Fundamental questions chiefly relating to the book of Genesis and the Hebrew scriptures

Front matter

iiill

' Eh i

Shelf....

Chapter I. Divine Revelation

I HAVE been called upon to give the reasons why I believe that the Bible is a divine revelation, the Word of God. The request is personal to myself. It is not that I should set forth the general, theological argument for the truth of the Scriptures, but that I should give the reasons why I myself believe, as I do without a shadow of doubt, that the Bible is a revelation from God. This auestion I will endeavor to answer.

And in the first place, negatively :

• It is not because the Bible so asserts for itself. The Koran does the same ; and on this ground I could not tell which to choose, or whether the claims of both might not be equally false.

Nor is it because the Church so teaches; or because I was brought up in this belief, and those around me so believe. The Mohammedan and the Hindu might believe in their sacred books for the same reasons, and I should be no better off than they.

—

FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS.

Nor does my faith rest, primarily, upon the miracles of the Bible. These miracles were evidence to those who saw them of a divine power and authority in those who wrought them ; but they are not so to me. I ask, I have the right to ask, I am compelled to ask : Were these miracles ever wrought according to the account here given ? No amount of human testimony, no conceivable weight of evidence given by those who claimed to have been witnesses of the fact, could ever prove to me that a miracle had been wrought in our own day. Suppose it were claimed, as it was claimed a few years ago in behalf of a Roman Catholic priest in Pennsylvania, that a man of our own time had raised a dead body to life. And suppose that a thousand of the best, the wisest, the most honest of men should testify under oath that they had seen the miracle performed. Their united testimony would bring no conviction to me. I should still feel that there must have been some deception or some mistake. To me such a miracle could not be proved. And of the miracles recorded in the Bible, I must have evidence very clear and very decisive before I can believe in them at all. I do believe in them with an undoubting faith, because they are recorded in the Word of God ; but I could believe them on no other evidence. I must first find other proof that the Bible is true before I can believe in the miracles. But when on other grounds I am convinced that the Bible is the Word of God, and that its record is perfect truth, then, with fullest faith I can believe in the miracles there recorded. Then these miracles assume to my mind an importance and value which no words can express. I see in them the clearest possible manifestation and illustration of the power and authority, the presence and the providence, the grace and the guardian care of our Father and our God.

Nor, once more, do the prophecies, by themselves alone, afford a sufficient ground for my faith ? After I believe in the Bible, the prophecies appear to me a glorious embodiment of the truth of God. But if, on other grounds, I doubted the truth of the sacred volume, I should be able, as others have been, to explain the prophecies away.

And now positively : Why do I believe, with a faith so perfect that to me all doubt is impossible, that the Bible is the Word of God ?

I believe this :

I. — Because the Bible, though many, is one.

The Bible is certainly the most heterogeneous book ever compiled. It was composed by some forty different writers, each expressing freely his own ideas, at intervals stretching through fifteen hundred years of time, in states of society immensely different, and in four different languages. In the work of these many writers we find literary compositions of almost every kind. There are history, law, poetry, prophecy, biography, personal narratives, — preaching, philosophy, and letters. Never, surely, in any other case, was such a singular medley of dissimilar materials united in a single book. And yet, the more I study it, the more deeply do I feel that no other book was ever so absolutely one. From first to last, from beginning to end, it is one teaching, one truth, in perfect harmony with itself. But more than this. In this truth of the Bible there is a regular and wonderful development. From beginning to end, through all these many and various treatises, the one doctrine steadily grows and expands ; unfolding itself into a grand and symmetrical system of truth, which at last stands before us perfect and complete. As I think of this unity, and this grand development of truth, which characterize the Bible as a whole, I see clearly and certainly one mind, one intelligence, one purpose, one supervising control. But what mind, and what supervising control? I know of but one possible answer to this question. I must say, as the great apostle said eighteen centuries ago : All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

But I believe this :

II. — Because the Bible is more than a systematic unfolding of truth ; because, in its moral teachings, it is only truth.

From first to last there is no error, no false teaching, nothing wrong. This is the great wonder. Here is a book of which the fundamental and most essential parts were unquestionably written more than three thousand years ago, before science, before philosophy was born ; when darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people. How was it possible that a book so written, by such men, at such times, amid such surroundings, should have been kept so entirely free from all error, from all false views and false teachings of every kind ? To this question I can see but one answer. I am constrained to say again : All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

I believe this —

III. — Because the Bible is the full explanation, and the only possible explanation, of the world and the mystery of time.

Without the Bible, the aspect which the world presents to our minds, through all its history, is dark and gloomy indeed. To many a materialistic philosopher, rejecting the Bible, having no faith in God, and no faith in his fellow-men, the world has seemed, as with such views it might well seem to him, a mere chaos, without order or purpose, or end. It has seemed one vast bear garden; a wild arena of warring forces, principles and passions, dark, evil, and hopeless. Human life has seemed an evil, a scene of misery and trouble, the man of learning not the happier for his superior knowledge, but only worse off than other men, because seeing the evils around him more clearly than they. The world itself, if created at all, these men have been ready to pronounce one huge botch and abortion of the Creator's hand. Doubtless, for these dismal teachings of a wretched atheism, even without the Bible, there is neither reason nor excuse. Doubtless, as Paul has told us in the first chapter of Romans, it is possible to learn, and to learn with clearness and certainty, much of God, much of his character and government, and much of the plan of his providence, from the book of Nature alone. But the world is full of mystery, and full of great and terrible evils, which science alone could never explain, which without the Bible we could never understand. But no sooner do we open the Bible and understand its teachings than at once all is order, all is light. The Bible explains to us the world and the mystery of time. It teaches us to see, in the long history of the physical creation and of the human race, the steady unfolding of the vastest, grandest plan ever known or imagined by the human mind ; a plan reaching from eternity to eternity; a plan all - comprehending, harmonious, complete, in which our reason can rest with full satisfaction and content.

But here surely is a most wonderful thing. The Bible explains to us clearly and certainly the universal plan, the grand unfolding of this world's history ; and yet the last verse of the Bible was written more than eighteen hundred years ago, in the very childhood of scientific knowledge, and when as yet this grand unfolding and development had never been seen, had never been imagined or dreamed of by any human mind. How was it possible that such a book should be to us and to all the coming generations of men the one and only key, but the sure and sufficient key, to unlock and explain the whole mystery of time? Again I say — I can give but one answer to this question : — This book was given by inspiration of God.

I believe that the Bible is a divine revelation —

IV. — Because in every point God has endorsed and verified it in his other book, the book of his works and his providence.

The Bible tells us of God, a God holy, omnipotent, and supreme. It tells us that God made man in his own image, with boundless capacities for progress and growth. It tells us of the law of God, holy, just, and good, which all men are bound to obey. It tells us that virtue and righteousness are the necessary conditions of human well-being, and that the wages of sin is death. It tells us that all men had sinned ; that the world was lost in sin, dark in the gloom of a moral night. It tells us that for this dark and evil world, God had purposes of mercy and redeeming grace ; that far back in the early ages of human history he established in the world a kingdom of righteousness and truth; that in the fulness of time he sent forth his Son to preach far and wide the blessed tidings of salvation for all ; that the Christian Church, founded upon the Gospel of the crucified and risen Son of God, was destined to extend its peaceful conquests, until Christ the Lord should reign in millennial glory over all the earth.

Now all this is given us as the moral plan and diagram of the world we live in, of the system of things of which we ourselves form a part ; and whether it is true or not true, we can very easily ascertain.

I have in my hands a description of what is called the great Corliss engine ; a gigantic motive power which is said to move its acres of powerful machinery in the great hall at Philadelphia as easily and quietly as the clock ticks upon my shelf. I have full plates and diagrams of this tremendous engine, with complete statements and calculations of all that it is, and all that it can do. Now how shall I verify these statements, and assure myself whether there really is in existence any such thing as the mighty machine here described? It is very easily done. With my papers in my hand I go to Philadelphia, stand in the presence of the great engine, and look upon it as it does its work. Point by point I compare my drawings and specifications with the actual facts before me, and in every particular I find them perfectly true.

And so I take the Bible and place it side by side with the living, moving world ; comparing it point by point with the actual reality of things in the history of the world and the experience of men. Most satisfying, most decisive is the result. As face answereth to face in water, so do the facts of the moral world answer to the written Word. Here is the hand of God, a God just, omnipotent, and supreme. Here are the law and the kingdom of God, everywhere controlling the destinies of men. Here are the blessings of virtue and righteousness, and here is the curse of an inexorable law upon all wickedness and wrong. Here are men ignorant and sinful, guilty and lost ; and here also are men forgiven and cleansed, transformed and redeemed. Here, too, is Christianity, the one grand, central fact of human history, subordinating all other facts to itself, ever extendo FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS.

ing its peaceful reign, and holding in itself the certain promise of a coming day when a Christian freedom, with all its attendant blessings, shall become the common birthright of all mankind. So is the written Word verified and confirmed by the facts of history and experience. God has endorsed it ; he has repeated it, and written it over again in his works and his providence. I know that it is true. We say : There are two books of God, the book of his written Word and the book of his works. But these books are not two ; they are but halves of one perfect, harmonious whole, each dependent upon and explaining the other, the second book rewriting and verifying the first. The Bible is the explanation of the world ; it is the law of the world ; it is the plan of God's kingdom in the world ; it is the promise and hope of the world : and, therefore, I know that it is given by inspiration of God.

On these grounds I feel that the demonstration is complete. For full assurance in my faith I need no further evidence. Yet there are still other proofs as convincing to my mind as those already cited. For —

V. — The Bible commands my conscience.

The law of right and truth written in the Bible is a law written with equal clearness and authority upon my own nature. I see and know that the God who made me, who gave me my being, and fixed the laws of my nature, is the author also of this written Word. That which the Bible tells me is right, I feel and know is right. That which the Bible tells me is wrong, I feel and know is wrong. And so it is with virtue and the rewards of virtue, with sin and the punishment of sin, with religion, with holiness of heart and life, with all duties to men, with all duties to God. On every page the Bible appeals to my own nature, to my reason, to my conscience. Every word is a word of authority to which my conscience, my reason, my whole being is constrained to bow. It speaks to me as God's Word, a Word heard, recognized, acknowledged. It binds my conscience. To me it is the Word of God.

But I hold this great truth for another reason, which, to me, is full and sufficient in itself alone. It is because —

VI. — In the Bible my soul finds full satisfaction for every longing, for every need.

I long for some certain knowledge of God, and here God is fully, clearly revealed. I long no less for some clear and satisfying knowledge of myself. I want to know who and what I am, from what source I sprung, for what end I was made, by what laws I am bound, how long I am to exist, and what destiny lies before me. I open the Bible, and there all these questions are fully answered. As it reveals God to my knowledge, so it reveals me to myself. I long to know what is right and what is wrong; what duties I owe, and what evils I must avoid ; what will debase and enfeeble my nature and work me ill ; and what will strengthen, ennoble, and perfect my manhood. I long to know what course of life I must pursue to promote and ensure my highest good* and to escape that wreck and destruction of my moral interests, of which I see dangers on every hand. All these things the Bible tells me, tells me clearly, tells me with authority, and with a fulness of knowledge which satisfies my soul. I long for some promise, some steadfast hope to illumine the dark unknown of the future before me, and I find it here. I long for a Father's love, for a Father's guidance and care; and here my desires are satisfied. I long, as even the poor Hindu has longed these three thousand years, and as the human soul must

IO FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS.

always long, for union and fellowship with the divine : and here comes to me the blessed assurance : Beloved, now are we the sons of God. I long for the opening of some large, some immortal destiny to my immortal life; and here such a destiny opens gloriously before me. All this the Bible does for me, and the Bible alone. I know that it must be from the same hand which gave me my being. Every gift fills a want which God has made, satisfies a longing which God has implanted. It is all the Word of a Father's love, a Father's wisdom, a Father's truth. To every word my soul responds. I feel, I know that it is true. It is the Word of God.

These, then, are the grounds of my faith, the reasons why I believe, with fullest conviction, that the Bible is the Word of God.

i. Because, in all its many books, it is one complete and harmonious whole. The work of many different authors, each of them writing naturally and freely, in different languages, in widely varying stages of society, and through fifteen centuries of time, the Bible is yet one embodiment of steadily unfolding truth, harmonious, symmetrical, complete.

2. Because the Bible is truth, and only truth. From beginning to end, in all its moral teachings, there is no error, no false teaching, nothing wrong. It is truth pure and unalloyed.

3. Because it is the full and only explanation of the mystery of time and the world in which I live. Without the Bible the world is a wild battle-ground of contending forces, full of disorders, and full of evils, the mystery of which no human wisdom could ever explain. I open the Bible, and at once the mystery is explained ; confusion becomes order, and darkness light. In this divine revelation I see the creating God, the sustaining

DIVINE REVELATION. II

providence, the wise and all-controlling purpose, the glorious and surely approaching end.

4. Because this book of his holy Word God has endorsed and confirmed, verified and written over again, in his other book, the book of his works and his providence.

5. Because it binds my conscience. Because the law' of right and truth written in this book is written also upon my own nature. Because it appeals with irresistible force to my own nature, my own conscience, my own reason. Because it is a Word of divine authority, before which my whole being is constrained to bow.

6. Because it satisfies my soul. In this book every longing of my immortal nature is satisfied, every want is met and filled. It gives me the knowledge of God and the knowledge of myself. It irradiates with clear and certain light the whole duration of my existence, in time, and in the future beyond. It gives me the promise of a Father's love and protecting care ; of a Saviour's redeeming and transforming grace; and of everlasting blessedness and glory in the life to come. It tells me all that I need to know, and in it my soul is at rest.

And now, to sum up all in a single word : I believe that the Bible is the Word of God because it is the sun of my moral and spiritual world.

The untaught rustic, as he looks up to the sun shining in the heavens, has little philosophy respecting its light and heat. He only sees its glory, and rejoices in its beams. He knows that to him the sun is comfort and food, is light and life ; that without the sun, he, and the whole world of living things, must speedily die in frozen night. And so it is that the humble and unlettered Christian, although he can give no clear and logical statement of the grounds of his faith, feels and knows that the Bible is the Word of God. It is the sun of the moral world, and of his own spiritual life. It dispels all darkness, reveals all things in earth and heaven, in time and eternity, to his eye of faith. But even this figure does not include all that the Bible is to him. It is more than light and warmth. It is the bread on which he feeds. It is water, living water, for his thirst. It is balm and healing for his spiritual maladies and infirmities. It is comfort and peace in times of sorrow and trouble. It is life immortal and divine. For by it are given unto him exceeding great and precious promises, whereby he is made partaker of the divine nature.

Chapter II. The Creation

The Bible is the Word of God, but not his only- Word. He has two books, each of them written by his own finger, and one of them just as much the record of his truth as the other. One of these books is his revealed Word ; the other is the book of his works and his providence. These two books are intended to go together ; and neither of them can be understood unless studied in the light of, and as explained by, the other. This is pre-eminently true of the first chapter of the book of Genesis. This chapter cannot be understood if studied in the light of Scripture alone. Thus studied, it seems to teach that the whole work of creation was performed in six days of twenty-four hours each. So for thousands of years it was understood. But in God's other book we have the parallel record, written out in almost infinite fulness and minuteness. And no sooner do we begin to study this record than we see at once how entirely inadequate and erroneous is the old interpretation of this passage of the written Word. We see that the word day is used in this chapter, not of a single revolution of the earth upon its axis, twenty-four hours in length, but of an epoch, or long period of time ; and that we have in this chapter, condensed into a single page, the outline of an inconceivably vast and multiform system of the works of God, carried on through millions of years. We see also that this outline, although written in the infancy of human knowledge, and thousands of years before true science had its birth, is yet scientifically correct and true ; that upon this point, as upon every other, God's two books are in perfect harmony and agreement, explaining and substantiating each other.

Upon the truth and authenticity; of this record of the book of nature, parallel to and explaining the history of creation in the book of Genesis, in respect to its leading facts and the general course of events, there rests not the shadow of uncertainty. It lies spread before us just as God wrote it and left it, for the instructed mind to read in the certainty of knowledge.

Let us now address ourselves to the study of this biblical record of the six days of creation, as it is illuminated and explained by the record of God's other book, the book of his works in the realm of nature. As we do this, I think we shall see the perfect harmony of the two records, the perfect agreement of this first chapter of Genesis with what are thus far the well-established facts of geological science.

As we begin our study, there are three preliminary points to be observed.

I. This chapter was written in the earliest age of human cultivation and intelligent thought ; an age of which both the ideas and the language were very meagre and narrow, the merest germs of what they were afterward to become. And yet the thought and language of this early age, the simple childhood of the race, were the only medium through which, at that time, the great revelation could be communicated and expressed. All that could be given, under these circumstances, was a simple, pictorial outline of a vast and stupendous process, of which, in its actual unfolding, the writer of this chapter was capable of no true conception.

2. The writer tells the story of the creation as it would have appeared to his own view, if he could have watched it through all its course from his own standpoint upon the surface of the earth. He could, in fact, tell the story in no other way. Of science, of the heavenly bodies, of any other world than this, he knew nothing at all. He must tell the story, if he told it at all, from his own point of view. We shall find this point of the very highest importance to a correct understanding of the first chapters of Genesis.

3. As a history of the actual unfolding of the vast systems of animal and vegetable life, the account given in the first chapter of Genesis is, and was meant to be, very incomplete. The actual process of this creation was a work immense and boundless almost to infinity; a work carried on, probably, through millions of years. In the thought and language of that early age that story could not be told. Neither the writer of this chapter, nor any other human being for many centuries afterward, was capable of understanding it. All that could be done, all that there was any occasion to do, was just that which was done, and done completely, perfectly, in this chapter. The work of creation was made to pass in vision before the writer's mind in six successive stages, each having its beginning, its progress, and its end. But of the time covered by these several stages, whether it were a day or an age, he evidently had no idea. We have thus given us in this chapter a simple and pictorial, but full and comprehensive outline of the great creative work as, through all its successive stages, it was begun, carried forward, and completed by the almighty power of God. The account of the creation thus given was fully sufficient for the instruction of men through all the earlier stages of their intellectual development, and one l6 FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS.

which, when science should have explored and interpreted the full history of the material universe from the pages of God's other book, would be found in perfect harmony and agreement with that larger record.

With these three points in mind, let us pass on now to the study of this history of the work of creation in its six successive days.

I. "In the beginning," we read, "God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void ; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said : Let there be light ; and there was light. And God divided the light from the darkness, the day from the night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." In his other book, God has given us a full and minute history of this first stage of his great creative work. From this record we know that this first day of creation was a period of almost inconceivable length. And yet it is the simple truth that of the vast development of all these millions of years, the brief statement contained in these four verses of the first chapter of Genesis is scientifically true and exact. The earth was truly without form, and void, a mere burning chaos of the elements. And when, in the slow lapse of ages, its crust cooled and hardened, and the waters began to gather upon its surface, darkness was upon the face of the deep. Not because there was no light, for the sun was in its place, shining then as now. But upon the surface of the globe, the stand-point from which the sacred narrative is given, all was rayless, inpenetrable darkness. And why? Because the tremendous heat of the fiery mass of the earth had driven off in the form of vapor every thing that could be vaporized among all its elements, — all that now makes the

THE CREATION.

6th Day

<u o v

Modern.

Post-Pliocene, or Glacial.

Pliocene.

Miocene.

Eocene.

O

C:

'0

J

O

O

Man.

Mammalia.

All forms

of modern

vegetation.

r

J-H

5th 1

Jay

O

U co

L

Cretaceous.

G Jurassic.

Triassic.

O j

N

O

D

ID

T3

T3

i w

Birds.

Sea-monsters.

Reptiles.

Palms, Cycads, Pines.

4th < Day

3d Day

Day

1st Day t/3 O

O

Permian.

Carboniferous, or Coal Period.

Devonian.

Silurian.

Cambrian.

u

N

•4

O

4-> c u cS u

Ph c

Oceanic Period.

Diminution of life.

Signs of glacial cold.

Amphibians.

Fishes.

Mollusks.

Corals.

Crustaceans.

Immense vegetation — Tree-ferns, Club-mosses, and Pines.

Mosses.

Algae.

Slates,

with Primitive Limestone.

Slates,

with Graphite or Plumbago.

.

u c

1—1

S)

c w

■s d

Q

Abundant development of coralline animal life, source of Primitive Limestone.

Abundant growth of sea-weed or sea-moss in heated ocean waters, source of the Graphite.