm of fact or fiction. "We know that some of the grandest truths are taught in fiction. In both the Old Testament and the New there are accounts of miracles wrought through human agencies as incontestably proven as any of the ordinary events of secular history. Shall they be accepted or rejected ? At this point many people are divided in their opinions. One thing, however, has not been, to any great extent, a matter of dispute — the Bible is a book of morals such as is not possessed by any people on earth, except Jews and Christians. How are we to account for this fact? Only by admitting its divinity. One thing is certain : to abide by its precepts, to revere its mysteries, and to drink in its spirit is the sure pathway of ascent to the highest personal, social, and national development in both intelligence and virtue. There are those who read the Bible to find fault with little things — the minor portions — as if one should repudiate the Declaration of Independence because its author neglected to dot an i or cross a t. No scholar denies the fact that there are obscure passages in the Bible, as well as a few spurious ones ; but they are easily pointed out and do not mar the teachings of the book. How they came there is not very clear, nor is it very important, but they are there. There are spots on the sun, but who thinks less of the sun on that account \ lie who searches for these and for the seeming discrepancies, and who reads every strain of poetry as if it were prose, and deals with every metaphor as if it were a mathematical equation, who applies to Scripture language the exactness of law or science, who sees in every expression born out of a luxurious Oriental imagination a plain matter of fact, is not only doing injustice to the book but to himself. He may fitly be compared to a traveler belated at nightfall miles from his destination who stops to read the inscription on the guide-board by the road-side, and instead of pushing on to where the index-finger points, thus escaping the darkness and the impending storm, falls to criticising- the lettering of the board.

But let us consider this book as a production — a book merely. It divides itself into sixty-six sub-books, which are attributed to about forty different waiters, and who lived through a stretch of nearly *or quite two thousand years. As a whole it is a unit. The New Testament quotes the Old frequently, while the Old Testament is the foundation of the New. Not far from one half of the New Testament w 7 as written by St. Paul. The next most extensive writer was the gentle and loving John. Of all the New Testament writers Paul was the only one who could claim any eminence in point of scholarship. The writers are mostly men of good native ability ; but if any, except St. Paul and possibly the " beloved physician," Luke, ever enjoyed the benefit of academic training both history and tradition have failed to make note of it. And yet how ably did they write ! What lofty themes inspired them, and what eminent characters have they chronicled ! These writers present different types of character. They were as unlike as musical instruments or trees. There was Jeremiah the sorrowful, Daniel the sagacious, Isaiah the sublime, David the poet, and Solomon the philosopher. The same varied talents appear among the writers of the New Testament. All seemed to have exercised their natural gifts, whatever may have been the degree of their inspiration. Moses and Solomon were the most learned of any of the writers of the Old Testament. The former, with his vast knowledge and proud intelligence — the legislator, reformer, and deliverer, brought up in the learning of Egypt — began the work of writing the Bible. John, with his tender depths of feeling and spiritual insight, completed it.

But how little we know of the inner lives of these men, even the last two mentioned. There was certainly nothing in them calculated to foster or exalt human vanity. Moses was a foundling rescued from the oozy rushes of the Nile; and John a lonely exile at last amid the rocks of Patmos, an island in the yEgean Sea, whither he had been banished by a decree of one of the Roman emperors " for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ."

The Bible, humanly speaking, emanated from the pens of a class of men whom the world never would have selected as authors capable of writing for all time. Is it not a proof of their inspiration that what was written in that age is so fresh — so interesting and applicable in this and all the ages?

It is a peculiarity of the holy writings that they hide no man's faults and cover up no man's sins. The greatest characters of the Scriptures were imperfect, and some of them at times were notoriouslv immoral. Even Abraham did not tell the truth — the whole truth, at least — on one or two occasions, when his own highest good would have been subserved by the strictest integrity of speech, which he afterward learned. Noah, David, Solomon, Peter, and some others were not always guiltless. There is no attempt at the concealment of their moral imperfections. Sin is always called by its right name. The entire frankness of this book in dealing with its chief characters is strong proof of its divinity. Is the Bible charged with being unchaste in its language, in some instances? It should be remembered that it is a reflection of the age in which it was written. Its authors were honest enough to make record of the evils in human life and societv, calling them bv their true names. If it had described onlv the virtues of its chief men, sinking out of sight their errors and sins, we might then indeed have had reason to suspect it of being untrue to what we know has ever been characteristic of human life.

It does tell of events quite impossible of belief to some minds. For instance, the story of the creation of the first woman from a rib of the first man ; the first human transgression and "fall," provoked and

20 FACT AND FICTION- IN HOLY WE IT.

precipitated by a " serpent " gifted with the power of speech; the Noachian deluge; the prodigious strength of Samson; the account of Jonah in the whale's belly, and some other equally remarkable statements. Let us be frank. To many these records savor of the mythical, the legendary, and consequently are disbelieved. The fact is, some people judge of the Scriptures by the standards of their own local and temporary experience, and hence injustice is done to the sacred writings.

This book is owned by millions and read in hundreds of languages all over the earth. Six hundred years ago the wages of a laboring man in England w r ere only about tw^o pence (four cents) a day, while the price of a Bible at the same period was, in our money, about one hundred and eighty dollars. A common laborer in those times must toil on industriously for thirteen long years devoting his entire income if he would possess a copy of the word of God. J^ow it can be owned by the poorest of people; for the earnings of half a day by a farm-hand will pay the cost of an entire copy of the sacred book ; and besides, if any are too poor to purchase it, the Bible societies will furnish it freely and gladly. What a contrast ! What an illustration of the power of the press !

You may eliminate from these pages every seeming contradiction of statement between the writers, every crude story, of which there are many, all the long chapters, with their almost unpronounceable names, and yet there is left a mine of truth — a magazine of spiritual force. If it be asked why it is that 60 many millions of our race accept this book as inspired of God, relying implicitly on its teachings and its promises, notwithstanding the many strange and mysterious things it records, the answer is that in reading it and in following its precepts the heart is comforted and the life is made strong.

At a recent Bible anniversary Mr. W. E. Gladstone gave utterance to these words :

" If we are in any measure to grasp the office, dignity, and authority of the Scriptures, we must not suppose we are dealing adequately with that lofty subject by exhausting thought and time in examining whether Moses edited or wrote the Pentateuch as it stands, or what w T as the book of the law found in the temple in the time of Josiah, or whether it is possible or likely that changes of addition or omission may have crept into the text. If the most greedily destructive among all the theories of the modern critics (so seriously at variance with one another) were established as true, it would not avail to impair the great facts of the history of man with respect to the Jews and to the nations of the world, nor to disguise the light which those facts throw upon the pages of the sacred volume ; nor to abate the commanding force with which, bathed, so to speak, in the flood of that light, the Bible invites, attracts, and commands the adhesion of mankind. Even the moral problems which may be raised as to particular portions of the volume, and which may not have found any absolute and certain solution, are lost in the comprehensive contemplation of its general strain, its immeasurable loftiness of aim, and the vastness of the results which it and its immediate accompaniments in institution and event have wrought for our predecessors in the

22 FACT AND FICTION IN HOLY WHIT

journey of life, for ourselves, and for the most forward, dominant, and responsible portions of our race.''

It may seem almost like a waste of time and energy at this late day to write upon this subject. We do it because old truths are often lost sight of in the whirl and excitement incident to the discovery of new ones. Moreover, the sons and daughters do not always walk in the footsteps of their fathers and mothers. We boast of our science and our civilization, but forget that they are the outgrowth of Bible teachings in a great degree.

The claims of the Bible are based on its antiquity, its history, and its contents. That which is old, and consequently has survived the wear of long periods of time, has some claim upon the respect of thoughtful people. We gaze upon the Egyptian obelisk, the ivy-mantled castle peering out upon us from the Middle Ages, or upon some ancient tomb that possibly once held the dust of a king, with peculiar feelings of veneration. No matter how we criticise these objects, they command us by their very age. Whatever men may say of the Bible, its pages bear the impress of the buried centuries. It is a message from the past to the present, from generations dead to generations living. Its utterances are the echoes of voices which were hushed in silence ages ago. Astronomers tell us of stars which are so remote in the fields of space that were they stricken out of existence by the power of God at this hour their light would continue to flow toward us for hundreds, if not thousands, of years to come. So of the men who wrote the books which in the aggregate constitute the Bible; they, being dead, yet speak the words of truth to us. We do not mean to say that age alone sanctifies any thing, for even time cannot convert falsehood into truth. There are some old books that might well be burned, and some old customs that need to be forgotten in order that the world may make progress. But this cannot be said of the Bible. Let us be respectful as we enter this temple, over whose archway is cut deeply the inscription, "Tims saith the Lord." Come to this book then, dear reader, as you would go to a well of pure and sparkling water gushing from the rocks below, not to find fault with its depths, but to draw thereof and drink to the quenching of thy thirst, remembering the words of the great Teacher : " Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst ; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

CHAPTEE II.

THE OLD BOOK IN ITS RELATION TO SCIENCE.

THE Bible has a mission, and that mission is not to teach every thing we ought to know. This thought we shall try to develop as we proceed. It is not the purpose of the Scriptures to teacli the world science. The Bible occupies a plane above the natural world. To open it at random, with a view to being directed in the ordinary affairs of life by the first passage upon which the eye happens to rest is not only an unwarranted use of Scripture, but a veritable superstition. It brings the Bible down to the level of a dice-board. . And furthermore, when we speak of the holy writings we mean the original writings, the languages in which they first appeared. When we speak of inspiration it is not claimed that the translations are inspired, though the work has been done well enough for all practical purposes. But every question of absolute verbal accuracy must be referred to the originals. Then, in reply to the objection that the Bible is not always true to science, I remark it does not claim to be, for it never w^as intended to be a text-book on geology, astronomy, or natural history. Neither the prophets nor the apostles ever made any pretensions as teachers of science. They did not profess even to adhere closely to the exact order in nature. At the time they wrote science, in the modern sense of the word, was unborn.

Mere glimpses, it is true, appear in the writings of Moses, Job, and some others, as they studied the phenomena of the heavens and of inanimate creation. David, moved especially by these phenomena, gives frequent utterance to his feelings in sublime poetic strains. Solomon was a naturalist of high order, but he was an exception to the generality of mankind in his own times.

The ancients had very vague ideas of the natural world. In their conceptions the earth was a plane, and not a sphere ; the sun was a great ball of fire which sank into the ocean at night, and, of course, must have arisen out of it in the morning. It was currently reported, too, that they who lived far to the westward could hear the hissing noise made by the sun as he plunged his fiery mass beneath the billows of the great sea in the evening.

Bible writers believed these same things, and their inspiration did not correct their science, for wrong science, then as now, might exist with a right heart.

The Bible speaks of the earth as " stretched out," and also of the " ends of the earth," expressions at variance with the idea of the earth's rotundity. The thought of a great globe floating through ethereal space, " hung upon nothing," would have seemed an impossibility to them ; and any one inculcating such dogmas would have been regarded as insane.

The earlier Greek astronomers introduced a system of crystalline transparent spheres, revolving, one within the other, and carrying the planets with them around the earth as a center. Far beyond these spheres was the primum mobile — the starry sphere revolving from east to west every twenty-four hours.

This system was incorporated in the philosophy of Aristotle, and seems to have commanded the assent of mankind for ages. Its truth was hardly drawn into doubt till the revival of letters, the commencement of the true astronomical science of the seventeenth century, and even then the clearest and strongest intellects were slow in extricating themselves from the Aristotelian philosophy. It was not until the time of Kepler that any real progress was made in discovering the true laws of planetary motion.

These old Hebrews, in common with the classical writers, understood the sky or firmament to be a solid vault as it appeared to an ordinary observer. Moses had said, " God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.' 5 Again, the same writer, in describing the rain-fall at the time of the deluge, said, " The windows of heaven were opened." Even if it was a figurative expression, to the unscientific mind it seemed descriptive of something material.

In like maimer, Job speaks of the " pillars of heaven." Samuel said, u The foundations of the heaven moved and shook." David sang, " He commanded the clouds above, and opened the door of heaven."

There are many other similar expressions, such as the " rending of the heavens," the "skipping of Lebanon," the floods and trees u clapping their hands." To these same people the earth was a stationary body, around which the sun revolved. Let us not visit any undue reflections upon them on account of their ignorance of the physical world, for at a much later period the same condition prevailed until Copernicus, Tycho Bralie, Galileo, and Newton broke forth in a darkened firmament as stars of the first magnitude.

A great commotion was raised when these scientists began to teach that the sun w x as the central point in our system, around which the earth revolved. They could not deny the evidence of their senses. Galileo constructed a telescope which revealed to him the true motion of the heavenly bodies, so that the plain teachings of astronomical science could not be successfully denied. For this overturning of old-time notions he was twice imprisoned by the irate monks, and each time recanted, so that the young astronomer lost the honor of martyrdom. As he came out of prison, however, he stamped the earth with his foot and said, " Yet it does move ! " But why this opposition on the part of the monks ? Because they preferred to interpret nature by Scripture rather than the Scriptures by nature.

" Is it not written in the Bible," they said, " ' The world is established that it cannot be moved % ' And do not the Scriptures say again of the sun that it 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 : and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof V The Roman Inquisition took the matter in hand and decreed as follows : " First, The proposition that the sun is the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scripture. Second, The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with diurnal motion, is absurd, philosophically Mse, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith." It is due to the infallible Church to say that in A. D. 1818 the papal edict was formally repealed, and the Copernican theory is now taught alike in Jesuit colleges and Protestant divinity schools. Until comparatively recent times science and natural history had no very conspicuous place in the religious training of men, and, as a consequence, many were ignorant of the important bearings which a right understanding of nature has upon the written word. Indeed, Christian teachers were afraid of science, especially that of geology. The author of this book, when a student, was urged by an old and conscientious divine to " let geology alone," for its teachings, he said, " tended to atheism." Times have changed ; it is now understood that both books are God's faithful records ; and if it be so, then it follows that either without the other cannot be fully understood. Cowper said, "An undevout astronomer is mad." So an un devout geologist or chemist or botanist is mad. The Rev. Richard Watson, afterward Bishop of Llandaff, England, who wrote a book entitled An Apology for the Bible, in reply to Paine's Age of Reason, was elected professor of chemistry in the University of Cambridge in 1769, and at the time, he informs us, he knew nothing at all of chemistry, had never read a syllable on the subject, nor seen a single experiment in it. The remarkable part of this is that at so late a date the physical sciences should have been held in such low esteem that a student could receive his degree without knowing any thing of chemistry. In his honor, however, it may be recorded that he studied it fourteen months and then began to teach it.

In the Bible all these questions relating to the natural world were merely incidental to the main subject, and hence the writers might use the language of common life or the more exact language of implied, if not real, science without in either case doing violence to the word of God. " It frequently," says Professor Maury, "makes allusions to the laws of nature, their operation and effects ; but such allusions are often so wrapped in the folds of the peculiar drapery with which its language is occasionally clothed that the meaning, though peering out from its thin covering all the while, yet lies in some sense concealed until the lights and revelations of science are thrown upon it ; then it breaks out and strikes us with exquisite force and beauty."

The Bible contains repeated instances where not only the ordinary speech is employed, but makes reference to things that were purely fictitious or legendary. There is one instance which has been a stumbling-block to many.* The questions have been asked myriads of times, " Did the sun and moon really stand still at the command of Joshua ? " " Must we believe that the law of gravitation was suspended and the machinery of the whole heavens interfered with while a couple of small armies were fighting a battle on the plainsof Beth-horon?" There isnot an intelligent youth in Christendom who will not find himself tempted to doubt this when he reads it. He may believe that the Almighty had power to arrest the planets in their orbits ; but, somehow, he instinctively calls this in question. He cannot help it, for he cannot see that the issue at Beth-horon was of sufficient importance to warrant so stupendous a miracle. We all reason in about the same way. That would have been indeed a wonderful miracle, but then all miracles are wonderful per se, and yet a Christian accepts the miracles, believes in them. Take these awav, and vou have not much left but the two lids of the Bible. Admit the existence of God, then certainly all miracles are possible. The rationalistic dismemberment of the Bible history begins with the negation of mircles, which is a denial of the supernatural. With the belief or disbelief of miracles the entire system stands or falls, for all religion rests on the supernatural. But in asking too much we may get nothing.

This account of the standing still of the sun and moon has generally been held to commit believers in the Bible to its literal truthfulness, when in fact, as any one can see by a careful reading, it is a quotation introduced into the sacred writings from the lost book of "Jasher." To receive this as literal Scripture, therefore, is not required. Let us cling to the Bible, but not at the expense of a correct rendering ; if we do, we shall only drive some intelligent and honest people away from it. The standing still of the sun and moon, though entirely possible, is no more to be understood literally, than the statement that Mount Lebanon " skipped like a ealf." David says it did, but then David was a poet. If we are to take these statements in. a literal sense we are simply converting poetry into prose. The above quotation from the lost book of Jasher, "Book of the Upright," describing the standing still of the sun and moon, is a poetic rhapsody, invoked as a sort of " grand march" in a triumphal procession after a great victory. In another place in the Scripture we are told that " the stars in their courses fought against Sisera." Are we to believe that the planets were transformed into warriors and came into Palestine and fought battles with men ? when it is only meant that the heavenly pow T ers were on the side of the Lord's hosts, or rather that Barak, the commander of the Israelitish army, assaulted his enemies under the cover of darkness, or in the dim light of the stars, and thus it was that the " stars in their courses fought against Sisera.""