BIBLE AND  SCIENCE;
THE WORLD-PROBLEM.
BY TAYLER LEIS,
PROFESSOR OF GREEK, UiION COLLEGE.
Cun t fecit bona in tempore suo, et MUNDUMI tradidit disputationi eo.
rum, ut non inveniat homo quod operatus est Deus, ab initio usque ad finem.-Ecclesiastes iii, 11.
And there was a voice from the firmament that was over the heads of the
living creatures.-Ezekiel i, 25.
SCHENECTADY:
C. Y. VAN DEBOGERT.
1856.
THE
I
OR,;   
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856,
BY GILES Y. VAN DEBOGERT,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Northern
District of New-York.
RIGGS, PRINTER, SCHENECTADY.
11                     if 
SOME apology is due for what may seem the miscellaneous character of the present volume, and especially the
mingling of the controversial. Such apology is found in
its history. There had grown upon the author's hands,
Scriptural notes and other matter designed for an appendix to the third edition of the work entitled The Six
Days of Creation. In the meantime, however, that work
had been the subject of a number of extended reviews;
no less than three by the editor of the Theological and
Literary Journal, whilst the conductors of the Andover
Bibliotheca Sacra have honored it by a whole year's
notice, with a promise of continuance. The author's
friends thought that he ought to make some reply.
The Andover periodical, however, was closed to his defence, although his writings had been charged in it with
" having a decidedly infidel tendency." A pamphlet,
therefore, was thought of. This grew in size, and as it
was found that the other matter would much exceed the
PREFACE. 
PREFACE.
original bounds assigned to it, it was thought best to
combine both objects in the volume now presented to the
public. Professor BARRows' review in the Bibliotheca
came out too late for notice. Some of his positions are
already met, and we think successfully, in the Ninth
chapter of the present volume. If the continuance he
promises demands an answer, permission for that purpose may be asked in the columns of some of our religious newspapers, or of the editors of such monthly or
quarterly periodical as may grant the privilege that has
been denied where it was due.
The book is a protest against what the author regards
as a most one-sided error of the times,- the false position of Physical Scienco, and its naturalizing effect upon
the theology and religion of the day. In the zealous
exposition of such an error, it would be no wonder if
the work was found to be somewhat one-sided itself.
The intelligent reader, however, will apply the corrective
which the author could not well employ without swelling
the size of the book, or unduly weakening the force of his
argument by too much of an apologetic or explanatory
tone. The volume is presented to the public with the
conviction, that whatever may be thought of the mode of
argument, it will be admitted to contain some timely and
important truth.
IV 
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
Question of the Creative Days-Its Pressing Importance
-Science has its Bigotry as well as Theology-Two
Classes of Scientific Men-The Keplers and the Galileos
-Present Faith in the Bible, how different from the Old
-Its true Internal Evidence as set forth by the Old
Divines-The Bible Everything or Nothing-Undue
Deference to Science-The real Naturalism-False and
limited use of the word Science-Natural History-Ex  travagant Boasting-Natural Science, Causes of its
Popularity-Easiness of Acquisition-General Smat  tering-Men love to be talked to Scientifically-Quack  ish Reasoning about Law and Nature-Spiritualism  Appeal to Utilities-The Bible Praised, but not Stu  died-Style of Preaching-The Bible not in the Heart
of the Age-Literature and Politics-The Bible to be
Interpreted, not Reconciled-The true Field of Reve  lation, All that it professes to teach...............
CHAPTER II.
Scriptural Interpretation in Connection with Science  Nine General Principles-Application to the Creative
Record-The Difficulty of a Solar Day without a Sun
as obvious to Moses as to Mr. Lord-If there is any
such Difficulty it is Patent on the Face of the Record
-It has not come from Science, but from False Inter  pretation-Interpretation, therefore, and not Science,
must Remove it-Creation an Order of Appearances
-Each Appearance a Morning-Succession, not Dura  tion, the Radical Idea.................. 
Pag,e.
is,
62. 
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER III.                     Page
THE WORD DAY, AND THE MYSTTC NUMBERS OF PROPHECY.
Various Senses of the Word Day-Summary of Princi  ples concerned in its Interpretation-Eight Heads of
Argument-The Prophetical Day-Analogous to the
Creative Day-Numbers as used in Prophecy-Three
kinds-Definite Numbers-Round Numbers-Perfect
Numbers-The Word Day as applied to the Closing
Dispensation of the World-Analogy with the Crea  tive Account-Kedhem, or the Ante-time State....... 76
CHAPTER IV.
Kedhem, or the Ante-time State-Psalm Iv, 19, "He
that Inhabiteth Kedhem"-Sadducean Interpreters  Psalm lxviii, " The Heaven of Heavens of Old"  Spiritual in Distinction from a Cabalistical Sense  Space Sense-Messianic Character of the Psalm  Where is Kedhem?-The Rationalist-The Twenty  four Hour  Interpreter-The  Timeless  State-The
Question of the Eternity of Matter-The Absurdity
involved in the very Inquiry..................... 120
CHAPTER V.
THE FOUR GREAT IDEAS OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT.
The Word-The Work-The Rest-The  Day-These
must be in Harmony with Each Other-The Old Ara  bian View-The Patriarchal View-Theory of Guyot
-Of Mr. Lord-Of Pye Smith-The True Scriptural
View is the one that has least Need of Science....... 142
CHAPTER VI.
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.
Spirit of the Scientific Patronage-Professor Dana's Apo  thegm-The Bible "the Boat, Science the Current"  The Natural in Creation-Claim of Prior Discovery  Claim of Science to have Proved the Supernatural
Science can not find the Supernatural-Must ever as  sume a Law for a Fact-Can not even find a God  An Atheist as good a Scientific Man as a Theist-Se  cret Wheels and Cogs in Nature-The Greater Dura  tions-Science can not disprove Development-Can
never refute the "Vestiges of Creation"-Bible alone
can slay "The Vestiges."..................... 151
VI 
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER  VII.                    Page.
WE KNOW NOTHING OF ORIGIN EXCEPT FROM A DIVINE
REVELATION.
The Vestiges of Creation-Who Killed the Monster?  Individual Generation as Mysterious as the Generic  Revelation itself the Highest Supernatural-Why
should we be afraid of the Natural in Creation?-Ani  malcula-Agassiz's Doctrine of Man-The Primus
Homo-Science occupied with What is, and How it is  The Cosmical Movement- Science does not take it into
Account-Hypothetical Discussion between the Vesti  gian and the Anti-vestigian-Nature's Gestation long,
her Births sudden and complete-Doctrine of Types  No Meaning in the Language as used by some Scien  tific Men-The Atheism of "The Vestiges," in what
it truly consists............................... 184
CHAPTER VIII.
TIIE SIX DAYS AS FOUND BY SCIENCE.
The Writer in the Andover Bibliotheca-His Nebular
Theory-The Reviewer finds no Difficulties-A hearty
Faith is not so easily satisfied-The chief interest of
the Mosaic Account-lst. Its Supernatural Character
-2d. Its Hexameral Division-The true Greatness
of the Mosaic Account-Greatness of Moses as compar  ed with Aristotle or Bacon-Professor Dana's Seven
Points-Of the First Three Geology knows nothing  Her Protests or Acceptances of no Value-Rests in
Nature-The Scientific Scheme of Creation-As well
Six Hundred Days as Six-The Reviewer's Boat
driven by two Forces-The Word Beginning-Sudden
leap from the Birth of the Light to the Growing of the
Mosses-Immense Distances from which Light travels
-Want of Chronological Harmony-Immense Hiatus
in the Second Day-A Modest Note-Spectral Light
of Geology-The Rakia or Firmament-Was it the
Breaking up of the Nebular Rings?-Had Moses any
such View, either as Fact or Conception?......... 215
CHAPTER IX.
SCIENTIFIC SIX DAYS AT WAR WITH EXEGESIS.
The Word Bara-The Beginning-The Shemitic Mind  Words for Creation-The Hebrew-The New Testa
Vil 
CONTENTS.
ment Terms-The Philosophical Greek-The Arabic Page.
Words for Creation-Emotional Aim of the Bible
Did Moses think of an Absolute Principium?-Six
Arguments: 1st. From the First Verse generally2d. The Words Heaven and Earth; Do they denote
Universality?-3d. The Earth the Locus of the First
Energizing mentioned by Moses-4th. The Light after
the Waters-5th. Heavens Built over the Earth6th. The First Verse, if severed from the rest, must
be Extra Dies-Parallelism of the Mosaic Account
with the First of John-Patristic View of its 3d and
4th Verses.................................. 268
CHAPTER X.
ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH.
(Geology claims the Sole Credit of the Idea-What may
be fairly Conceded to her-One who is not a Geologist
may Reason about Geology-The Geologist himself
may be unfitted for Cosmical Questions-A little Sci  ence wakes up Thought in Thoughtful Minds-The
Idea, once aroused, is seen everywhere-Antiquity ot'
the Earth as seen in the most Common Phenomena  Nature, in general, Honest and Truthful-Geological
Changes referred to in Job xiv-The Ancient Philo
sophy-The World-Problem-The Schoolmen and the
Galileos-The "Students of Nature"-The Epicure:ans the Ancient Scientific Boasters-Natural Theo  logy....................................... 301
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT IS NATURE?
'Can there be a True Nature?-The two Great Ques  tions-How can there be Evil without God?-How
can there be a Nature that is not God?-Can God
make a Nature to go by itself?-Laws of Thinking
higher than Laws of Nature-Deteriorations in Na  ture-Was there Death before Adam's Fall?-Nature
as well as Spirit left to itself-In what Sense?-Mo  tion by Impulse-The Axiom, "A Body once set in
Motion will forever continue in Motion"-The Mystery
of the Rolling Ball-Force-Is it an Entity?-Science
finds Formulas-Philosophy'Wonders-Faith Adores
-Ideas, as well as Laws, in Nature............. 336
Tiii 
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
Q(uestionz of the Creative Days-Its Pressing Importance  Science has its Bigotry as well as Theology- Two Classes
of Scientiif   i Men-The Keplers and the Galileos-Pre  sent Faith in the Bible, how different from the old-Its
true lnternal Evidence as set forth by the Old Divines  The Bible everything or nothing-Undue Deference to
Science- The real Naturalism-False and limited use of
the word Science-Natural History —Extravagant Boast  inmg —Natural Science, Causes of its Popularity-Easiness
of Acquisition —General Smattering —len  love to be
talked to Scientif cally-Quackish Reasoning about Law
and  Aature-Spiritualism-Appeal to  Utilities-The
Bible Praised but not Studied-Style of Preaching-The
B3ible not in the heart of the Age-Literature and Politics
-The Bible to be Interpreted, not Reconciled- The true
Field of Revelation, all that it professes to teach.
THE following work, it will be seen, is closely related to,
aniother lately published, and entitled "The Six Days of
Creation." It is very natural for an author to dwell or
the importance of his subject; but in this case, certainly
0to earnestness of language could well be out of place.
The question connected with the Mosaic account of the
origin of the Earth and Man, has difficulties in itself; it
has also been surrounded by others from without that'
2 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
are pressing more and more closely for a solution. A
settlement of them is demanded, and this demand will not
admit of much delay. The chasm of doubt is opening
wider and wider.  It must somehow be closed, and by
materials, too, from the Scriptural side. The bridge
must have its firmest abutment on that shore of the yawning abyss.  A certain class of scientific men in scientific
conventions, and a certain class of religionists in anniversary speeches, are much given to talking of "harmonies," but it has been in the main a harmony of one part,
or at the utmost with a very slender accompaniment. It
has, in other words, been made out almost wholly from
the side of science. Now this may satisfy those who
make it, for they have assumed the harmoniiy in the beginning, honestly assumed it no doubt, whether it be from
the strength or the easy pliancy of their faith, and, therefore, they can not appreciate the troubles of those who
have no such scientific piety on the one hand, or professional religionism on the other, to give confidence to so
easy an assumption. In other words, this reasoning will
never satisfy the silent, yet ever inquiring, common mind.
It ought to satisfy no mind; for when examined closely,
it is found to be but a string of empty truisms which men
would be ashamed to employ in other departments of reasoning.' All truth is consistent with all other truth,''the Bible being true can not teach what is false;''two
revelations from God (nature being assumed to be one
of them in as proper a sense as the Scriptures) can not
contradict each other,' etc., etc.  Of how many lectures
-and, we may also say, of how many sermons-do such
verbal platitudes as these form the leading staple! It is
time that this should cease, and that thinking men should
14 - 
IAIPOiPTANCE OF THE QUESTION.
address themselves earnestly to the difficulties of the
question, whether they be intrinsic and real, or have
been forced upon it by outward circumstances.   Such
truisms as the above may do for those who regard the
matter as all settled onil other grounds; but, we say again,
they will never satisfy the thoughtful commono  mind.
Nothing will do here but an honest interpretation of
Scripture,-bold yet careful, impartial but not indifferent, free yet most hearty and sincere.   The great question, the momentous question, involving nothing less than
the degree of hearty credence to be given to the very
first page in God's written revelation, this must be settled, and 8settecl fromi the Bible side, or there comes in
a flood of unbelief in all Scripture too fearful to contemplate.   We say all Scripture; for there is really no
ether place after this, where any holding barrier can be
erected.  At any point lower down, the torrent comes
rushing on with the accumulated force of all that has
given way above. Creation gone- its place in the
Scripture left a blank, or what is worse, a lying myth,
who will give credence to the account of the flood in the
dlemands of its historic exactness, or regard the succeeding events in any other than their loosest legendary
aspect?  Tlhe Patriarchs become dim mythological shaows; the God of the Patriarlchs a e:   rrfo  a parial deity, to rank hereafter with Baal, or Thor, or Jup;iter.  Sinai can never wholly lose its grandeur, but it
is the grandeur of a gloomy and terrible myth.  Moses
vanishes through the "Ivory Gate," and prophets follow
him to the land of lying dreams. And so of Him of
Whom Moses and the Prophets wrote.  The historical
Jesus departs with the rest of the long ghostly proces
15 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
sion. All is gone but the babble of the ideal Christ, and
how long would that poor shadow linger in the rapidly
deepening twilight that must follow the real setting sun.
We wake from dreamns, so called; but it is to a reality
insupportable.   We  are suffocated with its appalling
density.   It is like a man who starts up from a vision,
it may be a fearful one, (for all existence is such,) bGut
only to find himself in a still more fearful horror of great
and terrible darkness.   Should the world ever come to
this, then might we know what light there is in geology,
or with what propriety it claims to be called a revelation
But we turn from the picture as one too awful to contemplate.   Instead of dwelling on such  an  appalling
view, it is sufficient, for our present argument, to present
two  general  statements whose substantial truth every
serious reader must at once perceive. lst. There would
be no belief in revelation worth the name, one generation
after the common rejection of the absolute verity of the
Mosaic account.   2d. There is no hearty faith in such
account when it depends wholly or mainly upon scientific
assumptions, or reconciliations so called, forced up6n it
from without. The Bible is to be interpreted, not ereconiiled with anything but itself.   The  very thought is
almost equivalent to a rejection.   We are even tempted
to say that it is actually more insulting than frank, and
it may be, sorrowing, unbelief.
We cannot overrate the importance of a right faith in
this first chapter of Genesis.   The difficulty, we repeat,
whether regarded as foreign or intrinsic, was pressing.
hard, and must be met in some way, not by scientific
reconciliations, but by fair and thorough exegesis.   To
do this, or anything towards it, might seem an ambitious
16 
G(ROUND ARGUMENT.
attempt for a layman, but theologians were in a good
measure standing aloof. Professional Biblical scholars
w,ere occupied with outside questions of style, of Scripture natural history, or the pertinency of certain words
and texts to some exciting topics of the day, falling, in
importance, immeasurably below the truthfulness of the
creative history. The attempt, therefore, was madewe will not say the first, but the first to any considerable
length and with a professed exclusion of outside scientific theories that might affect the fair hermeneutical
result. It is not for us to speak of any merits of that
work. No one is more sensible than the writer, of its
many and serious defects. Still, it might be said, some
views of interest were opened; some new ground was
taken, in respect to which the author looked with anxiety
to the examination of other Biblical scholars. Hie feared
their adverse decision, not so much for his own, as for
the great question's sake. Especially was this anxiety
felt in respect to the reasoning about the great timewords that are so strangely used in the ancient Shemitic
dialects, and the interpretations given to them.   Iere
was the foundation of all the other argument. Here, it
was thought, was found that peculiar feature in the
ancient thinking which relieved all the other interpretations from the forced, or the mere possible, aspect.
Here, if the view could be sustained, was that idea
which the modern theology, and the modern conception of God's kingdom, had lost sight of, and which, if
it could be revived and shown to have a true ground in
the human thinking, and especially the earliest human
thinking, would make to appear natural and easy what
otherwise would have only a constrained, and therefore
2*
17 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
never satisfying, accommodation to pressing outside difii
culties. Could the old idea of divided instead of blank
eternities, (past and future,) or, in other words, the
doctrine of olams and eons as taught in the book, be
maintained, even so far as to entitle it to some share of
serious consideration, then the indefinite creative day
could be received with little difficulty as an interpretation not only possible, or speciously probable, but as
most truly in harmony with the simplest and earliest conceptions of the earliest human minds. We say, then,
for the great question's sake; for if any, whether scientific or religious, regard the doctrine of indefinite creative
days as most indispensable for their cherished reconciliation, we see no other line of argument on which there
is any fairer prospect, or indeed any prospect at all, of
its being made out. Other views, such as those derived
from the merely metaphorical sense of the word day, of
which examples enough can be found, may furnish a possibility, a probability, nay, more, a captivating speciousness; but the mind does not rest in them, aside from
such a conviction in respect to the ancient thought.
Whatever its demerits, the very attempt was entitled
to respect and respectful criticism.   And  such it has
received. The author would be ungrateful to complain
of its reception by an approving press and an approving
public. Still more encouraging are the private communications from readers, and that too of no low standing
in our scholarly and literary world, professing gratitude
for relief from serious and painful difficulty. Of five
extended reviews, three have  been warmly favorable,
two bitterly hostile, agreeing in the spirit of the assault,
though disagreeing in almost everything else.  It has
is 
SCIEAN'CE AND THE BIBLE.
been the singular fortune of the book to be thus assailed
at the same time, fromn two directly opposite quarters,
and that, too, with an asperity of feeling beyond what
usually arises from any mere literary or scientific antago~
nism.  Another noteworthy circumstance is, that in two
long and labored attacks there should not have been met
a single one  of those Biblical interpretations whose
strength or weakness constitute the real merit or demerit
of the argument. The Editor of the Literary and Thelogical Journal is so confident of having slain all the geologists, and so unshakably certain, moreover, that day
means day, and can mean nothing else, except in prophecy,
where it denotes exactly 365 days 5 hours and a half,
that he probably thinks any matter of interpretation on
the other side unworthy of serious notice.  The question
is with him too plain for argument.   The Silliman-Proifessor of Mineralogy and Geology in Yale College seems
to ignore this whole department for another reason.
Doubtless he could have shown himself at home in it
had he chosen, but there was no need of it. It might
have been of some value in the days of the old ignorance,
when the best way of getting at the meaning of the Bible
was thought to be the study of the Bible, but now science
is the light of the age; "Science and the Bible" makes
a very euphonic heading for an article in a Review, but
the harmony itself must be made out from the former.
In much of the current thinking of the day, the Bible holds
~. place very similar to that of the Japanese Mikado, or
Spiritual Emperor, who has a court but no soldiers. It
is to be held in great historical veneration, but science
is the real monarch. To go to Scripture, therefore, to
find the evidence of this concordat is superfluous work.
10 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW,
It has even been construed into disrespect for the higher
authority.   Of course the Bible must agree with science,
that is, whatever certain scientific men say is science,
although other scientific men deny both the science and
the theology.'" Must not all truth be consistent?" On
the score of such profundities as these, the Professor would
seem to resent the Biblical effort as making an unlawful
entry into his jealously guarded doma,in. To have put
the two authorities on a par might have been tolerated,
though in the scientific parallelism science generally
comes first; but that may be for the sake of euphony
-" Science and the Bible" being rather more rythmical
than " The Bible and Science." This, we say, might
have been tolerated; but to represent science as vastly
belowv revelation, not only in this thing and that thing,
but in whatever the latter professes to teach us,-' to
speak of the changing language of human science as
altogether unfitted to convey the eternal verities of God's
word- to maintain that its technics, and boasted formulas, may, in some remote latter day, sound obsolete and
childish- to hint, that gravities may yet go the way of
vortices and epicycles, that the Newtonian system may,
in time, be regarded as but an advance on the Ptolemaic,
and the present geology looked upon, in some future
age, in very much the same light that we now regard
the Aristotelian meteorology- to argue that the permanent and the substantial is to be sought in the Scriptures,
while science can never get above the transient and the
phenomenal without bringing in ideas from other regions
that lie beyond its own true domain,- above all, to teach
that whenever God utters his voice from" His own Holy
Temple," all science, and all philosophy even, which is
-)o 
SCIENTIFIC BOASTING.
a higher thing than science, " should keep silence before
Him"- this was resented as an indignity.   Science
was insulted, forsooth, and greatly wrong,ed, although all
that was said against her, or about her, was said in this
relation, and fell far within the truth and spirit of the
above statements.
In assuming such a championship of science, and such
an  imaginary wrong, Professor DI)ANA well knew the
spirit of the age in whichl, and for whlich lie wrote, as
well as the amount of moral courage required.   It was
an         easy task, this writing a eulogy on Hercules.  Was
not        science ridding the world of nlonsters? Had it not
invented steam engines, and telegraphs, and daguerreotypes? Ilad it not, in the language of that Epicurean
bard of old, who boasts so much like a modern lecturer,
driven superstition from its haunts-that horrid mon
ster
Que caput a eMeli regionibus obteinldebat
I-orril)ili super adspectu mortalibus instaes;
Hlumania ante oculos fede quoni vita jaceret
In teris, obyressa gravi sub religioze.
Had it not delivered us from the fear of comets and falligr stars, as say all the school books in their enumeration of scientific utilities? Had it not banished witchcraft
from the earth, although of the modern spiritualism it
hardly knew what to say,-this new powrer talking itself
so scientifically, and having alreadcy drawn some of scientific note, both here and abroad, within its magic circle.
.],tu its greatest achievement was its patronage of the
Seriptures, altho,ugh  here there has been no little division in its ranks,-not a few, who claim free thought,
regarding this as a burden wyhich science should not be
required to carrv.
21 
INTRPODUCTORY VIEW.
Now we are not much afraid of being mistaken in the
truthl or spirit of these remarks. There are scientific
men of loveliest piety, of most religious mocldesty.   Thlere
are men of religious science, in distinction firom a secientifiic reliyiotis;)n,- meni, who, although they revere both
names, would rather be called the followers of Kepler
than of Galileo.  There are writers, late writers, and
those too whose works exhibit science of the highest
order, whose references to the Bible, and quotations from
the Bible, have some heart in them.   To mention names
might seem invidious.'  But such men are among us, and
they must know, and feel, that the representation given of
the position of science in respect to the Bible is not only
correct, but the only one consistent with even the lowest
honor that can be conceded to a true revelation —a true
voice from the invisible supernatural world.  They must
feel, too, that the truest honor of science arises to her
from her recognizing and modestly taking this position.
Such men must know and acknowledge that there has
been, and is yet, an irreligious spirit manifested by not
a few of hi,ghlest scientific name, whilst, in other quarters,
there is an assumption of patronage, which, though less
hostile to the Bible, is hardly less odious. They can not
think of denying such well-settled facts.  With men like
these the writer would deeply regret any difference of
opinion -much more would he regret, if, in his own onesided zeal, perhaps, for deeply-cherished views, he may
have uttered a word, or thou,ghlt, wounding to profes
'There is one we can not help referring to.  No one can read Lieutenant MIAURY'S Physical Geography of tlhe Sea, without feeling that the l3i;le
lies mu,ch nearer to hIis heart tl)an anly alo:,nt Ef plhsical. inowledre.
22 
TWO CLASSES OF SCIENTIFIC MEN.
sional pride, or derogatory to the honorable love of hon orable ancl- cherished pursuits.
But there is another scientific spirit to which we make
neither concession nor apology. It is not so high nor so
philosophical as the other, but it is more general, as it is
more superficial in its general outside thinking, while it
has accordingly more command of the ear and mind of
the age. It is the pretentious, noisy, arrogant science.
WVe say nothing of its merits or demerits in its own field
but it is thus justly characterized, because it claims to
be itself the age, and asserts a superiority over all other
departments, and all other forms of thought.  Sometimes, and often, as every intelligent man knows, it is
decidedly infidel, hostilely and contemptuously anti-biblical.  It seeks no " reconciliation;" it cares nothing for
" harmonies;" it rather spurns them both. At other
times it graciously accel)ts the Scriptutres as containing
a collateral revelation, but one that must first be put in
harmony with herself.  Science -this kind of science
and whenever the word is used by us in a manner to call
in question its arrogant claims, let it be so understood
this science assumes to reveal the highier and the older
law, and when she speakls, what have Bible men to do
but to pull up "their stakes" and "lengthen their cords,"
and follow on without venturing even to look into their
travelling directory to see where they are goirng,.  There
is, for example, Professor DANA'S highly eulogized friend
AGASSIZ, whom in one place he would commend to the
disparagement of the author of the book.  We have all
respect for him as a man of highest rank in his own department of science; but he is preparing for a new move;
or rather, he has already made  a new move; and in
23 
INTRODUCTORY YIEW.
prompt correspondence with it, some in the theological
world, yes in the evangelical part of it so called, are overhlauling their creeds and dogmas, and apparently packing
up for a start. This question of the unity of the human
race, and their descent from one primus homo, differs
widely from the geological question, important as that
may be. The point presented is deeply vital, not only
to the historical, but to the central faith.  The difficulties raised respecting the manner and chronology of ereation, may affect our belief most seriously, yet indirectly.
Revelation might live, perhaps, though thus cruelly mutilated in the very fore-face.  Even if compelled to surrender chapter after chapter, and book after book, the
believing spirit would hold on to the last member that
gave any evidence of historic vitality.  It would cling
to the last plank of the broken vessel.  But this latter
move of science touches the very core of Christianity;
the assailed fact, or dogma, intertwines itself with truth
that can no more be separated from it than the blood
from the heart.  Anid yet, even here, it is thought by
some- yea, the opinion has been hazarded in the very
schools of the Prophets- that we must not be rash ill
affirming confidently a'llt the Bible does or does not
teach, until we hear what science has to say.  Let her
make her move, and then it will be time enough to see
whether the doctrines of the Fall, of the Primal Covenant.
of the Federal Headship, of the Redemption, and even of
the " Incarnate Mlystery," (that \-ondrous thought that
has heretofore kept its place in all views of the humai
ruin and recovery, and which even the freest Christianithas been reluctant wholly to part with,) may not possibly
be so revised as to meet the case. The Church is advised
24 
TfHE RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY.
to maintain, in the mean while, a philosophic calmness,
though science should affirm us to be ten thousand instead
of one, or take the unphilosophical, as well as seemingly
anti-biblical, ground, that nature and species are mere
terms of outward classification-that they are words of
quantity grounded on the more or less of an ever unde finable resemblance, instead of the fact of an historic germ
that can only be proved or disproved by revelation, and
in which the present many historically meet at a point
where they are actually as well as generically one. It
is in this way, and from such examples, we account for
the feeling that the Bible has little to do with any physical questions-that it has little to do with the origin
either of the earth or man, and that, therefore, interpretation in respect to them, is so ignored, yea, treated as
a positive disrespect to science, should it be maintainedas in such interpretation can not well be avoided- that
when God speaks, all human knowledge, and human discovery, should take the lower place.  It is this spirit
which, as we shall attempt to show in its connection, is
the real naturalism.
But it is in their temper, rather than in their positions-,
that these two reviews do most especially resemble each
other.  It is here that the religious and scientific bigotry
can hardly be distinguished.   There is, however, a difference.  The first is bad enough, but it is, after all,
more excusable than the second. The religious bigot
thinks, at least, that he has a holy motive.  He knows
not himself, of course; but the very ground and reason
of his self-deception, make his zeal a higher thing, and
a better thing, than the scientific bitterness that knows
no such palliation. He is contending with the infidels,
25
a, 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
not the well-known enemies of the common Christianity
but those whom he chooses to call " infidels in disguise,'
because they may question in any sense the infallibility
of his own interpretations.  He is a ~' defender of the
faith," and every notion he has derived from his own
traditions is a precious portion of that faith; and every
man is, of course, an infidel who does not subscriber to
it precisely as he expounds it, or who does not even anathematize errorists as he anathematizes them. He has,
therefore, some plea to which the scientific bigotry can
lay no claim. And yet, malevolent as this latter shows
itself to be, degrading as it is to that science and literature which boast so much of refining our poor human
nature, still is it strangely regarded by the world as the
more respectable of the two.  Its voice, in the present
age at least, has the greater weight, and this is the rear
son why we bestow upon it the greater share of attention.
The religious bigot, after all, can not do much; at
least now a days.  He is fighting valiantly against the
infidels, but the real infidels- and there are still some
such- are not at all afraid of him. Indeed, they set
great store by this faithful sentinel.  Nothing delights them
more than to hear his sharp cry ever ringing out, not
against the real invaders, but the most honest and earnest
defenders of revelation. Sometimes they will even lau-c,
him -we have known citable cases of this very thing -
for his boldness, his frankness, his outspeaking, honest
zeal. Rejecting, as they do, the whole idea of a supernatural revelation, yet, say they, if there is meaning to it
at all, this honest man has got it. The First of Genesis
is manifest fable, to be sure, but he clearly has the only
sense, and that shows it to be a fable.  Nothing can be
26 
THE SCIENTIFIC BIGOTRY.
plainer, they say, to any man of sense, than that all this
talk about the Bible and the Church is of things in nubibus, and the lauded harmony of "science and religion"
all a modern myth; but then, his nonsense is as good as
their nonsense, and a great deal more honest. Anything,
in short, to bring the Bible into disrepute, and with materials for this his infallibility most abundantly furnishes
them.
But the scientific bigotry is more respectable - claims
to be so at least-whether deservedly or not.  It has,
therefore, the more influence with another and wider class,
and for a somewhat different reason. There are two
causes for this wider influence. One is a diminution of
a controlling and exclusive faith in the Scriptures,-exclusive, we mean, in all matters of which they profess
to treat-the other the disproportionate space in the
common mind, occupied by what is now called science.
Our first proposition may seem a very bold one. Some
would say it is utterly false and unjust. If there is any
thing which peculiarly marks the age, they would contend, it is the direct contrary of what is implied in the
assertion.   First appearances, perhaps, might justify
such an indignant protest.  It is certainly an age famous
for its laudation of the Bible, but still, we venture to say
it, with a corresponding diminution of a living faith in it
as the real Word of God, which is indeed to control our
ethics, our politics, our literature, our philosophy, yea,
our science too, if between it and that science, or any
assumptions of that science, we discover a difference
which no fair, honest, hearty effort of our minds will
enable us to reconcile- a faith that in such a case would
,not ride over appearances, being little better than no
. 27 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
faith at all.  Yes, we laud the Scriptures; different
classes of men seem to vie with each other in Iauding the
Scriptures.  The Bible! is it not the religion of Protestants?  Is it not the bulwark of our liberties?  We
eulogise it on the platform; we fight- for it in our common
schools; we make speeches about it on all occasions.
But has it a corresponding influence, or anything like a
corresponding influence, on the general mind of the age?
This is the test.  Otherwise our pompous eulogies are
the very things to cast suspicion upon the strength and
heartiness of the general faith. Take an age when there
was no doubt of the power of the Bible and a Bible-taught
theology,-when they controlled all movements, and entered into every department of thought.  Such an age
is not distinguished for its eulogies on the Word of God.
There is something too hearty in its faith to allow of it,
or make it necessary. All the writings of all the Ushers,
of all the Hookers, of all the old divines of Holland,
Scotland, England, and New-England, do not contain so
much laudation of the Bible as one modern sermon, or
one modern platform speech. But after all, what is its
influence as a vital power entering deeply into the mind
of the age?  We say the mind of the age, for there are
doubtless individuals, and very many of them, in whose
souls the claim of a divine revelation, instead of being
relaxed, has only taken a firmer hold. The rise of other
powers, and their preponderance in the general thinking,
has only driven them more closely and trustingly to the
Word of God. There are men to whom it is their one
book, their sole authority. There are those to whom,
without the Bible, the universe is shrouded in darkness
-to whom, without it, all science, and all philosophy,
28 
LAUDATION OF TIE SCRIPTURES.
would give but a spectral light — to whom, without it,
geology, boasting geology, would be but a lamp in the
catacombs, a poor mummy light which we might faintly
see, indeed, but could see nothing by it, read nothing by
it, even of the greatest of physical truths, our origin,
much less aught of the still deeper mysteries that gather
round the questions of destiny and salvation. Such men
are not much given to praising the Bible as the founda tion of our liberties, or the great instrument of civiliza tion. Their faith is not easy enough for that. They
find in it to many difficulties.  They see in it those
great and terrible truths of salvation which throw into
the shade all other estimates of its value as connected
with even the highest aspects of life that are still but
secularities.   Neither do they claim any intellectual
merit for their faith, even where they feel that they have
as good a right to do so as any who challenge to themselves, and to their pursuits, a higher and more expansive range of thought.  They can not, they dare not,
disbelieve the Scriptures. The feeling has been sown
deep in their infancy; it has grown Keith their nurture
and their culture; it has connected itself, perhaps, with
some peculiar experience having more of the Biblical
element than is now usual, and thus, in all these ways
confirmed itself, not as a blind superstition, but by leading
to that hearty study of the Scriptures which furnishes
their strongest evidence, and without which the Bible
is never truly believed, either by an individual or an age.
It becomes their "meditation by day and by night" -
"sweeter than honey and the honey comb;" and thus,
whether they have any great science or not, it " maketh
them wiser than their enemies that be round about them."
3*
29 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
Yet still we venture to say it, however rash it may
seem in us, there is in much of this religious world, especially as exhibited in its more conventional and secular
aspects, a poor diluted faith, a poor shivering faith that
can not keep itself warm from the Scriptures, and so it
runs to science and everything else. Its want of strength
and earnestness is very much in proportion to the noise
it makes about the Bible and the so-called " Harmony
of Science and Revelation;" or "the two revelations,"
as it is fond of styling them. We have no doubt of its
honesty, or its purity as far as it goes. This belief is
genuine -it has a value in the preservation of the soul's
health, and its ultimate salvation. It has a sincere regard for the Bible, but it is so immersed in secularity,
and secularizing movements of reform- its Christianity is
so much of this world, and allies itself with so many collateral influences from the world, that it has no time, and
-if it had time, has not heart enough to arouse, or strength
enoug,h to sustain, that whole-souled study of the Scrip,tures, that "meditation therein by day and by night," that
.consequent devoted love of the Book, which would teach
them wondrous things out of it -thus making its bright
internal evidence the most immoveable support of their
faith. The deep study of the Scriptures is essential to
any strong faith in them, and could men be induced
heartily to engage in it, it might be recommended as the
best of all cures for scepticism, or naturalism, whether of
an individual or of an age. But here we are met by a
difficulty which gives the proposition the appearance of
a paradox. Without such faith there will be no such
study. The truth is, that both are, at the same time,
cause and effect. They must act and re-act upon each
3o 
EARNEST STUDY OF TI  SCRIPTURES.
other. But without settling that difficulty, it is enough
to present the fact, which few will deny, that the Bible,
though generally and honestly believed, and with much
interest manifested for its distribution, is not in the heart
of the age, at least as it has been in the heart of former
ages.  It is not so much the one sole authority that it
used to be, the one great superseding authority in all
matters of which it speaks.   It is not so much that the
Scriptures have been rejected, as that other things have
come into partnership with them, and, we may say, to
some degree of superiority over them in the control of
the common thinking —even the fbetter and more serious
common thinking-  of thie age.
We repeat, then, the paradox- the true remedy for
this semi-scepticism which respects the Bible so much
which swears by the Bible while it serves other godswhether it be the gods of politics, philanthrophy, or science, the god of social "ideas," or the "god of forces"
the true remedy for this is that devoted Biblical study
of which we have spoken. Superficial reading, or mere
formal reading, only breeds difficulties or indifference;
instead of light it only reveals pitfalls and stumblingblocks.  A deeper study produces that evidence of which
we read much in the old divines who lived just after the
Reformation, but which is now seldom alluded to in modern
books either of instruction or devotion.  It is not the external evidence, commonly so called, or the historical
proof of Christianity, valuable and indispensable as that
is for all ages. It is not that other kind of evidence
more usually named the internal, but which is as truly
external as the first, whilst it has less of its conclusiveness. We mean by this, the supposed conformity of the
31 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
Scriptures to right reason, as it is called, or "the nature
of things"-there being meant by this our own views of
what ought to be true in theology, or ethics, or what we
conceive to be true in science. This evidence, we say,
is, in one sense, as much external to the Scriptures as
the historical. In both cases it is a light we bring to
the Bible, and not a light we derive from it. Hence,
thus viewed, both are equally outward- that is, outward
to the Bible. One is an outward historical knowledge,
the other an outward knowledge -of mind or matter which
we call science and philosophy.   This second kind of
rationalism, though boasting a higher rank, is less conelusive than the first. The explanation is, that in the
one case our reason is called to judge of what lies easily
and plainly within its nearest sphere, such as the meaning of words, the laws of language, the fair principles of
interpretation In the other, we bring to the clearing of
the Scriptures the very darkness they were intended to
illuminate,, or, if we take the road of science commonly
so called, we enter upon a region whence nothing can
be proved of the human, or the mundane destiny, because
the unknown so immensely, so infinitely, we might almost
say, exceeds the known. We may say, too, that in this
attempted proof of the Bible by its conformity to what
we call right reason and the nature of things, the very
first principle of the purest reason is itself subverted.
We measure the infinite by the finite.   We  make our
thoughts the test of the Divine thoughts, our ways the
test of the Divine ways; our natural science, or natural
theology, as we call it, which is but the discovery of links,
we revere as the very canons of that Divine wisdom which
is known only in the revelation of beginnings or ends.
2 
THE TRUE ITERNAL EVIDENCE.
Such a proceeding to prove revelation is, moreover, in
the very face of the revelation to be proved.  It contradicts some of its sublimest utterances.  "Your thoughts
are-not my thoughts, saith the Lord;" "neither are your
ways" (your ways of thinking and knowing as well as
acting) "my ways."   "For as the heavens are high
above the earth" (the strongest hyperbole that language
can employ) "so high are my ways above your ways,
and my thoughts above your thoughts."  This Scriptural
language is evidently employed to denote things not only
immensely apart in rank and magnitude, but also inconceivabiy differing in kind.  Hence the value of that
other internal evidence to which we barely alluded, but
of which the old divines are full. The reader will not
often meet with it in modern religious or theological
works, but he will find it most prominently and most
abundantly set forth in such writers as Owen, and Baxter,
and Hooker, and Hall.  He will meet with it in those men
of ponderous learning and child-like piety, the old theologians of Holland who lived before Grotius and Grotianism 
had unspiritualized that noble Church; and we have no
doubt that it might be found in the most religious of the
Roman Catholic divines. It is that internal evidence
that reveals itself to us by its own light; the light which
the Scriptures themselves have kindled in the soul.  It
is what Hallyburton, in his reply to the rationalism of
Locke, calls "the Divine glory beaming and burning
in the Scriptures." It is the recognition of the majestic
voice of God speaking to us therein, and in every part.
It is not simply the intellectual assent to the logical consistency of its doctrines, however defectively or partially
seen; it is not that "beautiful morality" which some
33 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
infidels have been so fond of praising; it is not the loftiness of its oratory, or the sublimity of its poetry, but distinct from all these, and above all these, it is that impres8
(f -Divine Authority which comes from long, and devout,
and loving communion with the sacred volume. It is
that'- satisfying light," evidencing itself to be true light
by the fact that it enables us to see, not only itself, but
ether things by means of it, making reason more clear
by revealing its limitations, and other knowledge more
valuable by the discovery of its true yet inferior position.
It is what one has called " the Divine majesty beaming
in the Word."   We would not trust our own language
here, and so we adopt that of the venerable and learned
men who so loved the Scriptures, and so lived in the
Scriptures, we may  say, that their mode  of speaking
about them sounds mystical, or hyperbolical, to our unbiblical age. They were not dreamers, nor enthusiasts,
nor fanatics, but sound-minded men, noble scholars, logical interpreters, keen analyzers of their own psychological states. It was not only the Ushers, and the ]udworths, and the Owens who spake thus- though these
might well be compared with the soberest scholars and
theologians of our own age,- but the great Bacon, too,
talks in the same style   the great Bacon whom so many
sciolists so ignorantly worship. In the decline of his
political and philosophical greatness it might have been,
but it was after his mind had been brought into closest
communion with the Scriptures, that he speaks of " seekin# God in nature, but finding him only in his Word."
It was a trait of the universal religious thinking.  The
writers to whom we have referred speak of it as a reality,
a glorious reality, not confined to a few mystical dream
1c)i), 
EXCLUSIVE AUTHORITY.
ers, but belonging to the common faith of common Christians in that believing age.
This faith they regarded as supernatural; but whether
supernatural, or having its seat in the natural faculties of the human soul, and  in the natural exercise
thereof, still was it ever the intimate companion of deep
and hearty study of the Scriptures. It was only by
intense meditation therein, that men's eyes were truly
opened to discern the glorious light in the Word and thus
to "discover wondrous things out of the Divine Law,"
and in no part more wondrous than in this earliest record
of man and the world.  To this hearty study of the Scriptures must the age return   There must be regained that
single, honest, view of the absolute authority of the Bible
in all matters of which it professes to treat or evenispeaks.
No other faith is worthy of the name.  A revelation, so
received as coming from God, must be everything or nothing,. It must be exclusive as well as conclusive. It
can allow no concurrent, no collateral, authority. Nothing else that is styled a revelation, whether in nature
or in history, can be put on a par with it, or, in any sense,
placed in parallelism with it.  Once admitted, as indeed
the Divine supernatural voice, nothing else can even approach it,-nothing else that calls itself authority can hold
up its face before it on its own field.  Among all truths of
reason so called, we can conceive of none more rational
than this. And to this the Church and the age must
return, or give up its loud talk about the Bible -the
" Bible and Science" -the Bible and natural theology
-the Bible and democracy-the Bible the palladium
of our liberties- the foundation of our social, civil and
religious rights.  It may not be prudent to say it, but it
35 
IN'TRODUCTORY VIEW.
is true, notwithstanding, and therefore, we will say it,
that even before the Reformation, among divines of the
Roman Church, and in the works of the schoolmen, written, as we are taught to believe, when the Scriptures
lay buried and unknown, there was more of hearty,-faith
in them than can now be discovered in the teachings of
some who are the greatest praisers of the Bible. There
is more appearance of devout reverence; there is a more
spontaneous deference as to unquestionable authority;
there is more of a loving resort to them as the ultimate
decision, after philosophy has had her say, and science
has delivered her message, whatever it might have been,
for that or any other age of the world.   If this living on
the Scriptures, as, next to Christ, the soul's truest food,
be the best test of faith in the Bible, then will an Anselm,
an A Kempis, an Aquinas, yea, perhaps, unknown souls,.
not a few, from the cloister and the cell, rise up in judgment against the Bible eulogizers, and scientific harmonizers of the day. It may not be prudent to talk thus,.
but we are certain that there is truth, important truths
in what we say, and that the age should hear it. We
appeal to serious men of all theological parties. Is theScriptures in the heart of this age, as it has been in the
heart of former ages? Is the evidence of this in the pul
pit, in the press, in the theology, or the literature of the
day? Does the mind, even the religious mind, go spontaneously to the Written Word? for this is the true test.
In every difficulty does it first think of the Bible? Ir
all the great questions of the day, as they are called,.
-the social, political, moral questions - those questions
which all depend so much, for their truest solution, on
right views of human destiny and its relatioln. to the invi
36' 
BIBLICAL CRITICISM.
sible worlds, and where the Bible m-ast be supposed to
give some light, if it give light at all - on all such ques tions, is it the first thought, what do the Scriptures fairly
teach, or do they teach anything, either as precept or
principle, to which all other reasoning can and must be
made to conform? We talk much more about the Bible
than ever the Puritans, or the Reformers did; is the com mon mind, the common religious mind, we mean, more
familiar with it than it was in their day'- familiar with
it, not in the mere quotation of a few pet texts, which
almost any party can get out of it, but in the spirit of
the Bible, and its whole bearing upon the analogy of revealed truth? These questions might be carried into the
higher departments.   How  is it with  our professed
Biblical study? Does it go into the very marrow of the
Scriptures? We have got rid of some of the crudities of
former preachers and interpreters, - we have read Old
Mortality, and can talk bravely of the extravagance of
the Kettle-drummles, and McBriars, and Mucklewraiths,
though even this has more heart in it, and therefore,
more truth than much that is conceived and written in
the opposite style. But if there is an absence of their
peculiar errors, there is also an absence, much to be
lamented, of those rich views of divine truth, in its
entire Biblical harmony, which the old English scholars,.
and the learned Leyden divines brought out of the eversuggestive Word of God. Instead of that direct deduction of all high truth from the Bible which is now condemned as mystical, we have the most elaborate discus —
sions about the Bible, and about the books of the Bible,
and the natural history of the Bible. Instead of the
"analogy of faith" which led men to regard each book.
37
4 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
as a part of a most perfect unity, such as it certainly
must be if it is God's Word in any true sense, we have
Lowthian criticisms on the varied human styles of its
composers, all very true indeed, but very subordinate to
the higher harmony which such a kind of criticism has
ever a tendency to keep out of view.  Such is the spirit
of much modern Biblical criticism, rich as it is in its machinery of outward interpretation.   It is fastidious of the
impurities that belong to the bucket rather than the foun-t
tain; and, therefore, instead of drawing copiously and
constantly from the deep wells of pure Scriptural thought,
it is ever on the outside, at least in regard to essential,
vital truth.  In- short, it is ever about the Bible, as though
it were a curiosity to be examined, rather than the Book
of the Lord given to us as a light shining in a dark place,
and to which everything else in the mind of the believer
should be so subordinate, that even if he does not derive
his philosophy and his science from it, as a direct textbook, he is, at least, willing to say, and is forced to say,
that he will have and can have no philosophy, and no
science, that are in any sense really or seemingly at war
with it.
We are far from- saying. that the modern reception of
the Scriptures is not sincere and sound as far as it goes.
Its greatest fault is, that it is not exclusive, as it ought
to be if it would be anything. It takes the Scriptures
as authority, as high authority, but not the all-controll
ing authority, on all matters of which they speak.   Other
Lords have come in and shared dominion with it. In
our literature and our science there is a mixture of the
"Jews' language" with "the speech of Ashdod."   Especially has there been a dimming of that highest evi
38 
BIBLE PRAISED IN ITS SECULAR ASPECTS.    39
dence of which Owen, and Hallyburton, and Pascal speak.
The Lowthian spirit of interpretation sees it not, because
it does not look for it. Along with this obscure percep tion of the true divine majesty and authority speaking
directly in the Word, there is an increasing tendency to
laud the Scriptures for those more secular teachings, or
in those secular aspects of revealed truth, which are either
greatly subordinate, or are forced upon it altogether.
Hence there is so much mere talk about the Bible.
Politicians magnify the Bible. Are they really going to
the Bible, drawing nearer to the Bible, or is the Bible
viewed as coming down to them? Literary men are
sentimental about the Bible; social reformers cant about
the Bible. The tendency sometimes manifests itself in
an appearance which would be ludicrous were it not profane; the bully chief of the Empire Club breaks up a
meeting of fanatics, as he calls them, because "they abuse
the Holy Bible," and the vile makers of vile political plaforms endorse the act, and the spirit of it, in their canting resolutions about our civil and religious liberties.
This is not all hypocrisy; the lowered position of the
Bible has made men dread it less, and so they "respect"
it more. They seek to harmonize it with everything,
and that general ignorance which comes from the want
of earnest study, makes this, in most cases, a very easy
and accommodating process. In short, the Bible is a
favorite book of the age; it has a most convenient storehouse of texts and mottoes; it contains the articles of
our faith, although we sometimes have to put them in a
more philosophical and scientific form.   It professes,
indeed, to carry with it its own credentials, but as a
general truth, men go abroad for its evidences. 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
Hence the undue weight attached to scientific and
other foreign testimonies to Christianity.  Science at the
present day, in distinction from philosophy and theology,
occupies a disproportioned, and therefore injurious space
in the public mind. This is especially true of natural
science, and still more so of that department strictly
called natural history, and to which, in other times, as
wise as our own in the philosophy of namgs as definitive
of ideas, the term science, would hardly have been conceded at all. But whether that be correct or not, it is
rather a singular fact in the history of human thinking,
that these very branches have come to usurp the name
to the exclusion of almost everything else.  Let the word
science be used, and how many, even among the educated
who ought to know better, never think of Language, of
Psychology, of Ethics; of Political Science, of Theology
highest of all.  Philology-it is the "study of words,"
and what are words compared with shells and minerals?
Even the Pure Mathematics hereby finds a place except
as an auxiliary to some of the usurping branches. Chemistry, too, is thrown in the back ground, while Conchology, Mineralogy, Icthyology, come trooping up, paper in
hand, and demanding to be recognized not only as very
respectable and very useful branches of knowledge, which
they certainly are, but as science per se, in its highest
and almost exclusive import. These are, indeed, beautiful pursuits. We do not wonder that they are ardently
loved by those who have time to devote to them, and
who have been drawn to their study by temperament and
circumstances clearly indicating them as the paths of
knowledge in which they could best connect their own
happiness with the utilities, and not only the utilities, but
40 
CIBENTIFIC CONVENTIONS.
the refinement of the age. One of the purest men, and
clearest intellects, with whom the writer is acquainted,
has devoted himself for many years to a thorough scien tific hunt after that mischievous and evasive enemy, the
wheat insect.  He has traced him through three forms of
generation, and discovered some curious facts of'develop menta that ought to make Professor DANA less confident
about his having slain the Vestiges of Creation. There
-is, doubtless, in many others engaged in similar pursuits
the same earnest amor scientice so ennobling to our humanity in whatever form it may show itself, together with
the same unwearied search of facts that may subserve
the physical good. All honor to them; — but we appeal
to such men themselves, or to the more serious and thinking among them, whether there has not been too much
of an arrogant claiming, or at least employment, of the
name science as peculiarly, if not exclusively applicable
to these and kindred branches.   Let any one examine
the records of our annual scientific conventions. Threefourths of their proceedings relate to natural history properly so called. Of the remaining fourth, astronomy has
a fair share; mathematics pure brings out its paper now
and then, whilst all else beyond this physical region, is
as much ignored as though it had no claim whatever to
the dignity of a science, or the consideration of scientific
men.  And so too of the latter phrase-a man of science; -let it be mentioned, and at once some physical
ology, or some branch of natural history, suggests itself
'We refer here, not to development from inanimate matter, but to some
curious facts of what may be called double generation-the immediate offspring so unlike the parents, that they would be regarded as a new species
if the fact of origin was unknown.
41
4* 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
to the common mind. It thinks immediately of shells,
and mosses,-at the highest of gases, fossils, or telescopes. Legal science, political science, ethical science,
Biblical science, hermeneutical science!-the terms indeed are recognized, but they are regarded as being
used by way of accommodation rather than by intrinsic
right. Now this utter distortion of names and ideas is a
mark of a one-sided, if we may not call it superficial,
age. It is the language of a generation, and of a thinking, immersed in the physical; and we protest against
it. It gives an undue advantage. In an age when men
read and talk far more than they think, it clothes certain
opinions of a certain class with an authority which does
not belong to them. There is a sufficient instance of this
in the very example that has called out these remarks.
Why should the dictum of a geologist be deferred to
on a question of the interpretatiQn of Scripture? There
is no reason for it; there is every reason against it; and
yet it carries weight, and carries along with it too the
timid religionist, because it comes forth under this highsounding name of science, so unjustly and even absurdly
usurped for a department of knowledge extremely limited
in extent, and very far from being the highest in idea
or in aim-in intellectual difficulty, in intellectual rank,
,or even in utility when judged by the IHighest and truest
standard.
In reply to what is here said about the great dispro-portion of such subjects in scientific conventions, it might,
perhaps, be alleged that there is a reason for it, without
its being attributed to any such usurpation or exclusiveness.  The great majority of the papers read are on nat-ural history, or, at the widest, what is called physical
42 
PHYSICAL SCIENCE POPULAR- WHY.
science, because these furnish the topics that are the
more directly popular, or acceptable to the common think ing. There is some truth in such apology -but is it for
the glory of this kind of science that it should be so?
Does it form an honorable ground for its extravagant
boasting? Physical science, especially in the depart ments to which we have chiefly alluded, is popular for
several reasons. In the first place, it is more easy of
acquisition. To be thorough and eminent in any one of
these does indeed require a life devoted to it, as to any
other pursuit in which decided excellence is the aim.
But their general acquisition, to a respectable extent,
lies within the power of almost any mind of ordinary intelligence and ordinary opportunities. We do not at all
wish to underrate them, although the immense boasting
they have made, or that has been made for them, fairly
justifies any attempt to reduce them to their true place
in the wide map of human knowledge. Take the one
which may be said to have the least science, strictly, of
them all- that is, is most built on outward classification
instead of inward organic life running up into that universality of law and idea whose tendency is to connect
all knowledge that partakes of it into one catholic thinking.
Take Conchology, for example; even here we concede
that to be a good conchologist requires a peculiar habit,
a peculiar talent, and a peculiar and patient observation
that all do not possess. An enthusiastic devotion to it
is very honorable to a man, if it be accompanied by an
appropriate modesty; but it is very far from requiring
the highest order of mind, and it becomes very foolish
when, on the score of its being so peculiarly and exclusively
science, it challenges for its devotees a deference in other
43 
l4TRODUOTO'iY VIEW.
matters, and in widely different if not altogether higher
departments  of knowledge.   He who  makes  himself
thorough in this department of science, occupies a high
position, and ought to occupy a high position, among
useful and intelligent and cultivated men; and yet it is
true that almost any one who has any inclination for the
study, and time for it from other pursuits, may make
himself very respectably scientific here with little effort,
and in a very short time. The same is true of Geology,
the most vaunting of them all. It calls out the same
and no greater faculty of observation, no greater powers of thinking, though connected with more important
and interesting results. It has, however, one peculiar
"4 utility" that the others do not possess. To many minds
we do not fear to say what is so fully borne out by
facts-to many minds, it has a charm from the supposed
fact of its furnishing a ground of objection-whether
true or false -to the credibility of the Scriptures. It is
this which gives it a large share of its importance, and
none better know the fact than those of its religious,
Bible-loving students who most sincerely wish to counteract its influence. We are conscious of telling truth
here, and therefore shrink not from its assertion. It is
the general spirit more than any facts of geological research, that is hostile to the Scriptures. It is the general spirit as manifested in two ways, the bold and sneering opposition of many Geologists abroad, the apparently
friendly but hardly less mischievous asssumption of its
being a sort of collateral and even higher revelation,
that is made by others under orthodox'influences in our
own land.  Good men  and Christians, who are, at the
same time, very "scientific men',' are trying hard to
44 
POPULARITY OF GEOLOGY.
counteract this; but the dishonorable popularity which
the studyhas derived from its being supposed to minister
to this anti-biblical spirit, can never be seriously affected
from the scientific side. Geology-serious Geology we
mean-can never be relieved from it, until thorough,
honest, reliable interpretation takes the place, and the
authority, of one-sided scientific "harmonies of nature
and revelation." For the reasons we have given, Geology
is popular; it is a favorite science of the day, but it really
demands no greater powers of mind for its observations
or conclusions than other branches of the same scientific
genus. It has a much grander sound, indeed, to talk about
boulders and glaciers, and yet these may be actually
coarser and less artistic works of nature than ferns and
mosses. Geology is diligently engaged in examining the
epidermis of the earth, it is making curious discoveries
among its dorsal fins, and some are most diligently hunting there for human bones, but it may require no more
intellectual power to do this, than to classify plants, or
dissect an animal. It deals too, or assumes to deal, with
immense times deriving interest from other associations,
but having, in themselves, no more intellectual value,
and less intellectual interest than the question of the
change and periods in the germination of the seed, or
the growth of the feetus. The pride of Geology in this
aspect, is as absurd as it would be to regard the mnere
anatomy of the mastodon as a matter of more scientific
importance than the careful observation of the insect in
its wonderful transitions from the egg to the grub, and
from the grub to the winged state.
These sciences are easy.  They are more easily ac
(juired, and this gives them another advantage.  In con
45 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
sequence of such facility, they are, in the second place,
more generally diffused than other and more difficult studies; or, rather, there is a more common diffusion to a
certain extent. There is a more general smattering; and
this contributes more to their popularity than even a deeper and more difficult knowledge. They are the popular
studies of the day, pursued in our schools and academies
to the neglect of the more solid, and, in the end, more
truly useful branches of knowledge. There is every
where a little Physiology, a little Mineralogy, a little
Geology, etc. Of course, there is obtained, in general,
but a smattering in each; but this is enough to fill the
common mind with a wondrous conceit of science.  It is
a scientific age, it is often said; the term being ever
used in reference to physical science as the only thing
known to be entitled to the name. This gives a great
advantage to the common lecturer. Audiences love to
be talked to scientifically.   It gives them a very scientific
opinion of themselves. Each hearer fancies himself a
Galileo, a defender of knowledge and progress against
bigoted theologians and persecuting priests. The lecturer, though he may be himself a thoroughly scientific
man, and one who truly loves science in its higher aspects,
yet adapts himself to this state of things. Instead of the
rigid demonstration he would employ, if he really meant
or hoped to instruct his audience, he dwells on the lower
practical business aspects, or, if he would seem to rise
into something higher, it is what may be called the thaumaturgical presentation of science that has the greatest
charm for the hearer, and the greatest temptation for the
,speaker. We mean by this those curious facts which
46 
THAUXATURGIC LECTURING.
are mainly calculated to astonish' men, though having
no more, and often even less connection with fundamental scientific truth than others which the lecturer or the
book-maker neglects, because they are less adapted to his
purpose of immediate excitement, and hence immediate
applause.  A rigid exhibition of the mathematical modes
of determining the distances of the planets would be dry
and wearisome.  To most audiences, moreover, notwithstanding the boast of its being a scientific age, it would
be unintelligible. But to make a grand display of decimals, to talk of millions and billions, and distances which
the cannon ball could not traverse in a thousand years,
and rows of figures reaching round the earth, this gives
them a wondrous view of the science, and of the still
more wondrous human mind that can make such computations, and entertain such far-reaching ideas. Thorough
and patient instruction in the doctrine of transits and
parallaxes, with the necessary demonstrations and diagrams, would drive the wearied audience from their seats.;
but let them be told, in thaumaturgic style, of the wondrous swiftness of light, and how a luminous stream two
hundred thousand miles long enters the eye every time
a man winks, and there is immediately a hail-stone chorus of applause. The lecturer has hit the mark. The
audience came to be amused, and he has adapted himself
to their wishes, and to the degree of science which is just
sufficient to call out such a feeling. The man of true
'It is astonishment, not the philosophic wonder, which is very different,
One belongs to the imagination or mere sense-conception, the other to the
idealizing mind. The one has its exciting cause in merely curious facts
presenting an odd or strange picture; the other is aroused to those mysteries of nature and prime causality of which the highest science, as well
as the humblest facts, is merely suggestive.
47 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
science, we say, often does this. HIe is compelled to do
this or lose the reputation of a popular lecturer. But
the quack, too, takes advantage of it. He knows the
general tendency to talk about science; and how fond
audiences are of being addressed scientifically, and how
prone they are to take a certain stereotyped, story-telling language of science as rigid science itself. Hence,
under a babble about "laws," and "natural causes,"
and " developments," and the "organic and inorganic,"
etc., almost any kind of foolery passes current. All
these adopt the same lingo, whether it is the man who
wishes to recommend some quack medicine, or the lecturer on Biology, or Phrenology, or that miserable concoction of inane delusion, childish reasoning, and wicked
imposture, that goes under the name of modern spiritualism. The chief cause of the success of this species of
quackery is its continual assumption of a sort of scientific
gabble. It is ever talking about laws, and fluids, and
forces, and electricity, and magnetism, and there is just
enough everywhere of a certain kind and certain depth
of science to give it its present pretension and its present
popularity. There have been ages of far less natural
knowledge, when this thing would have been spurned
with contempt. Delusions taking the form of religious
superstitions, and claiming connection with the supernatural, might awe the soul; but the days of witchcraft,
and of the belief in a satanic influence had too much
philosophy, and too much love for the Scriptures, to entertain the least respect for such a satanic naturalism or
naturalizing spiritualism as this.
There is, in the third place, the continual appeal to utilities, which is another great element in the popularity of
48 
SCIENTIFIC UTILITIES.
this kind of knowledge. One finds it so much more of a
facile task to persuade men of its immediate practical
bearings. This is so easy that even the devoted student
of natural science, who knows that he pursues it from
that pure love of theoretical truth which is one of the
highest traits of our nature - the man, in fact, who would
give his days and nights to his laboratory whether any
utilitarian inventions came from it or not-even he is
tempted to take what he knows to be the lower motivethe motive by which he is conscious that he himself is
least influenced-and hold it forth as the main thing in
all his appeals to the public for educational encouragement in his favorite pursuit. Hence this becomes so
prominent a theme in introductions to text books, and in
the common notices of scientific progress.  Chemistry is
of vast importance in the practical arts.  It is a great
aid in the manufacturing of paints and soap; it furnishes
us tests whereby to distinguish poisons, and quack medicines; as though these ludicrous impositions that science
may multiply, but which it will take something more than
science ever to drive from the world, were the only kind
of quackeries from which we have now-a-days anything
to apprehend. So Geology discovers coal mines, and
Astronomy is a great aid in navigation, and Navigation
is essential to commerce, etc., etc. Thus science, natural science, becomes popular by having ignored and kept
out of view its own highest effect and aim. In like manner, Colleges are sometimes praised, not for the minds
they have produced, not for having elevated and spiritualized the tone of thinking in their age or neighborhood,
but for the agricultural improvements and mechanical
inventions which, in some far-fetched way, are ascribed
49
0
6 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
to their influence. And then there is the everlasting
sing-song of the steam engine, the daguerreotype-, and
the magnetic telegraph, as though the rapid transmission of a thought were of vastly more importance than
the quality of the thought transmitted, or the age was to
be lauded for the improvement of the one, whatever deterioration might take place in the rank and true value of
the other.
All these causes have given natural science a space in
tie public mind which is altogether disproportioned to its
real worth; and in themidst of many acknowledged utilities we are suffering also serious evils in consequence of
it. The cause of true education is hurt. The profounder, and, in the end, the far more useful studies lie too
much out of the common track to be so easily appreciated. It is far more difficult to make the public feel
their real merits.  The higher intelligence sees, or ought
to see this, but in this class, too, there are popularity
hunters, and instead of sustaining by extra aid those
really most useful branches whose utility, however real,
lies remote from the first and most obvious thinking,
they are for putting all things on the same democratic
level, and making the test of value in any spiritual,
as well as in any material, thing, the immediate public
patronage as coming from theimmediate public demand.
Outside causes have contributed to the same unfair
preponderance. All the circumstances and wants of the
age tend to magnify physical knowledge, or "science"
so called. Philosophy has completed one of its cycles,
and is now occupied more with its past history than with
any quickening view, whether new or old, of the universal
problem.  There is our thin rationalizing theology, all
50 
UNDUE DEFERENCE TO SCIENCE.
reasoned out of nature, or the nature of things, as it is
called, rather than the Scriptures; there is our utilitarian
ethics, our shallow radical politics.  "Science," as it is
called, is not only more easy, but more really beautiful
and worthy of loving study than some of these in the
aspects in which they are now presented, and we do not
wonder that men are rushing after it.  Hence, for our
age, science, natural science  has acquired a place and
a space that do not belong to it; it demands a deference
from all other departments of thought, which is not due
either to its dignity, or its true utility. In the language
of prophecy," it has become the horn having a man's
voice speaking great things," and the world, even the
religious world, is wondering after it. Here we find the
secret of that pitiful attitude which is not unfrequently
witnessed among religious men -that pitiful attitude
that would beg an affidavit of the truth and value of our
Christianity from some leading politician, or of that poor
faith that exhibits so wondrous a delight at a compliment
paid to the Bible in a scientific convention, or reserves its
cautious decision on the most important interpretations,
and the most important doctrines of the Bible, until science-  this kind of science- has spoken.
But we protest against it.  The Scripture is to be
interpreted from itself, and by this we mean, not only its
own direct utterances, but all things that by fair hermeneutical laws stand connected, historically and psycholologically, with the conceptions of those who were made
the medium of such revelation, and with the language
which they were directed or permitted to employ as the
direct outbirth or growth of such conceptions.   In  a
late admirable sermon before one of our ecclesiastical
51 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
Assemblies, a distinction is made, in this respect, which
has the appearance of being not only fair for the Scriptures, but philosophically sound.  Still, with all our respect for the pious and learned author, we can not
accede wholly to his position.  When carefully examined, it seems to us to surrender the main ground of the
Bible authority and put it too much under the patronage
of science. " Where the subject belongs more properly
to revelation," to use his own language, "we are to be
governed by the laws of interpretation, and Scripture
thus interpreted is paramount. Where it belongs more
properly to science then her decision is to be deferred
to." It seems fair and rational; but the very illustrations immediately brought forward show, we think, the
fallacy of the distinction. The creation of man as one
primus homo, the author would regard as belonging to the
first class; the question of creation, or of the indefinite
creative period, he concedes to the second.' In the one,
accordingly, science, whatever she may seem to discover,
must yield to exegesis; in the other, exegesis yields to,
or rather, is to be made out by the decisions of science.
Hence, he says "the question whether the word day
(yom) in the First of Genesis signifies a period of twenty-four hours, or a longer period, may be safely left to
be determined by the investigations of Geology."   We
can not admit the ground of the distinction. The attempt to make it only gives rise to a still more difficult
question than either,- that is, if it is to be settled by
our philosophical reason without appealing to Scripture
itself. It is this. What questions "belong more properly
to revelation"? Can anything decide this but revelation
itself properly interpreted? Can any one tell us what God
52 
THE BIBLE DEFINES ITS OWN PROVINCE.
ought to teach us, or may properly teach us, except God
himself? "Who hath been his counsellor" in this re spect? The question keeps coming up - What: was the
B]3ible intended to teach us? Just what it does teach us,
is the only answer consistent either with reason or a pro per deference to what we believe to be a divine autho rity. It alone can define its own province. To concede
this to anything outward is to abandon the whole ground.
If the interpretation of YOM is to be taken from philologi cal science (including in the term all of history, of arch ology and-of psychology that belongs to it,) and given to
Geology, why should not the word ADAM, in like manner, be surrendered to Physiology, or anything else that
may put forth its great pretensions under such a name?
If one is to be given up to Professor DANA, why should
not the other, in like manner, be yielded to Professor
AGASSIZ, who maintains, or must maintain, if he pretends
to interpret. Scripture at all, that the word ADAM must
be taken generally, or generically, to denote humanity*
instead of one single man. This he says it must mean
to be consistent with certain facts he has discovered, or
thinks he has discovered. Now we do not think much
of his facts; but his reasoning would be as good as that
of Professor DANA'S, and the concession to him equally
rational. If, as interpreters, we agree with either, or
disagree with both, it can only fairly be upon the ground
that such opinion is really consistent with the words and
context of Scripture, or that there is something on the
face of the language which excludes one interpretation
'And that, too, not as one in mnank, grounded on one-ness of law and
idea developed from a once actual unity, but as a many in one class,
grounded on resemblance and held together by arbitrary definition.
,,5o}
53 
INRODUCTORY VIEW.
of science (if we may call any decision of science an
interpretation) and demands the acceptance of the other,
either as directly made out, or simply because there are
greater hermeneutical difficulties in rejecting it. Thus,
for example, we fairly and safely believe in the one primus homo, and in the indefinite periods, on the same hermeneutical grounds. The word ADAM may have a generic sense, as the word YOM may have either an unmeasured or a twenty-four-hour sense. We believe, however, that ADAM means a single man, because there are
insuperable hermeneutical difficulties connected with the
other view-difficulties arising from the immediate context and from other parts of the Bible. So we believe
that YOM in Genesis I, was meant to be indefinite, or at
least, could not have been intended for a solar period of
twenty-four hours, because such view can not be exe#etieally reconciled with the account of the first ante-solar
days- because it creates a difficulty that must have been
as patent to the first writer as any science can now make
it,- and because the other interpretation best harmonizes
-with other parts of the Bible and the soundest ideas we
.can form of the ancient thinking.  On such grounds,-all
~;ermeneutical in distinction from geological,-we base our
decision.  If science agrees with it, so much the better
for science. The interpreter may admit that some of
'her discoveries, or her loud talking about them, have
aroused him to a more full examination of the matter.
But this is all that can be rationally conceded in the case.
To make natural science itself the interpreter of Scripture is as great a solecism in language as it is an absurcdity in idea. The highly respected authority we have
quoted would certainly not carry it thus far.  If he
54 
CASE OF GALILEO.
means that one of these positions is more important than
the other, and that on the less vital question we may
concede more to science, we should not differ much from
him. But this can not affect the principles or true idea
of interpretation.   The greater or less importance of the
truth, if it is truth, which God has condescended to teach
us, can make no difference as to the mode by which it is
deduced, or not deduced from the Scriptural language.
Whatever can not be made out, and fairly made out, from
the Scriptures, is not taught in the Scriptures-is not a
doctrine or dogma of the Scriptures   We  can not well
conceive of any proposition more rational or more directly
applicable to our present subject.
It is further urged that it was "from want of attention
to this distinction, there arose the persecution of Galileo,"
and the controversy in respect to Joshua x, 13.  We
would most respectfully venture to call in question both
these views. There is good reason to believe that the
Italian shared the free-thinking spirit, at that time prevalent, with other savans of his age and nation. He
was as fond of controversy as the priests, and provoked it
by a display of his science in that very way that would
look most like a collision with the Scriptures. It was
the scientific narrowness against the hierarchal narrowness' with this difference, that the priests, mistaken as
they may have been, both in scientific fact and sound
interpretation, were contending for truths, and consequences as involved therein, with which all the science
of Galileo, and of all the savans of his day, or of all succeeding days, bore no comparison, either of value in
itself, or of interest to man. That there was something wrong in the spirit of this oft-quoted witness, is
6 I'D 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
made evident from the case of Copernicus, who published
freely the same views in Astronomy, as also other men
of his day, without calling out any persecution, or, in
fact, the least opposition from the Church. The error of
the enemies of Galileo was an error, not of science, but
of interpretation. It was that common fallacy of confounding language descriptive of a fact, as represented by
a phenomenon, with the more or less remote causality of
that phenomenon. There are hundreds of passages of
Scripture where the same blunder might be made as
well as here. That there was a supernatural prolongsa
tion of the day is the phenomenal fact.  The "sun did
not go down" at the usual time, but continued in the
heavens. This is all that the language of Scripture is
responsible for. The appearance might be identical with
the causality, or it might not. There might be a near or
a remote connection. There might be in this causality
but one wheel, and that the actual motion of the sun around
the earth;-there might be in it wheels so many that
even the best modern science has not begun to count
them. As long as no difference between the phenomenon and the causality was known, or even suspected,
it made no difference as to the interpretation. The actual reality of the miracle was as sure, and as great, on
one view as on another; but to have made the language
responsible for any causality that might exist, or be supposed or suspected to exist, would have been as much
a violation of sound hermeneutical principle before the
scientific discovery as after. And so all the best minds
in the Roman and Protestant Churches at once perceived
it. The case has been kept up by a certain class of scientific writers, who for some reasons find it too valuable
56 
ERROR OF THE ITALIAN PRIESTS.
to let drop. For centuries it has given no trouble to
any devout man of ordinary intelligence, and yet the
stale story is repeated ad nauseam. We can hardly
hear a lecture without it; as though, at this day, men
of science were actual martyrs, or professed it at the
peril of their lives. In view of the exceeding staleness
of the story, and the infidel hostility it often so unmistakably manifests, we might almost be led to regard the
priestly intolerance as certainly a more respectable,
though equally unjustifiable, exhibition of human nature.
It may seem that we are dealing in paradoxes, and yet
there are good grounds for saying, that the governing
principle of the Italian priests was in substance, if not in
form, very much like that of some modern men of science.
The appearances are different; the spirit and end are
the same. The reasoning, too, possesses some striking
points of resemblance. The interpretation of the Bible
made by the priests was to them a finality; just as some
now hold in respect to the language of science. The
Scriptural language denoted only the phenomenal fact
according to the then knowledge, or rather, want of knowledge, of the causality; but those'" literal interpreters"
held it responsible for the ultimate causality itself as irrevocably determined by that knowledge. Now, just in
the same manner, and with the same bigoted spirit, too,
talk some of our modern men of science. They have
groped their way along to a few more interior links of this
immense chain; they have got a few inches beneath the
surface of things, and, therefore, they resent the bare
suspicion that gravities may yet be found imperfect, as
vortices have been, or that the present language of science
may ever become obsolete, or be laid aside as grounded
57 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
on conceptions found to be inadequate and therefore delusive. For the language of Scripture we need never
fear this; since it is built on those first phenomena that are
the same for all ages, for all eyes, and therefore can
never vary whilst human eyes and minds remain the
same.*
'We do not'attach much importance to the particular Hebrew verb used
Joshua x, 13.  It may be said, however, that the woid t7:: or =:1,
has nothing to do with the idea of motion. It implies neither motion nor
stoppage, but simply a remaining of things as they are, or were, at any
one momlent of time.  Such is the radical idea of the root in the Arabic,
although in the Bible the most common thought connected with the word
is that of silence, quietness, or repose. This radical idea appears most expressively, as well as beautifully, in an Arabic formula which has every
appearancesofgreat antiquity.  They say, (using this verb,) "the sun stands
still in the summit of heaven." Or, as it is better given in the Latin, substitit sol in culmine czli.  It is their phrase for what we would call high
swon, when the sun seems to be almost motionless, and the hours move
exceedingly slow.  The Greeks have the same etymological image in their
phrase ocrisgOav ~af, which is also applied to the noon, or the time
when the sun seems to stand still. The reader will find a very clear explanation of this language as given by the scholiast Hermnias on the Phsedrus, p. 342, and quoted by Ruhnkenius in his Notes to the Lexicon of
Timaeus.  The contrast is beautifully presented between the seemingly
motionless position of the. sun at noon, and the comparative haste with
which he rises and sets: at which latter time, especially, the rapid lengthening of the shadows furnishes the deepest contrast to their apparent me
ridian immovability.  We dwell on this to show how purely phenomenal
the word is, and how little it has to do'with any matter offact, or scientific,
belief about the cause of the appearance, whether as existing in the earth,
or sun, or both. The latter would be the answer of the highest philosophy;
for all motion, or change in the relations of two bodies, is ever relative, as
long as we bring in no third thing in respect to which one of them may
seem to be immovable.  In this case the language is not only phenomenal,
but, in some sense, subjective. It is not only the appearance as presented
to the sense alone, but that sensation, or rather perception, as affected by
other thoughts and other associations of the mind.  So might we treat the
appearance recorded in Joshua, as a subjective slow moving of time, if all
the other aspects of the account did not irresistibly force to the belief of
an outward miracle in nature and natural causality.
68 
THE OUTLINE CREATIVE IDEAS.
The Bible must be interpreted by itself and of itself.
We present it as the pervading thought of this introductory excursus on the spirit and position of science. It
will be the leading idea never lost sight of in all the remarks that follow. The creative account must be interpreted from Scripture alone; and, when so interpreted, it will yield us a satisfactory resting place in certain
great out-line ideas independent of science, but which
she may fill up, if she will do it modestly and reverently,
as she pleases;- SIX GREAT DIVINE WORKS, having respect not to the universe, or universal cosmos, but to our
earth- each of these commencing with the going forth
of a supernatural Word, and the energising of a supernatural Spirit,- and all followed by an ineffable divine
REPOSE which still continues. Or, to state it another way
-SIX GREAT DIVINE WORKS in SIX GREAT DIVINE DAYS,
or periods - these periods incommensurable, that is, outside of any present cosmical measurements that might
be used to determine either their brevity or their length
-called days, not metaphorically, but because they are
true days in their cyclical law- called also, and by the
same authority, TOLEDOTHS, or GENERATIONS, because
they were real birt7is and growths through which God
conducted this world from its chaotic infancy up to the
crowning work in the creation of humanity, and the covenant made with the primus homo or head of the race.
We must have a fair interpretation that may stand,
let Geology go where she will; and no one knows where
that may be. She is now getting into no little confusion
and speaks uncertainly. The time may possibly come,
when she may give up her pleiocene, and eocene, her
millions and billions of ages.  She may discover or get
5-9 
INTRODUCTORY VIEW.
some hint that there have been quicker powers in nature
than had been dreamed of,- that there are reserve laws
that operated of old, and that may operate again when the
new period of travail comes after the long and silent gestation -laws and forces that may bring out, in very short
times, series and generations that under other influences would seem to require an immensely longer duration.
In such case, those in the Church who have had the most
to say of "harmonies" might be disposed, perhaps, to
retreat with her; and yet fair interpretation would remain
unaffected amid all the changes of the science, or of its
religious or scientific followers.  Such fair interpretion
would even then, as now, content itself by saying,- we
have no right to set definite bounds either of hours or
ages to what God has left indefinite- -we have no right
to measure what is left incommensurable by any cosmical
standards which were themselves uncreated, and could
not, therefore, have been measurers of the creative works.
Yes, the Bible must interpret itself. We must believe
-if we believe at all — that it was meant to teach just
what it does teach us. Thus, too, our highest and deepest
ground of faith must be in the devoted study of the Book
itself. Here must be our anchor. All evidences derived
from science, let her be ever so favorably disposed, will
fail us, and will fail the age, unless we hear that voice of
authority speaking in the Scripture and to which the old
divines so frequently refer. We have said that the
thought was comparatively rare in modern times. It is,
therefore, with no ordinary pleasure that we cite the testimony of one of our profoundest thinkers. The same
idea is presented in a late Address of M. GUIZOT, at a
late meeting of the Protestant Bible Society of France.
60 
TESTIMONY OF GUIZOT.
In distinction from all external testimonies, whether historical, philosophical, or scientific, he insists upon this
" Divine Presence in the Scriptures," as the deep, soulfelt ground of their authority.  "The examination of
the Scriptures," says this pious statesman, "reveals difficulties, but these are only occasioned by human ignorance and human infirmity. Above them all appears
the Divine character of the Sacred Books, the Divine
Breath which fills and animates them. The movement
may be sometimes obscure, but God is ever there.  In
every part is he to be seen, heard, felt. Through all difficulties, and through all obscurities, there is the constant
view of God's presence, the constant sound of his voice."
He makes no distinction between the New Testament
and the Old. The Divine Presence is everywhere-no
less majestic in some of the oldest than in the later portions of the same inseparable revelation. This noble tes
timony is no mere rationalizing, either after the manner
of Locke or that of Cousin. Each would be equally
external here. The idea of M. GUIZOT is the same
with that of Owen and Hal]yburton, and presented in
nearly the same style of language. In his political
retirement he has been a devout student of the Scriptures. Here is the ground of his faith. The same faith
can only become general when the age gets tired of talking about "nature as a divine revelation," and in its exhaustion and its weariness sits down to the Bible to learn
how little we know -how little all things else can teach
us of the human origin, the human destiny, the true human history-in short, those higher truths of nature as,
well as of morals, aside from which philosophy is as.
sounding brass, and science but a tinkling cymbal.
6
61 
SCRIPTURAL INTERPRETATION.
CHAPTER II.
Scriptural Interpretation in Connection with Science-fine
General Principles-Application to the Creative Record  The Difficulty of a Solar Day without a Sutn as obviou#
to Moses as to Mr. Lord-If there is any such Difculty
it is Patent on the Face of the Record-It has not come
from Science, but from False Interpretation —Interpreta.
tion, therefore, and not Science, must Remove it-CREA  TION an ORDER OF APPEARANCES —Each Appearance a
MIorning-Succession, not Duration, the Radical Idea.
TiE argument for the creative days has been already so
fully treated that we would not weary our readers with
even the appearance of repetition in respect to any maters of detail, or particular interpretation. There is,
however, a synoptical view of the whole ground, that presents itself under somewhat new aspects, and which we
would desire to give in a more condensed, and as we
think, more convincing form.
The interpretation of the Bible must, of course, require
more care than that of any other book. The principles
of such interpretation must be high and broad just in
proportion as we regard the author of the Scripture as
divine. Yet still they lie within the fair range of the
human intelligence; they must be the rules of reason
and common sense properly elevated by a feeling of the
sacred work in which the mind is engaged. We will
62 
RULES OF INTERPRETATION.
,proceed to state a few of those we cannot help deeming
the most important.
Ist. The record should be interpreted from itself.  In
doing this, single words should be defined by their use
in other parts of the Bible, and especially as they lie in
nearest connection with the passage explained.
2d. The difficulties acknowledged should be such as
exist in the record itself- on the face of it.  They must
have been difficulties obvious to the writer and the men
of his day for whom he wrote, and, therefore, inherent in
the very nature of the descriptive narration. It follows
from this, of course, that the solutions must be such as
are furnished by the record; in other words, they must
be such as might have been accepted by the writer and
the men of his day.
3d. Whether the language is extraordinary or not,
must be determined from the extraordinary nature of the
facts recorded, and the known difficulty of setting them
forth in any other way. This will not change the radical conception* of a term; otherwise the language becomes entirely -arbitrary and cabalistical; but it determines whether it is to be taken in a limited or an enlarged
sense, and whether we have any right, a priori, to expect
any such expansion of the word and the thought.
4th. If the idea of the ineffable and the anomalous is
forced upon us in some parts, we may lawfully carry it
'As this term is frequently used by us, and is greatly liable to be misunderstood, we will define it, once for all, as that image which is most prominent, and most permanent, in the pictorial representation the mind is
compelled to make of the idea, or thing thought.  Thus, in the word and
idea day, period,'gs6o0g, revolution, cyclity, ever remain, though other
features, such as any particular duration, or modes of marking it, may coniceptually vary to any extent.
63 
RULES OF INTERPRETATION.
into others in close connection with it.  For exampleif, in the creative account, we are compelled to admit
that the Word, the Spirit, the Work, the Rest, are extraordinary or ineffable ideas, not to be measured by ordinary
conceptions, we carry out the spirit of the interpretation
when we apply the same rule of conceiving to the times.
If God's work is not like our work, if his rest is not like
our rest, then his day of working and his day of resting
are not like our day. They must be in harmony with
the other ideas, unless instantaneousness or suddenness
is meant to be a chief feature of the account; of which
there is no evidence, or rather there is the evidence of
the contrary, on the face of the Mosaic narrative. We
can not imagine anythiing more fair or rational than this.
5th. The individual or peculiar conception of the writer
is not to be disregarded. Otherwise we make him a
mere outward amanuensis; we have nothing to fix the
idea or ultimate fact which his conception represents;
we have nothing to determine it to one thing more than
another; and thus, under pretence of magnifying revelation, we take from it all possibility of any definite interpretation that shall be catholic for all sane minds.
6th. The conception of the writer once ascertained is
authority for the fact he would narrate, or the thing he
would describe, as separate from all other facts or things;
but it is not authority for the science of that fact or thing.
Thus the language of Moses, in the account of the second
day, shows that there lay in his mind the phenomena of
the sky or atmosphere. He meant to narrate the making of this in the order of the terrestrial creation. The
fact binds us, however erroneous may have been the attending conception. When we extend the language here
64 
SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
to the nebular rings of science (whether real or imaginary) we travel out of the fact, as well as the conception.
The consequence is that instead of a catholic interpretation, we have one that comes and goes with the varying
mind, and varying imagination, and varying science of
every age and of every special interpreter. Hence follows rule
7th. All science must be excluded, as well as all deductions from any science, which we are sure was unknown to the writer.  Otherwise God did not make use
of the mind of the writer, or the linguistic conceptions of
the writer, but only his articulating organs or letter-tracing hand. Hence it follows, that the Bible contains no
discoveries in science, properly so called, nor any revelation of facts which science is able to discover, but only
of those great physical truths of origin which, in their
very nature, lie beyond the field of all science -in themselves unknown alike to all- and which may be as easily
announced to the common as to the most scientific mind.*
Hence,
* We have elsewhere remarked upon this as drawing a distinctive line
between the Bible and everything else assuming to be a revelation. It
wholly avoids committing itself to any scientific or philosophical speculation, or to the language peculiar to such speculation. This is not from caut i o n, but because the Bible thoughts are, in themselves, essentially above
any theories or discoveries in science. In the sacred books of the eastern
religions, the tendency to philosophise is plainly discernible. They contain pantheistic ideas which are evidently a.fer thoughts of philosophising
minds, such as the Egyptian priests or Indian Brahmins,-striving to escape
from common notions, and seeking to employ a vehicle somewhat different
from the common speech. Extravagant and mythical as they are, they
betray their human origin by their very attempts to get above humanity.
Although there is no pantheism in the Koran, yet no one can study it carefully without seeing that Mohammed, ever and anon, has some crude scientific notion that warps his language. He talks of the earth, not phenomenally, as the Bible does, but in such a way as to give some of his extrav
6*
65 
66    WE CAN NOT MEND MOSES BY SCIENCE.
8th. That interpretation labors the most, which, in
clearing up supposed difficulties in language, or narration, has to seek the most aid from the inferences of a
science now known, but then unknown. Thus, Mr. LORD'S
theory is false, because he can not make a solar day of
the first period, or give any consistent work to the fourth
period, without bringing in rotating hemispheres, and
varying inclinations of ecliptic axes, that, whether true
or false scientifically, were utterly unknown to Moses
either as facts or conceptions, and could, therefore, have
been of no aid to him in solving a difficulty which, if it
exists at all, lies now, and must have lain then, upon the
face of the account.
agant Arabian traditions respecting the earth's form and place the appear ance of cherished scientific hypothesis which he would put forth for its own
sake. Sometimes, too, he gets hold of a psychological conceit, the display
ofwhich evidently forms a prominent design in the passage where it appears. Thus, the dependence of the time-conception on the conscious suecession of thought had not escaped the musings of these sons of the desert.
It is alluded to in Oriental tales, such as the striking story of the Magical
Water to which Addison alludes in the Spectator. Now Mohammed evi dently has this in view in his account of the Miraculous Sleepers in S?re
XVIIIth of the Koran, entitled The Cave.  On waking from their long
Unconscious state, they were asked for their estimate of the time that had
,elapsed; and Mohammed says that it was for the very purpose of testing
them in this respect.  It is evident that the philosophical interest, and the
philosophical notion crude as it is in his mind, are predominant. How
-very different our own Holy Scripture.  Time is nothing to the u,z-thinkiig
it is all-present, without length or shortness, to the All. Thinking. And this
idea is given us in the Bible, but not as a psychological truth or as having
a philosophical value.  All is subservient to a higher purpose, the ineffable
glory of God.  "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday, when
it is past, and as a watch in the night." Anything which should have
looked like the set language of any philosophy, with any design, however
faintly appearing, of making this philosophic interest predominant, would
hleave impaired the thought, or rather the emotion of the thought, which is
-the vital thing; and so there is a resort to the impassioned poetical speech
, of the higher spiritual region. 
CREATION AN ORDER OR SUCCESSION.
9th. Therefore- The only office of science in respect
to Biblical interpretation is to stimulate enquiry, and
then chiefly as to the fact whether some plain statement
of the record may not have been disguised or obscured
by having had forced upon it changed conceptions arising from modern scientific discoveries.  When it has thus
aroused the mind to examine whether certain modern
prejudices in regard to Bible language may not be false,
it should never be allowed to force upon the Scriptures
any mere possible interpretation to make the sense accord with any real or supposed state of scientific facts.
Let these rules be kept strictly in mind and we have
a guide to a trustworthy interpretation of the First of
Genesis, carrying us safely between the ever-shifting demands of science, and the insane bigotry that would shut
us up to one of the most narrow of modern conceptions.
We get, as one might a priori expect, the extraordinary,
the boundless, the sublime, without committing ourselves
to nebulae, or the uncertainties of ever-lengthening telescopes, on the one hand, or the narrowest anthropomorphism on the other.
The whole of the creative narrative in Genesis is sublimely pictorial; since in this way alone could it be sublimely truthful. Any other method of bringing it down
to us would have involved more error and less reality.
But as we have it, nothing could be more splendid for
the imagination, and, at the same time, more satisfying
to that philosophic intellect which regards all nature as
but appearances of things unseen, and all science as but
an arranging and classifying aid in the study of such
appearances - following, indeed, its conclusions to a
67 
THE FIRST MORNING.
great distance, yet never really penetrating into that invisible world which lies back of them all.
The 3osaie Creation was an order and succession of
appearances.
" In the beginning God made the Heavens and the
Earth." What appearances are here intended? What
beginning? What Heavens? What Earth? The language
following explains this brief language of the Title or Caption. The writer, in what is said afterwards, commences
with the Earth, although in the title itself it has the second place. The reason of this is plain. In the caption,
where chronological order is unnecessary, or postponed
to the order of ideas, the most striking object in the picture, or conception, is put first. On the other hand, in
the narration itself, the time series rules. The creation
of the earth is first set forth because it actually is first
in time, - the heaven is built upon it, that is, the sky or
atmospherical heavens, which is all that Moses had in
mind, or was inspired to have in mind. This creation of
the earth consists primarily in the change wrought upon
that dark state where creation, the Mosaic creation, begins. It is brought forth into light and visibility. It is
made to appear. The Spirit goes forth brooding on the
waters, and this was the beginning recorded by Moses.
There is a much more ancient beginning mentioned,
John i, 1. That was from eternity. There may have
been, in time, many other inceptive epochs in the great
spiritual and material works of God. But this beginning, of which Moses informs us, was in the evening.
With the Spirit comes the Word, and, straitway, there
is an appearance. Light appears, and this was the
morning.  Those mighty beings called "Morning Stars,"
68 
EACH APPEARANCE A MORNING.
the yet unfallen Luciferi, " sing aloud, and the sons of
God shout for joy." This was the morning. How can
we think of a common morning here, or keep out those
ideas of the extraordinary, of the ineffable, which, if once
admitted, must give character to the whole subsequent
account.  God called this morning day.  It is his own
definition of the term. He does not define it by subsequent ideas, but by phenomena already mentioned.   In
thus naming there is no reference to duration, or to any
measurement of times, but to division and contrast. It
was the morning as compared with the old night of chaos,
the new appearance as compared with the old invisibility.
It could not have been a solar day; for as yet no sun,
no moon had appeared in the heavens, although there was,
somehow,  a glorious  light upon  this  infant  world.
Whether existing or not, these sky lamps were yet among
the things unseen. Even the heavens, in which they
were to have their optical manifestation, had not yet appeared.  There was no sky, no rakia, or firmament,
above. This certainly is safe interpretation. We cling
close to Moses here. There was no visible sun to measure time, but still there was a day, a period characterized by most remarkable powers and manifestations.
There was the Brooding Spirit, the Commanding Word;
there was the terrific darkness on the waters, and the
creative light that shone, notfrom a sun, but out of the
darkness ('x exorovu) as Paul says, in his significant comparison, 2 Cor. iv, 6; and thus "there was an evening,
and there was a morning, one day."  Who shall think
of twenty-four hours here? We repeat it-because the
mnore we meditate upon this strange language, the more
69 
70   SUN AND MOON HAD NOT YET APPEARED.
strange it seems that any one should have ever had such
a narrow conception whether in ancient or modern times.
Again goes forth the Word. The Firmament appears
— the expanse above with its sailing waters-the old
glorious, and yet still glorious sky.  "And God called
it Heavens." He has interpreted the language for himself. It is the same heavens mentioned in the first brief
titular verse. Here we have a more particular account of
its creation, or btuilding, (xJ) in the work of the second
day. This was the making of the heavens. Were they
optical in some way? Were they lit up by an aurora,
such as we have seen revealing the vaulted sky in a
moonless night? We know not.  Imagination may be
soberly indulged, but all scientific hypotheses, as such,
are worthless and contemptible. Was it so named in
reference to the after appearance, when it reflected the
light of the celestial lamps? Such a view may be indulged; but it is all conjecture. We cling close to Moses
when we say there was a sky, a heavens, although no
sun, no moon, no stars had as yet appeared therein.
These were as yet invisible, and, in this sense, as nonexistent to our earth as the satellites of Jupiter before
the days of Galileo, or many of the nebular clouds before
the making of Lord Rosse's telescope. But there was
now a sky; -and here comes the same language, may
we not say the same self-interpreting language, telling
us, in unmistakable terms, what these strange mornings
and evenings really are. Let the reader mark the constant order. There is a division, and then an appearance.   As first the waters appeared when the light
shone on them, or out of them, so now a sky appears,
although no sun nor moon as yet appear in it. What 
SUCCESSION OF MORNINGS.
prevented their being seen we know not. We have only
to interpret, and to bring our imaginations into harxmony
with such interpretation; but Moses says that they were
not appointed to their office, until the fourth day. Until
this time -to use the paraphrase of the Son of Sirac -
"they did not stand in their watches, giving light in the
high places of the Lord." But here is a new division
and a new appearance, and immediately is it said, there
is a new morning, and a second day. What can be
plainer, if a man will but throw away science, all narrow
modern conceptions, and bring himself into the power
and spirit of the language? Each appearance is a morning, so named from the fact of appearance, without any
reference to duration or any present divisions of time.
The language interprets itself. Each appearance is a
morning. The appearance of the light was the first
morning. The appearance of the sky was the second
morning. The appearance of the earth rising out of the
waters was the third morning. The appearance of the
heavenly bodies, sun, moon and stars, in the sky or firmament where they had not appeared before, -this was
the fourth most glorious morning. Each has its corresponding divisions so arranged in consecutive and ascending order as to make the conclusion irresistible, to a sober
thinking man, that such first naming of the day, night,
and morning is the clue, and was meant to be the clue,
to all the rest.  Divisions-contrasts-and contrasted
successions, are the prominent ideas. Duration comes in
not at all, unless we force it upon Moses. They were unmeasured days.  We say this on the soberest principle,
because there was no sun to measure them, and because
we are expressly told when solar-measured days began,
71 
OBJECTION CONSIDERED.
as if to mark the difference in a way that could not be
mistaken. These divisions, moreover, were supernal
tural.  God made them, as Augustine says, to distinguish them from the natural or the sun-made intervals of
time which now exist.
The difficulty of a solar day without a sun must have
been as obvious to Moses (had such been his view)
as to us. It is not at all a difficulty made by science.
The fact, therefore, that the writer does not attempt to
solve it, or explain it, not even recognizing it, shows that
he could not have regarded them as solar or common
days. He had good reason to think that his readers
would be so impressed with the feeling of the marvellous,
the extraordinary, pervading the whole style and structure of the narration, that they would not need an explanation.
And here we may refer to our third rule, which those
who can only see real or apparent salient points, might
be ready to cite against us.'The language must be
defined by that which lies nearest to it, unless there is
something in the face of the account that positively forbids.' We applied it to the word heavens, when we said
it must have the same meaning in the third verse as in
the first. The objection has been taken- why should
not the word day have the same meaning in the second
verse, as when used below of undoubted solar days? We
might reply, in the first place, that it has the same
meaning if, when we speak of a word's meaning, we
look only to the essential idea. The nine-hour day of
Jupiter, the twenty-four hour day of the earth, the six
months' day of the pole, the millenial day of some of the
immense astronomical cycles, or, in fact, any temporal
72 
THE ATMOSPHERICAL HEAVEN.
period of a cyclical self-measuring.character - all these
are alike days in the essential idea, and the application
of the term to one of them is no more metaphorical or
secondary than it is to another. But if such answer is
not satisfactory, we have one that is conclusive;  and
that is, that aside from any difficulties of science, the
very record on the fair face of it forbids the inference
from which the objection is supposed to derive its force.
In the use of the word heaven no intimation is given of
a different meaning, or we may rather say, a more or
less extended application of the same idea.* The heaven
made and mentioned in the third verse is the heaven
mentioned in the second- the same in phenomenal conception, the same, we think, in supposed extent.   But the
day mentioned in the first and third verse, though truly,
and not merely metaphorically, a day, or self-measuring
period of time, was not, in extent at least, and other diurnal incidents, the day mentioned in a part of the fourth
verse where the dividing office of the sun is first set forth.
For this transition, there are certain irresistible evidences lying on the very face of the account. We repeat
them because it is strange they should have been so over
* The word heavens presents, in other aspects, a complete parallel. It
carries the same essential idea, whether we apply it to the atmospherical
heavens or the astronomical, although one is inconceivably more remote
than the other, and in itself may present any number of gradations of the
same conception.  We find this latter, or astronomical sense, coming into
the subsequent Hebrew writings, where they speak of the heaven above
the heavens,'or heaven of heavens (as though we should say day of days);
but whether in the nearer or the larger view, it was the same radical conception, satisfied by the same term, and allowing of an immediate transition from one to the other, without surprize or any seeming need of explanation. Just so, in this very record, we have an undoubted transitiona
in the use of the word day in the beginning of Chapter ii, where it is ap
plied to all the creative generations taken as one cycle
7
73 
74       GOD-DIVIDED - SUN-DIVIDED DAYS.
looked in modern times, although they arrested the attention of older commentators. These latter mentioned
days are expressly described as sun-divided-the first
were Cod-divided. The one class lay within the natural
ongoings of a system set in order, the other belonged to
the supernatural originations. The one was connected
witll and measured by cosmical relations from without,
the other had its measurement only from the work or law
of working within; the one class were solar days keeping times for the inhabitants that should be on the earth,
or for the internal economical arrangements of the earth
itself; the other were ceoni~ or olamic days measuring
the earth's relations to the universal ongoings of time, or
the great worlds or ages before and after. The proof of
our assertion is, that there was no sun in the sky to divide
them- the very manifestation of the sun is one of their
works. It being certain, therefore, that they were not
common or solar days in the more important idea (important we mean for a solar day) of being measured by the
sun, we have no warrant at all for forcing in the narrow
and far less essential idea of that exact duration which
such a mode of measurement now gives, and on which such
duration is entirely dependent. But this we have elsewhere discussed at length, and to it the reader is refer red. It is an argument that Mr. LORD has made no
attempt at answering, although it was put directly in his
way. Why should the exact duration be insisted on when
other and more essential elements of the idea of a common
or solar day are necessarily excluded? The question
is not answered. We do not think it can be answered.
But to resume our sketch. In the same manner might
we go through the other great days. They present a 
THE SABBATH.
continual succession of appearances or mornings. We
had spoken of the glorious fourth day, when the Meorim
or Great Lights (lighters, luminaries) are hung out in the
heavens. Again goes forth the Omnific Word. There
is a new appearance, a new life; -and this is the fifth
morning.  Again-an appearance still more remarkable
- a higher life, and lo! a sixth new morning. And here
the hitherto uninterrupted mention of the mornings and
evenings ceases. The calendar closes, or rather this remarkable feature of it, before the creative history is fully
completed. A seventh great day is mentioned, but not
a seventh morning. It is the beginning of God's ineffable repose, whose glorious morn is not yet fully ushered
in. Nature yet sleeps. It is the Sabbath eve of the
world. What its full morning will be, can only be learnt,
as far as it can be learned at all, from the prophetic
Scriptures which are but the complement of the creative
history. Science will never discover or define it.
There is no forced interpretation here; that is, it is
not made by pressure from without.  Everything we
have said is in harmony with the spirit of the record and
the grand ideas it most naturally suggests.  Everything
comes into place and proportion, if we will only take the
right stand point —if we will only divest ourselves alike
of our modern science, and our modern bigotry, whilst
we interpret the first supernatural voice of God to our
world, in a manner consistent with its enchanting simplicity, and on a scale commensurate with its ineffable
grandeur.
75 
THE WORD DAY.
CHAPTER III.
'THE WORD DAY, AND THE MYSTIC NUMBERS OF PROPHECY.
Various Senses of the Word Day —Summary of Principles
concerned in its Interpretation-Eight Heads of Argument
-The Prophetical Day-Analogous to the Creative Day
-Numbers as used in Prophecy-Three kinds-Definite
Numbers —Round Numbers —Perfect Numbers — The
Word Day as applied to the Closing Dispensation of the
World-Analogy with the Creative Accouznt- Iedhem, or
the Ante-time State.
NEXT to the general principles of interpretation would
come the more particular arguments applicable to words
of time, and especially the leading word day. In respect to this whole class of terms, there is an important
and interesting enquiry. Hiave we good reason for
thinking that there is a wide difference between the
most ancient and the most modern mode of conception
connected with them? Hence the great question which
is the hinge of the whole discussion, and which we would
state clearly, yet in a manner wholly independent of science, or of any scientific deductions. Was the creative
day just twenty-four hours in length, or was it indefinitely
longer, and yet a real days not metaphorically, but strictly
and truly a day, in its essential, cyclical, self-measuring
idea, though undefined in the merely incidental feature
of its duration, whether relatively long or short-.hat is,
76 
METAPHORICAL SENSE.
in comparison with any times out of itself.  Whether
such a view would satisfy any real or fancied difficulties
of science, was not the enquiry. It was hoped it might
do something towards such a result. Scientific men differ about it. Some of highest note think it would furnish
a fair ground for a harmony; others would still reject
the idea of reconciliation on this or any other ground.
It would be absurd in the writer to say he felt no interest
in the fact of such agreements but he certainly can say
that he would not allow it to affect the principles or method of the Biblical enquiry. What is the fair interpretation of the word day, as it stands in a certain very ancient Record dealing in very extraordinary ideas, and
expressed in very remarkable language? This enquiry
pervades the book which has been charged with naturalism; everything is subservient to such an issue. All
seemingly divergent discussions grow out of it, return to
it, and terminate in it. The arguments, or heads of arguments, in support of it, may be thus briefly re-stated,
and presented in one view to the reader.  There is,
I. The metaphorical sense. This, although the first,
does in fact furnish the least reliable argument. It has
been the one usually and mainly employed in favor of
the general idea of long periods, and yet it is one on
which alone we would not dare to rest the great question.
It gives a possible interpretation, barely reaching to a
probability, perhaps, but nothing beyond it. We want
something more than metaphors for a foundation here.
We make the distinction because this metaphorical sense
has been confounded with something widely different and
entitled to far more consideration. This is,
77
7* 
CYCLICAL SENSE.
II. The cyclical idea, or the evidence for the cyclical
meaning of the word day. A metaphor,-as the etymology implies, is a change, a!transfer of a word from one
department of ideas, and that its native department, to
another. The essential notion is exchanged for a resemblance or analogy more or less fanciful or real. In the
essential idea of the word day, the chronological, or the
thought of an absolute time complete in itself, yet standing in some relation to other absolute time, or times, is
an inseparable element. The metaphorical use, on the
other hand, transfers the word to the expression of a
mere state of. being having strictly nothing chronological,
that is, no real connection with absolute time or any like
recurring periods before and after.  Thus the "day of
joy," the'" day of adversity," the " day of prosperity,"
etc. These are all metaphorical. They denote no real
time- they are subjective mainly, and belong not to the
absolute chronology of the earth, or the universe. Now
.take another class of expressions- the "days of creation," the "day when God made the heavens and the
eart,h;" including all the subdivisions (Gen. II), the
' days of prophecy," the "latter. day," the " day of
Christ's reign," the "last day,"i the " day of Judgment," the Drgs aswvo; of St. Peter, (2 Pet. iii, 18)these, it must be felt at once, have a very different character.  They are chronological,-  completed by an inner
cyclical law of their own, or by the divine supernatural
divisions, yet connected in the great chronology with
similar periods going before and following after them.
'To a superficial view, this may seem a metaphorical
sense, but it is widely and essentially diverse.
78 
WORDS OF GENERATION.
III. The mention of the morning and evening, and
the peculiar order in which they are repeated as indicative of something remarkable in the day requiring such
emphatic repetition, and as explanatory of the name from
the fact of two such contrasted states of one periodwhatever those states might be.
IV. The absence of the sun until the 4th period, and
the consequent impossibility and unimaginability of those
more common characteristics that mark the common
solar day.
V. The employment of words of generation, or terms
carrying in their roots the ideas of growth and birth,
that is of nature- like the Hebrew n-tn- and the
using these for the ages, growths, successions, or days of
the earth.
VI. The remarkable language that is held respecting
the earth's first producti6ns in the third and fiftth days,language implying growths, natural causalities, (though
divinely quickened,) and hence driving us to the idea
of successions, and consequent durations exceeding one
revolution of the sun.
VII. Argument from the Sabbath- the divine Sabbath as a continued and present repose from creation.
VIII. The ground of the whole discussion as sought
in the old idea of the olams or time-worlds, or ages, so
strangely used in both the old and later Scriptures for
the very worlds themselves.
Such is the outline of the argument and its pervading
aim. It may be said of it here that all that looks like
naturalism (and the careful reader must see that it is
only in appearance or from a perversion of language)
grows out of closely following the record, in the remark
79
0 
80       ARCHEOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY.
able language applied to the vegetable and animal growths
" Let the earth bring forth-Let the waters bring
forth." If it is naturalism at all, it is the bold naturalism of Scripture, such as a poetical myth-maker, or
a sentimental religionist, or even a science that takes special pains to be pious, would never have ventured upon.
If it is naturalism at all, it is a naturalism grounded on
close interpretation of the only record, and ready to be
abandoned at once whenever that interpretation is shown
exegetically to be false. We do not wish to be wiser
than what is written, or, through fear of an odious name,
to shun the acknowledgment of what seems to be really
revealed as God's chosen manner of working. The hypothetical reasonings, which have been so unfairly distorted,
and even called "the prominent positions" of the writer,
every candid reader must see are simply statements
(with answers to them) of objections that might be made
on other points, if such were the true interpretations in
those that are directly treated.
This argument in its broad outline —we say it fireely
and fearlessly-has not been met. The book has been
the subject of two hostile reviews, one assuming the special guardianship of the Bible, the other the no less zealous championship of science. Of both, however, it may
be truly said that they have not affected, and hardly
touched, a point on which the true merit or demerit of
the work might be said to depend. The editor of the
Literary and Theological Journal keeps up a standing
cry of infidelity, danger to the Scriptures, undermining
the faith, Platonism, etc. He sees a total wreck of all
belief in revelation, if this twenty-four hour idea is in the
least called in question. How the faith and integrity of 
DAY FOR A YEAR.
Scripture is so vitally connected with this particular interpretation he does not pretend to say. Why there
might not be a long day in creation as well as in prophecy, in the archaeology, as well as in the eschatology of
Scripture, is nowhere shown, or why the large scale of the
word and the idea is not as rational and as natural in the
one case as in the other.   The interpretations are not
even examined to any extent worth noticing. Words,
idioms, texts, in the analysis of which great pains have
been taken, whether to any purpose or not, have not
even been noticed.   The startling difficulties which on
the twenty-four hypothesis lie on the very face of the
account, are hardly alluded to as difficulties at all; except it be to bring in a great number of purely gratuitous
scientific guesses -the strongest evidence that this easy
literal theory, as it styles itself, is, of all others, the most
difficult and unsound.
In addition to this general outline view of the word
day, in its varied, hermeneutical uses, there may be properly presented here a few remarks on Mr. LORD's employment of the same word, and his inconsistency in so
freely applying to prophecy what he denies in any sense
to creation.  This belonged more strictly to the second
division of our summary, or that grounded on the distinction between the metaphorical and cyclical meaning.
As it would, however, have interrupted the order of outline, we have reserved it for this part of the chapter.
The fact to which attention is specially called is, that,
Mr. LORD, and others of the same school, are compelled
to bring in the aid of this cyclical idea in the interpretation of the prophetical Scriptures. What he will not
81 
DAY OF JUDGMENT.
listen to for a moment when predicated of the beginning,
or first times of the earth, he takes for his fundamental
thought in all that relates to the closing days of the
mundane history -or, to speak a little more pointedly
and pertinently,-what he regards as most infidel and
dangerous in archaeology, is most Biblical, most evan gelical, and most pious, in eschatology. He never thinks
of limiting the Day of Judgment as revealed in Mathew
and Revelations (if both passages mean the same) to a
period of twenty-four hours; in fact his reasoning is altogether inconsistent with any such idea; and yet it is most
emphatically called in the Gospels the Last Day- or the
Latter Day. So also of the day of prophecy in general.
He is compelled to regard this as something different from
the common solar diurnal measurement. The style of
speech, the hue of thought, the elevation of idea, the
accompanying emotion, which are all connected with the
glowing, aweing, mystical and mysterious language of
prophecy, will not permit. He is forced to take up his
position in a wider and freer space. We are in the
midst of the extraordinary, and ordinary words naturally
and  easily take on extraordinary meanings-that is,
meanings not radically different, but on a larger scale.
We have that feeling of vastness which so much more
freely arises in the contemplation of the unknown, unmeasured future, or the remote unmeasured past, than
in the survey of the well mapped historic present, as we
may style the region that lies divided and subdivided in
the current astronomical chronology. This is the real
ground for expanding, both in emotion and idea, the time
words of prophecy. Mr. LORD feels it like other commentators, but when hunting for reasons in favor of such
82 
ALIQUOT PARTS.
a mode of interpretation, he returns right back to his
old narrowness. He would sustain this extra-twenty-four
hour view of the word day from a few passages of Scripture which have with it merely an incidental association
of thought, such as Ezek. iv, 4, 6, Daniel viii, 14; but
these when examined are found to be far from sufficient
in themselves to furnish a trusty ground for so important
a principle of interpretation. Mr. LORD is not content
with it. His next thought is a glimpse of the truth in
the innate cyclical or periodical idea of the word day.
The essence of it is revolution. But the year als6 is
revolution. Therefore a day may stand for a year. We
will give his own language (Lord on the Apocalypse,
p. 252):  "A day during which the earth revolves upon
its axis has a resemblance which fits it to be a symbol
of the period of its revolution round the sun." Although
there seems to have been chiefly in his mind the mere
outward resemblance, yet still he recognizes, although
very inadequately, the cyclical idea. Instead, however,
of making day, thus viewed, the representative of cyclical
period in general, he treats it as the arbitrary symbol of
another period, simply because that second period is a
multiple, or pretty nearly a multiple, of the first. It is
just as though, in space, he should make a circle of one
foot radius, the symbol of one that had a rod or a mile
radius.
"In like manner," he continues, "a month, during which the moon revolves upon its axis, has a resemblance which fits it to be a symbol of the
period of its revolution round the sun. The forty-two months are therefore by the same law (the law of mere quantitative resemblance!) twelve
hundred and sixty years, and solar years doubtless; as, though the monthly
division was drawn from the revolution, yet it was reckoned of thirty as
well as of twenty-nine days, and the year itself was determined by the
revolution of the earth round the sun.!'
But the greatest difficulty found by Mr. LORD,- as
83 
84     FRACTIONS AND INCOMMENSURABLES.
appears from his effort to remove it,- arises from the
fact that the solar day cycle, in its absolute duration, is
not any aliquot part of the annus, and therefore, on the
principle of divisibility alone, can no more symbolize it
than the side can symbolize the diameter of the square.
The two quantities (viewed simply as quantities, or aside
from their common cyclical idea) are incommensurable;
-— ih other words, no number of our present days, carried to any conceivable height short of infinite, can ever
make any exact number of our present years. Extend
the ratio ever so far and there are fractions still. The
year we know is not 365 days, but 365 days, 5 hours,
54 minutes, so many seconds, so many thirds, etc., etc.,
etc. Here, therefore, he is compelled to break his own
symbolic law (which he has a perfect right to do since it
is a law of his own making,) or introduce a looseness
that renders it worthless. But let us hear his own statement of the difficulty:
"It may be thought an obstacle to this construction that, as the period
of a lunar revolution is not thirty days, forty two lunar months are not equal
to twelve hundred and sixty days. But neither are twelve hundred and
sixty days equal to the number in three and a half years, nor the number
in forty-two months, of thirty days each, equal to the number in three
years and a half; the astronomical year consisting of 365 days and a fraction in place of 360, at which it was reckoned by the Jews and other eastern nations, yet three hundred and sixty days were taken as the period of
revolution of the seasons, or the year, although they were known not to be
the true period, and thirty days were taken also as the period of a lunar
revolution, or a month, although they were, in like manner, known not to
be the true period."
Now what a calculation is this? Especially when we
bear in mind, that it is a leading idea of this writer, that
these numbers were given to enable us to fix satisfactorily the prophetic times and seasons as they actually occur in history, (whether of the past, the present, or the
future,) to determine accurately their beginnings, continuance, and ending,. This he regards as an important and 
FRACTIONAL ESTIMATES.
tchief design of the prophetical writings. It is a maxim
of law, de minimis non curat lex; but this will not do
in prophecy, if the fixing of times is its chief, or one of
its chief objects.   But it is not a question de gninimis.
The throwing away five days and a half in each year
would make quite a difference in the beginning and ending of any period he might choose to estimate.  It would
leave these important dates- important if it is the design
of prophecy to have them fixed- a generation or two in
utter uncertainty. In a millenium of 365,000 years,
which is Mr. LoRD's computation, it would make a difference of 5,000 years. If we take into the estimate
merely the fraction of a day, 5 hours, 54 minutes, etc.,
then, instead of 365,000, it would be 365,296 years,
with odd months, days and hours still remaining.  There
is the same dificulty, only arithmetically more perplexing, attending the computation of months as intermediate
between the day symbol and the year. Mr. LORD is
compelled to throw off all the fractions, and this on no,
other authority than his own artificial law. How does
he know but that there may be mysteries in these frac
tions, or that they may not symbolize occult times, and
occult events, which may have an important bearing on
the great result. They may represent secret nooks or
niches in history, either of the past or future, that, instead
of deserving to be thrown away, in this manner, may demand his deepest symbolical research. If he has a right:
to reject these, another commentator has a right to take
them into the account, and rectify his computation accordingly. Such consequences would seem to come directly from the rule or principle adopted, of making one
measure of time or space a symbol of another, not from
8
86 
86 PROPHECY NOT DEPENDENT ON OUR CALENDAR.
the general cyclical idea, but chiefly on the ground that in
arbitrary quantity one is a multiple, or nearly a multiple,
of another. We would treat this subject with all reverence.   Every interpretation of Scripture brought out
by any serious mind is entitled to our respect. But we
can not help distrusting a method which would thus make
important periods, or rather important ideas, in prophecy
thus to depend on the varying calculations coming from
adopting this or that canon by which scientific or unscientific ages and nations have regulated their ever ill-regulated calendar. If the day may symbolically represent a little less or a little more than the year's revolution,
(to say nothing of the fact that both the daily and the
yearly revolution may in some remote periods be astronomically very different from what they now are,) then
it may represent whatever the fancy of the interpreter
may connect with such arbitrary measurements.* Instead of treating the prophetic arithmetic in this conven
It need only to be remarked that this is said wholly of the actual fulfilment. Such fulfilment will, of course, be exactly true on some principle
in nature, or in numbers, or in natural and historical causes, that will al
low of no uncertainty.  But in the manner of representing it, whether
symbolically, or by any other kind of language, words, and the attending
conceptions partake of all the imperfections belonging to every kind of human media. The sacred writer may use 30 days for a month, and 360 days
for a year,-we think he does so,-but it is not easy to bring ourselves to
believe, that if the millenial-aeon is to be exactly 365,000 years, it will not
be that number of years in their natural, perfect estimate, but, in fact, 364,704 such years, in order to correspond to an imperfect mode of reckoning
employed so far off in the infancy of our world.  In other words, the prophetic fulfilment can not share the imperfection of the symbol (for that
imperfection is a changing quantity) and, therefore, on this principle, the
interpreter is bound to apply his science to verify the result. We say,
on this principle, for the very fact that such scientific estimates must be
applied, shows that the multiple principle itself,as thus employed, must be
fundamentally wrong. 
THE MILLERITES.
ient fashion, the safest, although perhaps not the easiest,
way, would be to keep in the fractions.   Some of the
Millerite calculations had to be altered and re-altered on
this principle. At times the error was supposed to arise
from the fractions being put on, and again from their
being left off. Peace to those deluded men. We would
not join even the religious world in scoffing at them.
There is something more sublime in their error than in
many of the world's most lauded truths. They had a
great principle of faith to which we who so often repeat
in our creeds that'; Christ shall come to judge the quick
and the dead at the last day," have become too indifferent,
if we may not say too sceptical.  But they erred as to
times.  They carried out too faithfully that same idea
of multiples to which Mr. LORD tries in vain to adhere,
and in which attempt, both he and they go contrary to
the Scriptural declaration that it is not for men  "to
know the times and seasons which the Father hath put
in his own power." It is not on the ground of equal
quantitative ratios, exact fractions, or aliquot parts, but
as representative directly, and not metaphorically, of the
cyclical idea, that the word day seems to be used in the
language both of creation and prophecy.   In both cases
great outlines orders  successions, contrasts, and relative proportions of events, are shadowed forth, rather
than exact durations, whether of hours or of years, or
any current dates in the annoedomini astronomical calendar, whether regulated by the -Cesar, the Parliament, or
the Pope.
Mr. LORD starts with something of this cyclical idea,
but spoils it in carrying it out.  A  little thought would
how us that the day in prophecy is not to be bound down
87 
88     TOPOGRAPHY OF THE NEW JERUSALEM.
by any such nice calculations, any more than terms of
space used in a precisely similar manner.   A furlong in
the Holy City might just as well be made a symbol of a
mile, or of a league, or of a geographical degree, and
with even more ease, for these measures are exact multiples and divisors of each other. We might just as well
attempt, in this way, to give the dimensions of the New
Jerusalem as its chronology,- its territorial extent in
space, as well as the months and years and millenia of
God's kingdom in time. The Apostolical Seer has presented to us a glorious picture of the Civitas Dei-its
twelve pearly gates, its harmonious geometrical dimensions, its river of water of life, its trees and fruits, its
" gardens and its pleasant walks,"
Its bulwarks of salvation strong,
And streets of shiiLng gold.
Now, in utter contempt of all this spiritual beauty, one
might as well attempt to bring it into feet and barleycorns, or to determine its latitude and longitude on the
celestial sphere, as apply any analogous computation of
current years or centuries to the ages that precede it, or
that measure its continuance.
There are in Scripture two very distinguishable methods of employing numbers in their relations to time and
space. Both of them are found in the prophetical writings. These are, lst, definite numbers, or those that
appoear to be such, and, 2d, what may be called full and
perfect numbers, or, as we sometimes style them, round
numbers. The first class would seem to be used for no
other purpose than the mere designation of quantity, or
to mark definitely some actual number, extent, or magni 
SCRIPTURAL NUMBERS.
tude, in that of which they are predicated. In the use
of the second, precise quantity, if it be meant at all, is
more easily seen to be a subordinate idea. The structure or peculiar law of such numbers shows that some
other thought connected with them  is predominant.
This may be fullness, roundness in the sense of harmonious complement of parts, or, if it be quantity at all, it is
quantity in its more general and comparative aspects of
greatness or brevity rather than precise numerical extent. Such numbers as the 1260 days of Revelations,
and the 1260 and 1290 of Daniel, would seem to have
their place in the first class. As belonging to the second,
there would easily suggest themselves "the twice ten
thousand chariots of God," in the LxviIith Psalm; the
"1 ten thousand times ten thousand" of the celestial armies mentioned by Daniel; some of the estimates in Ezekiel's Vision, such as the successive thousand cubits of
the mysterious river that came forth from the temple, the
144,000 whom John saw standing on Mount Zion, the
cubical dimensions of the New Jerusalem, the numbers
3, 7 and 12, as variously used in the Bible, and especially the 1,000 years or millenium of the Apocalypse.
It is the first kind of numbers as used by Daniel and
John, or as they seem to be used by them, that has formed
the favorite study of a certain class of commentators.
The great yet ever unsuccessful effort has been to get
the 1260 days into current anno domini years, with a
fixed beginning and end corresponding to some known
events in history. This has been on the principle of a
day for a year regarded as sanctioned by such passages
as Ezekiel iv, 4-6; or on the more satisfactory ground,
which Mr. LORD partly assumes, of the common cyclical
7*
89 
90       " THiE TIME, TIMES, AND A HALF."
idea, whereby one may be taken as the representative of
the other. It is, however, a very fair question, whether
these numbers are really intended for definite representatives, or do not, in fact, and notwithstanding their appearance of precision, belong to the second class. That
they can be reduced to it, we think can be made to appear
from the following considerations. The careful reader
can not overlook the fact that, in both the prophetic parts
of the Bible referred to, these apparently so definite numbers occur in unmistakable connection with another expression of the opposite character, but evidently intended
to denote the same time, times, or periods, whatever they
may be. Ever accompanying the 1260 days, both in
Daniel and John, are the "time, times, and the dividing
of a time" of the one, and the "time, times, and half a
time," of the others- or, if we employ the dual, as it is
clearly implied in the plural form of the Hebrew word,
it would be, "a time, two times, a dividing of a time."
Now the one of these, or the 1260 days, has a strong appearance of arithmetical precision; the principal feature
of the other is its mystic indefiniteness,-and yet there
can be no doubt that they refer to the same periods, and
include the same class of events.   The question, there-fore, fairly arises-which of these presents the funds
mental conception, and is therefore to control in the in:terpretation of the other.  We  have no hesitation in answering, the latter. The indefinite is the ground, and
the apparently definite is derived from it.  Aside from
'Daniel, xii, 7, vii, 25, Apoc. xii, 14. "And he aware by Him who
Cliveth for ever that in a time, times, and division of a time, and when there
shanll be finished the scattering of the Holy People, all these things shall
be completed."  Vulgate-in tempus, temporal et dimidium temporia.LAX-Xxlgo9v, xalgo6;, Ftlo  xa;gou. 
WHICH IS THE GROUND CONCEPTION?
such a view being more in accordance with the general
style of prophecy, which is emphatic in respect to courses
of events and ideas, whilst it is designedly enigmatical
in respect to precise times and seasons, being truly a
revelation of the one whilst it is in general an obvelation
of the other- aside from this, we say, there is a stronger
reason, and one which seems to us to be conclusive.  Unless we regard the "' time, times, and dividing of time,'
as the fundamental conception, we can find no significance in these larger divisions.  That is, on the other
view, the three times and a half time, do not denote three
prophetical periods, each having a character of its own
which makes it stand by itself, and a fourth such period
or division uncompleted; but this extraordinary language
is merely a vague expression for another representing a
continuous period in which there is no other division but
the current times (be it days or years) of the almanack.
It is true, the number 1260 may be broken up in this
same ratio, and for 1 + 2 + a, may give us 360 + (2 X
360) + 180, or 12 + (2 x 12) + 6; but the very doing
so implies that the simple ratio is the fundamental conception on which the others have been constructed At
least, it must have been so to the mind that first entertained and uttered it. After the numbers have been
Oiven to us, we can proceed either way, from the divisors
to the multiples, or from the multiples to the divisors. If
the 1260 is the ground conception, then there is no significance in the three divisions and a half. They belong
merely to the composition of the number, and do not
outwardly represent a corresponding triad of times, defit
nite or indefinite, in either the outward or spiritual history of the world or the Church. If so, they are utterly
91 
MODE OF INSPIRATION.
unmeaning as far as their trinal and dimidial ratio is concerned.  But it is not easy or natural thus to regard it.
The " time, two times, and dividing of a time," must
have a significance, not only in its total amount, which
is all that some interpreters ever look for, but in its
great divisions whether those divisions denote any defnite number of current years or not.
Thus, if we have made our meaning clear, the 1260
is derived from the 31, but it is difficult to see how, on
any rational ground, the conceptual process could be reversed, or the 38 derived from the 1260, unless the
former had been someway in mind in the construction of
the latter number.   Any oter view makes the mind of
the medium a purely arbitrary receptacle, with a blank
numerical conception instead of any idea, thought, or
view, out of which the conception arises, and to which
it has a rational correspondence. That is not the doctrine of plenary inspiration. It would not even be verbal, but purely cabalistical.
We firmly believe, not only in the plenary, as the term
is commonly used, but also in the verbal inspiration of
S&ripture. That is, the language as well as the thought
is strictly designed by the Divine Wisdom. The supernatural impulse, though distinct and special in itself, and
having a special purpose, yet works in perfect harmony
with the laws that connect utterance, conception, and
emotion. And yet there is a reason for every metaphor,
for every mode of speech, for every peculiarity of style,
that grows out of the individual mode of feeling and conceiving. Such metaphors and peculiar modes of speech,
therefore, instead of being overlooked as no part of the
true word, or treated as mere matters of rhetorical criti
92 
HOW DOES GOD EMPLOY HUMAN LANGUAGE?  93
cism, may oftentimes require the deepest study as manifesting the divine no less in the manner of utterance than
in the matter. Yet still, these conceptions have their true
and orderly growth in the human soul, and after the
laws of the human soul. If God employs true human
language, he employs also the human images that lie at
the foundation of such language,-nay, more, the feelings, whether naturally existing, or supernaturally aroused, that give birth to such images and conceptions.  The
dignity of revelation is no more impaired by the one supposition than by the other.  The opposite view seems to
take high ground, and to honor the Bible by depressing
the mental condition of the medium.   It gives, however,
the lowest and loosest results; for by denying any fixed
and fundamental conception having a natural, and therefore, determinable place in the mind of the sacred writer.
it becomes the cause of all looseness and arbitrariness in
the conception of the interpreter.
But how account for the 1260? It may be regarded,
without much difficulty, as nothing more than a varied
expression to give it more of that enigmatical aspect which
is a designed feature of the Scriptural hidha,* or oracle.
' We use this term,,t, because of its peculiar significance in the
Bible.  It is not that mere matter of amusement we call the riddle, but
something as significant, that is in its own way, as any other form of speech.
It is used for as definite a purpose as the parable or the simile.  It distinetly announces two thing's-an important truth, event, or idea, and, at
the same time, that there is something about it which we can not know,
and should not, therefore, be tempted to enquire into.  The enigmatical
language, or the con?plicatio.a (as the Hebrew word primarily imports)
performts its office, therefore, as clearly as any other miode of speech when
it is thus understood-just as Daniel understood it rightly, when he said,
"I heard, but I u-derstood not."  It was the impression, we may think, the
vision was intended to leave upon his mind in respect to this matter ofcurrent days or current solar years.  It may, indeed seem a paradox, but thle 
THIE AWE OF TIIE UNKNOWN.
Paradoxical as it may seem, there may be, sometimes,
a profound revelation in the incomprehensible.  There
may be something higher than knowledge in the awe of
the unknown. It is not the feeling of blank ignorance,
-for that has no understanding, or comprehension whatever,-but rather the knowledge that knows itself, and
the limits that separate it from a higher and more divine
intelligence. This may be all nonsense to the Editor of
the Theological Review and the Silliman Professor of
Mineralogy in Yale College; but, without having the
fear of either before our eyes, we must still talk Platonism.  There is a hidha, or deep speculation of Socrates
about knowing what we do not know, and the curious
mystery of such knowledge. We would commend its careful consideration to both of these authorities.  It might
wholesomely temper the infallible dogmatism of the one,
and reveal a field of thought somewhat higher thian had
ever been suggested by the "exact science" of the
other.
But to return to the consideration of the prophetic numbers. We may not understand the precise reason of the
use of the 1260- and we are perfectly willing to confess
Prophet's exclamation shows that he comprehended well the method em
ployed to teach him impressively that he could not comprehend. Then,
language is employed to conceal, some one may ssy.  It is even so-" It
is the glory of Go(d (sometimes) to conceal a matter,"-even while reveal
ing something most impressive in relation to it.  Twelve hundred and
sixty literal solar days, as one class of commentators interpret it, or 1260O
current anno domii-i years, as another class regard it, have, neither of them
anything very occult. The first is plain enough, and the second is only, in
addition, the guessing at a multiple.  Daniel could have entertained either
view as easily as Mr. LORD.  Certainly this "man beloved," so "favored
with the visions of the Most High," must have been in a psychological
state as favorable for their interpretation (at least so far as judging of numbers is concerned) as the Editor of the Theological Journal
94 
TIMES UNEQUAL IN DURATION- EQUAL IN' VALUE. 95
our sense of difficulty on this point- yet still no less evident are the reasons and the reasoning by which it is shown
that the indefinite expression of times is here the fundamental one. It furnishes the ratio, and that gives us the
law of the idea.  It is a ratio, order, division of period
and event, and not precise sun-measured duration. If
this be so, then there follows a most important inference.
The more simple ratio, designating the larger period, or
the "time, times and a half," gives character and dimension to the day, instead of being determined by it, and
that, too, both in the representative conception, and as
that conception is carried out on the scale of the actual
prophetic fulfilment of the common ratio.  The larger
designation-the "time, times," etc.,-having nothing
higher of which it can be predicated as a measure or divisor, is, of course, indefinite.  It would not even follow
that one of these mysterious times is the same, in precise
duration, with another.' God's physical movements, es
They may be unequal in duration as measured by solar years, but equal
in historical and spiritual value. This is exemplified on the lower scale of
the world's most secular history.  Some Ieriods are very brief as reckoned
by the almanack, yet, contain more of eventful lif-,-the world, or a nation,
has done more in themin, thought more in them, lived more in them, than
during ages of much greater extent in current years.  It is true of the
physical world. One period of less cosminical time does vastly more than
one of greater duration, There is a cycle of birth, as well as of gestation,
of quick working, as well as of repose.  It is true of the individual man.
He does more, he lives more, sometimes, in a month than in a year. Above
all, would it hold of what may be called the spiritual history of our world.
The few years of Christ's miiistry, the succeeding period recorded in the
Acts of the Apostles-in what ratio with these could we place the forgot
ten centuries that follo)wed the Trojan war, or the stagnant centuries of
mediaeval Europe, or the dull, dreamy Egyptian and Assyrian dynasties,
out of whose ruins modern research is striving to extract history, with so
much promise and so little sutecess,-the whole of it only serving to show
how indispensable the clear though scanty light the Bible throws back
upon thos- God-forsaken ages, and how little their " sphynxes" or their 
96    ARE THIE DIVINE TIMES ASTRONOMICAL?
pecially in a regulated course of nature, may be supposed to have a connection with astronomical or physical
measures of time. Even this view, however, would have
to be greatly modified when it is applied to those creative and generative acts which are concerned with the
origination of nature, and the very adjustments of the
measures by which time is afterward regulated. But in
the moral, or great historical movements of God's kingdom, we have no warrant fiom without, and, we think,
none from the Scriptures, for applying it at all. At the
first serious impression, the mind starts back from the
thought that the timeless One regulates his great periods
by our almanacks, or by our single planet's astronomical
measures of time, whether seemingly arbitrary or seemingly natural, whether reckoned by the clocks we keep
in our parlours, or those that keep time for us in our
sky; -for in this connection of thought one of these is
as natural as the other. We would indulge here in no
mere metaphysical conceit. God's purposes and workings in the universe- the moral and providential as well
as the physical -have durations, indeed, and those durations, could we measure them, might be found to be certain numbers and fractions of numbers-be they more
or less-of our solar years and centuries.   But to sup
pose the divine movements adjusted to these as our movements are - that is, to imagine these great epochs as
"winged bulls," could tell us if this liaght were lost. Is it not most rational
to suppose that the prophetic times are to be measured by this epochal
valuie, as we may call it, in distinction from astronomical estimates, which
in respect to the real historical action, may be altogether outward and
arbitary? It is in the highest sense the real value, and, therefore, in the
highest and truest sense may we suppose it employed in the divine prophetical estimate, and to furnish the true hermeneutical prienciple in our
attempted estimates, of prophetical equalities and proportion. 
PROPHETICAL TIMES NOT COSMICAL.
being made exactly equal to each other through measures
taken from our sun, our moon, our clocks, or exact mul tiples or divisors of these, so that instead of having a law
in themselves determining their own durations, (as even
the lower physical cycles have) their time of day and
night is to be found by observations wholly outwardthis is the thing hard to be believed.   It is possible;
and if the Bible has revealed it, we must, of course, bring
our very fallible reasonings in submission to it. But it
does not seem natural, it does not seem rational, it looks
like a violation of all analogy; we do not see the evidence
of it inr the Scriptures, either as respects creation or the
great epochs of prophecy, although there may be something of these solar measurements in the lesser predictions that have special reference to the merely earthly
history of the Jewish nation.
We say, then, it would not follow that one of these
mysterious times was exactly equal to another, although
each might be represented as a great year, and a proportionate number taken from it to be divided in a manner
corresponding to the divisions of our annual cycle. The
prophecy, then, would denote three great indefinite periods, and the part of a fourth.  If so, it is the multiple
that gives character to the divisions, and not the divisions
first reduced to a definite annual or astronomical duration, in current days or years, and then carried back todetermine the multiple; just as though in the physical
world, we should determine the day by the hour, insteadof regarding the hour as the twenty-fourth part of the
day cycle, whatever the length of that might be.
It may be said that in this way we get nothing definite
in respect to the actual physical length of the predicted:
9
97 
THE SCRIPTURAL HIDiAR
times in current calendar years; and to this it may bc
answvered again, that such would seem to be the very
intent of the Scriptural hidha, namely, to conceal the
precise cosmnical time from us -to put us in the very
position of the prophet himself, that we might hear and
heed, yet u nderstand not,- that is, hear (receive into
the mind, which is a secondary sense of the word in most
languages) the clear epitomal outline of events, yet understand not the definite solar times it might incidentally
embrace. It may have been to take away the mind
from that search after current years, to which some commentators are so prone, and to substitute for this vain
pursuit the higher study of cycles or periodical courses
of events, whether regarded as existing in the more outward and secular, or in the more inward spiritual history
of the Church;- we say the Church, for the serious student of the Bible must see that its great historical idea
is, the world for the Church, and not the Church for the
world, which is the favorite notion of our modern secue
larizedcl Christianity. Commentators have followed the
other method to exhaustion. They have tried every
means of squaring these mysterious times to anno domini
years; they have put on the fractions and taken them
off; they have changed their termini, but all in vain.
We would speak cautiously and reverently here. It
may be the true way on which light at length may shine.
We would be very far from making ill success in the
application the test of falsity in respect to any method of
interpretation. But this continued variance ought at
least to lead serious students of Scripture to look about
for some other path, and to seek the solution of the
great times by means  of some other kind of cycles
than the astronomical. It might, perhaps, be discover.
98
1% 
PROPHECY BIAS ITS OWN CHRONOLOGY.
ed, that prophecy, like creation, has its own chronology
-that is, one which instead of being measured by subdivisions from without, or in an outwardly fixed course of
nature, has its own self-mneasuring days, and times, and
seasons, with which the others may be in some kind of
analogy, or may not.  What would seem  to aid such
a view, is the use in Daniel (the fountain of this kind of
language) of the Hebrew word O, which when applied
to time ever denotes a period whose duration is limited
by its own law as constituted and appointed.  It is a set
time, fixed by agreement, whether of human constitution,
or determined in the counsels or covenants of God, and
measured by the event or appointed work which is transacted in it. This is the Hebrew word employed Daniel
xii, 7-"' an appointed time, two appointed times, a division of an appointed time," fixing upon the mind the most
vivid impression that the trinal and semi-trinal division is
o,f the very essence of the idea, and not to be overlooked
in the estimate of another number, whether regarded as
of days or years, that, when alone considered, effaces
that division.'  The greater mo'-adhim are not to be lost
-- The absurdity of Mr. LORD's treatment of this mystical number is
m.ost striking. Th'e two witnesses of the IRtevelationls, it is expressly said,
are to prophecy in sackcloth this very period of 1260 days, equivalent to
the "timne, times, and a half."  It is his theory, however, for reasons it
would be too long to state, that these two witnesses are two literal men.
it is ou-t of the question, therefore, that the number can mean years in
respect to tlhem.  To suit such an exigency, it must, in their case, be re'luced to literal days. In other words, it means either one or the other,
,ast as these accommodating laws of symbolization may require.  There
is something, too, especially curious in the reasoning by which these
two witnesses are proved to be real men, or "sz/'nols qf themselves."  If the
reader has any curiosity on the subject, wve refer him to it (ch. xxvi) as
one of the most singular specimens of logical circularity that the necessit.es of a theory ever brought out.
99
I
I I
I. 
100 CONNECTION WITH THE SACRED NUMBER SEVEN.
in this way. The prime ratio is not thus to be absorbed
in the secondary representation. The Chaldaic word,
Daniel vii, 25, has the same import.  So also the Greek
x-.g6s suggests the idea of a constituted, yet self-determining season, rather than any outward measure whether
of celestial or terrestrial horometers.
There is another view of the " time, two times, and a
dividing of a time," which gives it a more direct connec-tion with our general subject, the Creative Days.   The
Ithoughtful reader can not fail to see that this strange
expression represents exactly one-half of the number
seven*,-the sacred number, the mystic number, which
from the earliest period was held in religious awe as representing something of peculiar interest in the constitution and chronology of our world.  Along with this may
hlave been connected the thought of some curious inherent property which it possessed as a number, or in the
relation of its numerical parts.  In fact, both ideas were
inited; for this looking upon the world, its times and
constitution, as represented in the mystic properties of
numbers, is old beyond all historical date.  It was a
nmusing of the ancient mind, both oriental and occidental,
long before the days of Pythagoras.   In this sense of its
extreme antiquity it was certainly an a p)oiori, if we may
-not rather say, an a primo idea, that God made  the
world by weight and measure, that is, by number.   It
* It comes, too, just in that order of divisioni, from which the omathlemati..al mystery of this number is derived.  It is not 32, without any coos'itiz tion or distinction of parts, but 1 + 2 + 2. The seven series is
1 + 2 + 1 +t 2 + 1, or rather, (1 + 2) + I + (2 + 1).
J:)aniel's number is just one-half of it, and in the same order.  VWe  simply
call attention to the fact. The reader may judge, for himself, of its mean
ilg and value.
.2 
" GOD MADE THE WORLD BY NUMBER."   101
did not wait for the slow, groping discoveries of modern
Chemistry. The early mind reached out and seized the
truth; whether the soul recognized it as one of its own
native thoughts which it saw, or thought it saw, imaged
in outside things, or whether God had given it by revelation and tradition, we may not be able to tell very
clearly; but it had it in some way beyond all doubt.  God
made the world by number; and so the world was, in
some sense, a number, a ratio, a harmony, a kosmos.
The idea is everywhere in language. And then there
very early followed, or rather accompanied it, the thought
that the mystic birth numbers that entered into the very
constitution of things might, perhaps, be somehow sha,Iowed forth in the world's higher chronology.  We have
been charged with dreaming, as well as Platonism, but
we beg the sober-minded reader not to be impatient
here. We do not intend to discuss the truth of this idea,
or to endorse its affirmance or denial. Sufficient for our
argument, and for the use we make of the thought, is
the historical fact of its very early and deeply grounded
existence. Of the sacredness of this number seven, especially, we find traces everywhere. When men had
little outward physical science to trouble them with its
details, they mused much on their own ideas.  Especially was the thinking mind-and they thought then as
much as they do now, perhaps more-drawn to that
strange class of existences that seem to belong alike to
the objective and subjective world —the world within us,
and the world without us. Numbers exist in nature;
they have a still more ic:xA cxi;1cnce in the soul (not as
mere umbrae or conceptual irtges, the way  in which
any outward thing may be said to be in the mind,) but
9* 
102 NUMBERS IN NATURE-NUMBERS IN THE SOUL,
as a part of its own most interior furniture' without which
it could not be a rational soul, but only a sensitive life.
Numbers, then, as existing in nature, it was thought,
must represent something like those properties which the
mind saw in numbers when it contemplated them among
its own ideas. If this was not seen directly by the sense
(as in that infant stage of scientific discovery could not
be the case) then it must be thought as assumed by the
mind. For somehow there must be an agreement, or
else God did not make the world by measure and weight,
that is, by number;-in other words, it did not come
from mind at all.-t Hence the tendency of the earliest
philosophy to find out nature by the mind's own ideasto think out the world-problem, its figurative forms in
space, its great births or changes in time. It was the
- a priori tendency" which Professor DANA SO flippantly
condemns, but understandeth not.t It was the view of
Belonging to mind, in fact, just as truly and as inseparably, as figurative forms belong to matter, and forms of motion to any idea we can have
of life.
t We are tempted to dwell on this theme, but it would interrupt our
general plan, as far as our rambling book can be said to have one. We
would, however, barely suggest to the men who cry out Platonism, and
see so much danger and heresy in the word, that it might be worth their
while to examine the Platonic mode of theologizing, or proving that the
world came from mind. It found this evidence in the ideas; the modern
discovers it in the utilities, or contrivances for happiness, or well feeling
as the very essence of well being. The latter method can never fully answer the Atheist's objection, that the use may have grown out of the
construction as an effect rather than a cause.  But aside from this, we
have no hesitation in affirming, and in maintaining, whenever necessary,
that the Platonic mode is not only more sublimely truthful, but more pious,
more reverent, more in harmony with the Scriptures, than the one now
so popular both with scientific men and theologians.
I The consummation and most perfect result of this tendency may be
found in that splendid effort of genius and philosophy, the Timeus of Plato.
It is an attempt to get at the elementaryforms and elementary mnotions of 
ANCIENT A PRIORI TENDENCY.
which some of our professed Baconians, misunderstand ing Bacon as well as Plato, show a sort of dreamy half comprehension in their sneering lectures, their ignorant
gibes at the old philosophers, their stale, stupid jests
about the schoolmen, whilst they have no wonder for the
strangest psychological fact presented in the history of
philosophy and the world- the strangest, we mean, on
their theory-that metaphysics should  have  been  so
much older than physics-the supernatural before the
natural- the contemplation of " the things unseen" so
much earlier than that study of the  " things seen"  and
tangible that is so predominant a feature of our later
times. There was an error doubtless, a great and baffling error in this one-sided a priori tendency, but there
was also in it a great truth, the loss of which can never
be compensated by any amount of mere physical knowledge that rejects or holds it light.
The  reader  will have  patience  with our  rambling.
This is a tempting theme, but we must come back to the
early ideas of mystic number. There was a supposed
mystery in the number 7, arising from its numerical composition. As three presented duality and unity, forming
trinity, so 7 was a dual trinity connected by unity.   One
all matter as derived from the necessary mathematical ideas, and the necessary dynamical laws. Plato regarded the world rather as an idea, or
system of ideas, than as a power, although hlie fully recognized the latter
aspect. Hence the Timnus is predominantly mathematical, that is-in the
ancient sense of the word-geometrical; for it is the application of the term
growing out of the modern analytical mathematics, that has extended it
over both departments, as they are embraced in that second Tim-eus, the
Mechanique Celeste of La Place.  Of course, Plato's Timaeus is a failure
when judged by our college text books on Natural Philosophy, and yet
we fearlessly hazard the declaration, as one we are prepared to prove, that
it contains truths, physical truths, of the highest import, that are unrecognized and unvalued in our scientific conventions.
103 
SEVEN AGES OF THE WORLD.
half of this corresponded to the mysterious "time, two
times and a half.  So it certainly is numerically; how
far the idea was an element in the Prophet's vision, the
reader may judge for himself. We would be content
with the unquestionable fact of a sacred estimate being
early entertained of this number and of such modes of
dividing it. Connected with this was the idea of its
being the creative number, which must have come from
some early and wide tradition of the great creative times,
and also the doctrine of the seven ages corresponding to
them and which would complete the historical period of
our own world or olam. This is to be found in early
heathen writers;' Augustine speaks of it as a wide-spread
belief; it was maintained by the Rabinnical writers as
among the sacred thoughts that had come down from
their forefathers, and we confidently say, that aside from
the inferences that might be drawn from the passages on
which we are now commenting, there are discernible traces of it in the Scriptures.  The "thousand years as one
day"- the thousand years of the New Jerusalem, as well
as these " time, times and half time" of Daniel and John,
The germ of this idea, we may soberly believe, exists in the Hesiodian
ages, three of which had passed away, and the fourth was just gone, when
the poet came upon the stage of time. Compare with this also Virgil's
Sybilline traditions, as referred to in the Fourth Eclogue, 5:
Ultima Cumeei venit jam carminis etas,
Magnus ab integro s8cloretm nascitur ordo.
And afterwards (12) where he speaks of the mageni menses or great moniths.
There is a similar reference in the VIth Book of the Eneid, where 2Eneas
is shown the souls that are to be born in the great latter day of the earth's
history, 
Longa DIES perfecto temporis orbe.
The Platonic magnus annus was epochal yet measured outwardly by astroniomical or cosmnical movements. What are called the Chaldaean magni
mnenses may be regarded as mainly, if not wholly, of the latter character
104 
A CATIIOLIC IDEA.
show the prevalence of the idea.*   Being thus a sacred
thought belonging to the universal thinking, there is nothing
derogatory to the idea of revelation, or inspiration, in
supposing that it was divinely made the suggestive source
of the prophet's conception. Neither would it at all affect this conclusion to show that it was a Chaldaism, and
that it came from this source to the Prophet's mind, and
imaged itself in his divine visions. The old Chaldea was as
directly in the line of the primitive world-traditions as
the Jews. There is even an additional value to the
thought if supposed to have come down through an independent channel from the earliest fountains. It has a
deeper interest, it becomes more sacred from the reflection that the descendant of Abraham found it among remote kindred who had preserved it since the early day
when the long-parted streams of generation first diverged
from the common ancestors who dwelt beyond the Euphrates. The conceptions of John were certainly inrfluenced by those of Daniel, and yet they are to be regarded
as no less truthful on that account.  What danger, then,
to faith, in regarding the Hebrew Prophet's conception
as influenced, yet divinely infiuenced,by still more ancient
thoughts, which had become catholic in the world for
serious minds.  There is, in fact, something exceedingly
a- Maty we rot suppojse also that Paul's style of language was suggested
I)y a silitar mode of thilkilng. We refer to the ~rX c v/Act   KAIP   N,
Eph. i, 10,-the  "'fullness of the  times"-the perfect seven, denoting
)ormpleteless, as the "time, times, and a half," woold seem to signify an
unfioishl-d or medic, re period.  PuLl's expressiol would suggest thle "mag
r0us smclorum ordo," when "al 1, hi,,I      shael be A'afheecd to,gether ice Chris,
t      ihigs ina Ieaven as well a(s tlitgs %1ypo  lhe   Earith."  Il  Galatians iv, 4.
it is "the fuliess of the time,"  0o9 X(9ovoU, in tlie singular, and the refer
frace is to tie lums.n birth, or fir-st coming of Chlrist.
101-5 
106  MIDDLE OF THE FOUPTH HISTORICAL DAY.
interesting in the thought of one part of the Scriptures
being thus made the channel of inspiration to another.
To a right thinking, the Bible becomes even more precious, the proof of its divine inspiration is strengthened,
by its being thus viewed as the channel of sacred ideas
that have lived in the minds not only of devout individuals but of ages. May we not rather believe that for so
high and catholic a purpose these ideas have actually
had their divine origin and nurture in the world?
But what, then, means the'" time, times and half a
time"? We answer, we know not. Prophecy in its explication has not been our study, except to note the many
failures of those who have attempted to reduce it to definite solar years. But though the application may be difficult, still the reference to the creative times, and to something in the history of our own olam corresponding to them,
seems more clear the more we meditate upon it. It may
be an intimation that the Prophet's vision looked half-way
down the stream of the wtorld's ages -that it brings us to
the middle of the fourth day in the world's historical hebdomad, when the coming of the Son of Man may be like
the manifestation of the heavenly lights in the fourth creative period. This interpretation, indeed, we would not
press. There is, however, a sublimity in such conceptions, a high moral value independent of all numerical
correctness.   One thing we are more and more drawn
to believe, that prophecy does not stand isolated, by itself,
measured by arbitrary numbers, but that the world's archieology and eschatology have a proportion, an analogy,
both of times and events, connecting the early day and
the latter day, the days of preparation, and the days of 
HIENGSTENBERG ON TIE APOCALYPSE.
consummation, in one grand dramatic unity of action and
idea.
A similar view, in one respect, is taken by Hengsten berg in his work on the Apocalypse. lie regards the
" time, times and a half time" as plainly connected with
the number seven, but yet as possessing no chronological
value. As the whole denotes fullness, completion, so the
broken number denotes a period incomplete, and comparatively brief. We can not wholly accede to this. Some
chronological import seems too clear, although the times
may not be measurable by our solar years. It is a true
chronology, but of the higher calendar. In other words,
it may be truly chronological, but not cosmical, that is,
not measured by present astronomical cycles, but by
higher moral periods, or, perhaps, the higher physical
periods that may belong both to our earth and the kosmos -periods having their cyclical law in themselves,
and, therefore, independent of outward standards.
Besides the number seven, there are a few others mentioned in the Bible that belong to the same class. The
chief of these are three and twelve. We need not dwell
on them. Whether the latter is connected with some
historical or archeological assumptions, or is supposed to
possess some significant arithmetical power, we shall not
attempt to determine.   Was  it mere  accident  that
brought out the twelve patriarchs, the twelve tribes of
Israel, the twvelve Apostles of the Christian Church, as
they are figured in the twelve gates of that New Jerusalem
which is the consummation, or fulfilment, of both these
standing prophetical types? It is worthy of remark, that
there is the same historical enigma presented by other
nations. The tt,,elve tribes are to be traced in the Athc
107 
THE DUODECIMAL DIVISION.
nian and in several others of the Grecian States. They
may be found in other ancient nations. There is some
evidence of there having been such a division among the
Etrurians. The Egyptians, too, held the number sacred.
Some are ready with the explanation - It came from the
signs of the zodiac.  But this only pushes the difficulty
of the question one stage farther back. Whence came
the signs of the zodiac, the twelve houses in the sky?
There is no fitness in connecting them with the moon
for although the number of lunar revolutions in a year is
a loose approximation to twelve, yet she passes through
the circle of the heavens every month, and, in respect to
such revolution, the duodecimal division is as arbitrary
as it is in respect to the sun. Both of them have phenomena presenting changes which may be brought into the
divisions 4, 8, 16, etc., but nothing to indicate the duodecimal. The division was accidental, or else dependent
on some fact now unknown, or some idea not now recognized.
Since we have gone so largely into this subject, a few
remarks may be allowed on what are commonly called
full or round numbers.   These come out of the decimal
notation, and owe their property of roundness to that fact,
which is, in itself, entirely arbitrary as to its origin,
though having this significance when established as the
basis of all practical enumeration. By arbitrary, we
mean, not drawn from any inherent property of numbers
but wholly from outward application. It has been suggested to every nation by the ten fingers of the hand as
the most ready and obvious means of counting. In itself
the ten has much less mathematical interest than the four,
the seven, or the nine; and this strikingly shows the ab
ios 
DECIMAL OR ROUND NUMBERS.
surdity of regarding the exact numerical extent of such
expressions, whether they are fancied to represent days
or years, or persons, as intended in the fulfilment of pro
phecy. Thus in the case of the 1,000 years, or the mil lenium, as it is commonly called, Mr. LORD is not only
chargeable with this fallacy, but he makes it worse by
mingling the two kinds of numbers together, in one arbitrary product.        Instead of treating it as one of the great
days  of th        e  w orld, having a vast and indefinite extent,
according to the sacred traditional chronology we have
already spoken of, he makes it in current years exactly
365 x 1000.  N         ow he  might just as well have maintained the precise number of the 144,000 who stand on
Mount Zion- a number made up of the round cubical
number 1,000, the cube of ten, and the square of the
mystical 12 the representative of both the national and
the spiritual Israel. He might just as well have maintained the cubical form of the New Jerusalem, as to have
regarded this cube of ten as representing that exact
number o          f         days, or years, or multiples of years, precisely
measured by the number of days in our year, accurately
or loosely estimated, with fractions taken into the estimate
o      r       left out.  C an we suppose that the exact extent of such
far distant times, and such unknown states of being, are
thus   dependent on an incidental method of computation
well   adapted, indeed, to the representative use to which we
may put it, but having no other than an arbitrary nume —
rical           association wit h the actual ages of fulfilment?  InL
other words, how strange the thought, that the absolute
arithmetic of this higher chronology should be bound up
in the precise literalness of these terms, when, as in Dan —
iel's "' ten thousand times ten thousand," and the Psalm
i0
109 
DANIEL'S SEVENTY WEEKS.
ist's " twice ten thousand chariots of God," the form of
the expression would strongly seem to have been adopted
for the very purpose of cautioning the reader against any
such definite conclusion.
Daniel's seventy weeks has an obvious solution with
out any arbitrary substitution of a year of 360 days for
one day. It is not 490 days, but 70 weeks, and the
week of years, or seven years, was a well-known measurement of the Jewish chronology. The institution of the
Sabbatical year made this hebdomad as natural and current a measure of actual time as the week of days, and
the Hebrew   _?, which simply means a seven  or hebdomnad, was as applicable to one period as the other.' It
was seventy times seven, and taken as actual weeks of
years would reach generally (though without an absolute
determinable precision) to the age of Christ, as it has
generally been taken in ancient as well as modern times,
There is, however, good reason for believing that like
* There was another still greater hebdomad consisting of seven times
seven, or forty-nine years, to which was added the fiftieth as a jubilee. It
is particularly set forth, Lev. xxv, 8: " And thou shalt number seven Sabbaths of years unto thee; seven times seven years, and the space of the sew
ven Sabbaths of years shall be unto thee.forty aezd nine years; and ye shall
hallow the fiftieth year; it shall be a jubilee unto you." What means this
widening, ascending series-sevenl days, seven years, seven sevens of
years? It had a connection with the Jewish earthly economy, we know;
but has it not also a higher sense? May we not soberly regard itas giving
us a hint of a higher chronology, with its greater Sabbaths and greater
jubilee? Even as the Apostle soberly interprets the " ark and the tabers
nacle" as significant of "things in the heavens"? In connection with suchl
a view it is easy and natural for us to believe that the thought entered into
the prophetical visions and lay at the foundation of their mystic numbers
It should be remarked, however, that if we regard the Prophet here as
setting forth a definite historical time, it would be five hundred years, iiistead of four hundred and ninety; since the great hebdomad with its jubilee
amount'ed tofftfy Sea} s, and there is no reason why it should nriot be reckl
oned ill what purports to be exact historical chronology.
110 
TWO MIODES OF INTERPRETING PROPHECY.   111
the other numbers of that majestic book of Daniel, it
passes over, in a higher sense, into the chronology of
the Christian si;v, and may reach to the second coming of Messiah and the New Jerusalem.  If there is any
ground for such a view, it might perhaps be found in the
mystical form of the number connecting it with the " time.
times and half a time."  It is the great seven, the square
of seven, and that multiplied by ten to denote roundness
of computation, as well as that mathematical symmetry
which is the symbol of chronological perfection regarded
mnore as residing in inherent cyclical self-measurement
than in any outward estimate we can make of current
years.
We may be darkening counsel by words without knowledge.  We would not press any such views, but we are
quite confident that some other mode in the study of prophecy must be adopted, differing from both those that
are now commonly employed.   One of these reckons by
literal solar days, carrying the periods of Daniel into
some obscure times which we have to dig out of the darkness of the Antiochean dynasties, and having little or no
moral or historical value, even could they be reduced to
any tolerable definiteness.  The other differs from this
simply by using a multiple of 360 or 365.  The great
practical argument against the latter as well as the first is,
that it gives us nothing definite after all.  No comments
tor who has tried the experiment has ever satisfied any
body but himself and a small clique of his own school.  So
endless have been the interpretations, so varied, and so
uitterly unreconcilable, so infallibly uttered too, (of which
infallibility Mir. LORD is not the least amusing specimen,)
that confidence in them must be seriously impaired. 
IRRECONCILABLE DIVERSITIES.
This fact alone would be sufficient to show, that there
had been some error here. Learned men, pious men,
most acute men, have labored to give current chronological significance to these numbers, but, Mr. LORD himself being judge, have  "utterly failed."  If we  may
believe him, the best of them have failed,-to use his
own very positive language so oft repeated,- they have
s' palpably" failed, their computations are " unquestion-ably wrong," their starting points are based on errone*)us historical views, or historical estimates, and therefore their conclusions are utterly unreliable. Whether
.his own views put forth with so much pretension  and
such a constant condemnation of others, are entitled to
any more credit, most readers will find no great difficulty
in judging.'  But we would not argue from failure alone.
No men are more apt to raise the cry of infidel than this class of conm-menitators on prophecy, and yet few things, we think, have contributed
more to bring the Scriptures into disrepute than some of these books.
Their distortions of history, their magnifying of obscure historical events,
in order to get the terminii that may agree wvithl their hypothesis, their
secularization of Christianity by connecting it with their own political no
tions founded on abstract ideas that the Bible does not recognize, their
consequent exaggeration of events near their own times, but which,, in
themselves, or as they will appear when seen from afar, have really little
or no historical value-as Mr. LORD, for example, in his politico-theology,
so extravagantly overrates the mere mobism which a few years ago dis
turbed some of the capitals in Europe, and has already in the brief space
of nine years subsided into insignificance-all these things have tended
not only to weaken confidence, but to lead men to overlook the moral sublime of whichi these mysterious prophetic books are so full when contemnplated with a different aim, and from a different stand point.  Similar remarks are applicable to Mr. LORD's scientific allies, when they too, in their
exuberant piety, attempt to raise the novel cry of infidelity.  In the prornoting-of the real Bible-hatiog infidelity, next to blundering interpretations
of prophecy, may be reckoned some of our scientific defences of the Scriptutres.  The amount of terror they have for the real infidel might be easily
tested. In this very controversy, on which side, so far as they have manriifested an interest in'it, are the " free thinkers" of our land! Their sympa
112 
SUPERHUMAN MAJESTY OF THE APOCALYPSE. 113
It would be unfair for the Scriptures, and the cause of
interpretation generally. It is in the Bible itself we
find a warrant, we think a clear warrant, for saying, that
at is not for man to know, and it was not intended for
man to know, the times and seasons.  Such is the express language of the highest authority; and aside from
this, the very form in which the predictions of the Apocalypse are given, show that, although it is a true Apocalypse, or un-veiling, as to great outline events not yet
well understood in the ecclesiastical or spiritual history
of the Church, it is truly a veiling as to the dates or
times at which, and during which, they are to occur.
And this, instead of diminishing the moral and spiritual value of the Apoc,alypse, does in fact greatly add to
it. No book bears more unmistakably the impress of the
divine  majesty-that  "' beaming  and burning glory"
which the old divines, to whom we alluded in our introduction, regarded as the true internal evidence of the
Scripture.  We do not want to know the exact duration
denoted by its mysterious numerals, to be impressed and
awed by it. Indeed, few things tend more to take away
this effect than the frigid calculations to which we refer,
and the endless controversies as to dates in history in
which they respectively commence and end. It is like
applying the statistics of a town and county census to
the 144,000 from the twelve tribes of Israel, whom the
Prophet saw standing on Mount Zion. It is, besides,
taking our own estimate of the value of historical events
(according to our poor political philosophy) for the
thies and affinities, in such cases, furnish a better test than argument; and
when these show themselves on the side of the New-Haven Professor,
't gives us the precisely measured probability of their being converted
by his A Harmony of Science and the Bible."
10o* 
114  DIVINE AND HUMAN ESTIMATE OF HISTORY,
divine estimate which may be something very different.
It may be that in the Heavenly economy, as studied by
the Heavenly Intelligences, or even as viewed from that
stand point to which the unwordly or spiritual mind may
attain in the loving study of the Scriptures, there is not
attached that same imnportance to Turks and Tartars, and
French Revolutions, and American Revolutions, which
they possess in our eyes. Democracy may be no more
the object of Heaven's care than monarchy.   It may be
that both are alike among the idols to be demolished,
and the " plants to be rooted up," before the coming of
the Son of Man. It may be that our American experiment is for a warning example rather than an encouraging lesson to the ages to come. Nothing but deep initiation into the spirit of the Bible can enable one to form
the faintest idea as to what historical events, in this dark
world of ours, belong most prominently to the divine
plan, or have most relation to the higher chronology of
the higher kingdom of the eternities. But this we can
not help feeling, that in many of the common historic
interpretations, so called, the glory of the Apocalypse is
dimmed; its sublimity sinks; there is a weakening of
that deep impression of the mighty warfare God is wagiug against the powers of evil, and the enemies of his
Church. Such is the effect that is felt in reading some of
these arbitrary yet pretentious interpretations; whilst, on
the other hand, nothing is gained on the score of historic
certainty. No estimate of exact times and seasons compensates for the moral and emotional loss that is suffered,
when for the grand, the indefinite, the superhuman, so impressive in outline, though incapable of being interpreted
mi detail, we substitute the poverty of earthly calculations 
CREATION LIKE PROPHECY INDEFINITE.
so little available for any moral purpose, even if not rendered altogether worthless by their endless variety and
endless irreconcilability of interpretation.
And so of creation. Whether we measure by exact
hours, the twenty-fourth parts of the present terrestrial
revolution, or by strata and layers of fossils which wo
attempt to guage by space deposits and the supposed
ratio of their feet and inches to supposed multiples of
years-the effect is very much the same. We get nothing exact, nothing reliable, after all; but the grand
impression is weakened, and, when pushed to the extent
to which some would carry it out, on both sides, utterly
lost. Leave it, as we reverently think Moses has left it,
indefinite, unmeasured by any historical time-calendars,
and we have upon the mind an effect worthy of its ineffable glory of thought, its inimitable simplicity and grandeur of expression.
But there is in prophecy (meaning by this all in the
Bible that looks to the future) another use of the word
day quite different from that of the mystic numbers, and
more immediately connected with the view we have taken
of the same word in the creative account. It is the distinct application of the term to some great epoch in the
latter history of the world, or, it may be, to more than
one. According to the definition given, there is no propriety in calling it metaphorical.   " The Day of Judgment," "the Last Day," "the Day of the Lord," or of
the Lord's coming, the "Day of the aeon,"  or the
aeonic day, the rsJgta a'vo.;, 2 Pet., iii, 18,- these
are not metaphors, that is, a psragog&, a change for rhotorical purposes, or a substitution of one word for some
116
I 
116     EPOCHAL SENSE OF THE WORD DAY.,
other well known term that might more literally, and
with more objective truth, have conveyed the required
idea. There is no such metaphor here; for there is no
such other term adapted to these great epochs, and whose
place day may be supposed to take merely for such rhetorical or emotional effect. We would rank it in the
same class with the creative days, only that the cyclical
or periodical idea does not so distinctly appear. The
revelations respecting this great time, or these great
times, are not so orderly, the mornings and the evenings
are not so marked. And yet, in other respects, they
present the same features suggesting the same higher
chronology. Hence we may style them the epochal,
and call this the epochal sense of the word day. The
first three expressions we have already alluded to, and
would not, therefore, further dwell upon them in this outline view. The fourth, or the one quoted from 2 Peter,
iii, 18, has some striking aspects. Its peculiar force of
terminology is concealed in our translation, where it is
simply rendered forever-a term which etymologically
resembles it (that is when carried back to its kindred,
the Latin ovum, and Greek aiov,) but in the change of
thinking has lost its ancient features. The Greek phrase,
as it stands, has the epochal idea, - that is, of a great
time by itself in the chronology of the universe. It is
the "dies eternitatis" of the Vulgate, the " day of euerlastingnes" of the old Wickliffe version, and the "'day
of eternitie" of the Rheims.   It may also be fairly re
garded as the New Testament version of the t=ms ace of
the older Scriptures. In the Old English, as in the New
Testament Hebraistic Greek, the noun has the force of
an adjective.  The  tgx  a;cvo;, the day of eternity, is 
THE ETERNAL DAY OF 2 PETER, IiI, 18.   117
the eternal day, the aeonic day, denoting extent, and
boundless extent, yet still, in a high and perhaps truer
sense, quality rather than quantity, or the character of
the day as belongingi to the great aeonic chronology,
whether it is to be regarded as a single u;Pv in itself, or
an aslv ~;V a,~;vwv, an aeon measured by aeons as lesser
ages are measured by centuries and years.  In any way:
how different, as thus appearing, from that blank conception we connect with those withered words of ours that
can only regain their life and clear impression by being
carried back to be stamped anew in the ancient mint.
Wickliffe's version here, though made from the Vulgate,
is better than our own, and that by reason of its expressive literalness-" the day of euerlastinynes."  By retaining the word day, it keeps up the epochal idea, and
suggests, if we choose to take it, the qualifying or adjective sense of the noun that is in the Greek and Latin.'
\Ve should have had all these ideas much more vivid in our minds,
had ourt collmmon version followved in thlis and similar places the VWicklliffian simplicity of expression.  That other old idea, too, of time-words used
for the very worlds themselves, so that it may be taken either way, and
with an iincrease of sublimity attending either conception, is brought out
in this pure Saxon English with all the force and clearness of the Greek,
'I'lihe reader niay see this in all those places where WVickliffe's translation,
f)llowilng the Latin, has world or weorldis for c.}ov and crtiveg, whilst the
colmmon version has the general epithets etes,eal and ccerlastin.o.  As in
Gal. i, 5 —" To whomi is worschip and glorie into wiorldis of worldis (a;ovag,,v oj,;vw,v)-Eph. ii, 7, "In the worldis abote  co?iing"-Col. i, 26,
"Hidden /'o woeldzs."  So also the Rheims.  The other English versions
have the singular, "before the world began," notwithstanding the Greek
plural, and the Hebrew plural from which the miode of expression is derived.  Thie translators did not recognize thie idea of time-worlds, and so took
those plurals collectively.  We have other examples-1 Pet. in, 11, " Glorie and lordschip unto the worldis of worldis"-Rev. iv, 9, "1 That lyueth
into worldis of wooldis."  The same Rev. xv, 7, xxii, 5-" They shall reign
foarever, orforever more," say the other versions.  The Wickliffe has it 
TIHE OLD WICKLIFFE VERSION.
But the word day is consistent with its absolute unend
ing everlastingness. And so we are prepared to view
it in this passage of Peter. Not only is it applied in the
Scriptures to the great olams that divide the chronology
of the created universe in its cosmical ongoings, but to
the whole that preceded, and to the whole that may be
thought as coming after. Thus we may reverently think
of three great days, or greatest days, which may be
described as the ante-time state, the kosmos that now is,
and the    fa a'tsvo or all that succeeds this world or
the worlds that now are. Taken all together, they would
be the " yesterday, to-day, and forever," of the Divine
,,And thei schulen regne into worldis of worldis."  But perhaps there is
no passage in which this Old English version is more strikiniig, or more inl
structive, than in its rendering of 1 Tim. i, 17 —" Now unto the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever.'
This has, indeed, a grand sound, though having only the general imageless
adjective; but it is not equal, either for truth or effect, to the old Version
that follows so closely the Latin and the Greek-" Now unto the Kynge
oqf worldis, undeedli and vnuysible, God aloonle, be onoure and glorie into
w'orldis of worldis, Amen."  It is the counterpart of Ps. cxlv, 13-"- Thy
kingdom is a kingdom of all weoldi.s."  This kind of language is the source
of the grand expression in the Episcopal Prayer Book, "world without end."
Surely it is lnot too much to say, that if the form and spirit of these early
translations had been preserved, (and certainly they are nearest to tihe
original,) the mind of the common reader would have had something far
more true, as well as far more vivid, than the blank conceptions that are
given by the current terms. One style of language gives us one world
with a waste continuity, undivided and undivisible, before and after it.
The other fills them up with worlds and worlds of worlds stretching on in
either direction as far as the mind can go towards the boundless comlple
meret of the Divine Kingdom.  We  surpass the readers of these old Versions, and of these old originals, in our space conceptions; but how far
we are behind them in those of time, is shown by the change of language
and the disuse of the old vivid forms. We may seek to compensate for
this by rows of decimals, and frigid conceits of solar systems turned into
sand-glasses to measure eternity, but it is all a blank as compared with
those mighty pluralities, the aeons and olams, and worldis of woridis of tlhe
earlier mind.
118, 
DAY OF THE ETERNAL GENERATION.
Existence.  There would seem, then, good reason for
ranking this expression (2 Pet. iii, 18,) in the same class
with that in Psalm ii,7- the ancient day of the "Eternal
Generation," and the day Isaiah xliii, 13, where it is
said " Before the day I am He," that is, before the whole
cosmical manifestation.  We might regard these as belonging to a still higher chronology than the days of creation and the days of prophecy, but any attempt to name
them would be only a repetition of the same language,
and a reduplication of the same inadequate conception.
We may be content with the idea as sound and Scriptural, where the conceiving faculty utterly fails to present
it to the sense or the imagination. There was an antepast eternity, before time began, "or ever the earth or the
world was." Of its mode of being we can know little or
nothing; of the fact we may reverently inquire if we
guide our thoughts, and our imaginations, by that only
light, the interpretation of Scripture soberly conducted,
but with an aim bearing some proportion to the acknow
ledged divinity and consequent grandeur of the Book.
119 
120     KEDIIEM  OR THE ANTE-TIME STATE
CHAPTER IV.
Kedhem or the Ante-time State-Psalm LV, 19, "iHe that inha..
biteth Kedhemn"-Sadducean Interpreters-Psalm LXVIII,
The Heaven of Henvens of Old"-Spiritual in Distinc  tionfroom a Cabalistical Sense-Space Sense —iVessianic
Character of the Psalm- Whiere is Kedhem?- The iRa  tionalist- The Twenty-four Hour Interpreter- The Time  less State- The Question of the Eternity of Matter- The
Absurdity involved in the very Inquiry.
BUT what do we mean by an ante-past eternity, or antetime state, as with good Scriptural authority it may be
named?  This may be called a purely speculative ques
tion. It is, however, one of exceeding interest; and,
therefore, we would beg the reader's indulgence if we
devote a chapter to its consideration- most scanty and
inadequate though it be. We can not help feeling that
there are allusions to it in the Scriptures, although in all
such cases he who seeks nothing higher may find plausible ground for being content with a lower sense. Of such
ante-past eternity there seems to the writer a vivid recognition, Psalm lv, 19, rendered in our Version "R e
that abideth of old." The Sadducean interpreter may
take it of some old historical time upon the earth, some
forefathers' day of the Jewish genealogies, and should he
be determined to adhere to it, it would not be easy to
refute him, or drive him out of it. It certainly may 
" HE THAT INHABITETH KEDHEM." 
have that sense if a man chooses to see nothing higher,
but to others in another state of mind the Hebrew suggests
a thought sublime beyond all expressioni.  It is:~t- =t,,
"He that inhabiteth Kedhem;" with which we may
compare Isaiah lvii, 15-"- He that inhabiteth eternity."
Kedhem denotes the most ancient state of anything, or
rather that which was before the most ancient state of
anything. It would mean etymologically the antiquity,
not in the sense of the oldest part, but rather as the anterior
or the before state. Compare Prov. viii, 22, 23, where it
may be rendered "the antiquity before the world was." So
here-"Who inhabiteth the antiquity,"-the ante-mundane
state-  the day before the world was.  Compare  also
=,. as spoken of the Logos, Mich. v, 1,-" Whose outgoings are from Kedhem,"-eyressus ejus ab inztio, a
diebus eternitatis. There is something very striking in
the whole expression, especially in the other word:.t.,
as applied to God-" who sittetlh kedhem." It sounds
very strange, and the interpretation may be condemned
as strangely literal; but may we not soberly look for.
" wondrous things," when such a term, and in such a
connection, is applied to Deity?' May it not intimate to
us that ineffable divine repose, that transcending quietude,
that preceded all worlds, when God sat alone, dwelt alone,.
in the ineffable glory of his triune existence. It may be
said there is something anthropopathic in such conception of the word; but what can we do? In what other
* The thought comes out far more vividly in the old versions.  The LXX,
a,rjXwv'gop  r.v a' vJ(v,V-" lVho subsisted  before the ages, or tbe
orl97ds, if we take the New Testament sense which we may certainly give
to the word in the Septuagint. Vulgate-Qui est ante smcula.  The Sy.
riac is clearest of them all-," who was before the world, " —azy:t, —
andc there can be no doubt of the sense il which it employ- the terim, i
elsewhere, for the world idea.
11
121 
122     THE RATIOINALIST'S INTERPRETATION.
mode is the conception, or the idea, to have a place in
our minds? The conception may be anthropopathic,
yea, must be anthropopathic, and yet the idea the conception represents may be one that transcends all philo-,
sophy.
There was certainly an ante-mundane state, whether
near or remote; for such terms are merely comparative.
Their power of affecting the mind, or producing religious
emotion, depends on other associations. But where was
Kedhem? It is a question we may reverently ask.
Certain commentators who call themselves sober or rational, and who neither seek nor find anything profound
in the Scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, would
carry the word back, perhaps, to the period before the
Saul dynasty, or, it may be, to some such respectable
antiquity as the days of Nahshon the Prince of Judah,
the grandfather of Boaz, who was the great-grandfather
of David- about as far as from the present generation to
the days of the Pilgrim Fathers. This to their minds
satisfies the language, " e who abideth of old," or " He
who inhabiteth Kedhem." It does pretty well; and is
a tolerably fair sense, we say, for those who choose to
take it. But we would desire to bear in mind that it is
the Book of the Eternal God we are reading, and we
would remember the reproof Christ gave the Sadducees
for their narrow yet plausible interpretation, when they
found nothing but matter in the Old Testament, and spiritual nonentity, and a few fleeting generations of miserable creatures who had not even a dream of anything
beyond the dissolution of the body, and yet were arrogant enough to claim the undying One as their God and
the God of their fathers who had long since gone down 
" THE HIIEAVEN OF IIEAVENS OF OLD."
to Sheol.  "Thou art our dwelling place in all genera tions." This, as the Sadducees maintained, was said by
men, and of men, who had long since "' been laid like
sheep in the grave," where "their beauty," their mortal
forms, the only real beauty that ever belonged to them,
"had been consuming" in their eternal "dwelling place"
of mortality. So the Sadducees held, and they had some
respectable grounds for their Sadducean doctrine; but,
Christ himself being witness, they were neither sound
nor profound interpreters. There were those in the
Psalmist's day who believed in the  z''g  Avo;, the
" day of euerlastizgnes," and such minds could readily
admit the thought of a kedhem or pre-existent state be.fore the day when the world was.
There is another similar passage, Psalm lxviii, 34,=ntIII.'of    AE-   To Him who rideth on the Heavens of reavens of old-the Heavens of Heavens of Kedhem." Here, too, may the word present its radical idea
of antiquity, or a time or state before, and yet in perfect
consistency with a gradation of senses (according to the
taste or reverence, or views of inspiration, or spiritual
mindedness in the interpreter,) until we ascend to that
highest and oldest to which the hyperbole or upmounting form of the expression would seem to carry us.  It
may thus be taken for the old skies on which God rode,
or, as the word may be rendered, sat throned, on the desert! It may refer to the Heaven of storms which he
gathered around the awful peak of Sinai. Either of
these is a good sense, a most important sense. It may
be taken-preserving, too, the same old radical conception of antiquity, or the ante-state- for an old heavens
before the Mosaic heavens, and belonging to the times
123 
124     THiE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURE.
before the earth was; or it may signify for us that most
ancient state before there were any mundane heavens,
atmospherical, stellar, or nebular, if we may use  these
terms by way of accommodation.   Or if we give the
conception another form, (yet preserving its essence) it
may suggest to us degrees of heavens in what we have
elsewhere called the altitudinal, or degree aspect, in distinction from that of space and time.  It may carry us
throu,gh all these heavens until we come to that oldest
t,imeless state, and that ineffable height which we have
Regarded as ultimately set forth in language like this.
A man, we say, may take the lower, but why may he
'lot also take the higher sense, if it comes fairly out of
the ever widening conception, and if it be really the case
-that this book, we are venturing to interpret, is truly a
book of God's thoughts, as high above our thoughts as
,the heavens are high above the earth.
Such a higher or spiritual sense, is the one taken by
A spiritual mind building on the old fundamental concep-tion. We may freely call it the spiritual sense of Scrip'ture, without fear of its involving us in any cabalistical
fancies'; for it is the great difference between it and any
,,eabalistical or Swedenborgian spiritual sense, that the
-atter has no such fundamental conception capable of be'ing fixed by philology, but in the foundation as in the
superstructure is wholly arbitrary, built on a supposed
second lexical revelation, or " dictionary of correspon dlences," to which it is not even pretended that the
rules of philology have any theoretical or practical appli cation.  This cabalistical or fancied spiritual sense, too,
is ever dry; it has no more warmth than light;it has
as little to do with feeling as with the intellect; whereas 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURE.
the other is the rational expansion of the " spiritual
mnind," under the influence of pious emotion which we
may regard as giving breath to the thought, whilst the
understanding remains ever anchored on that ground
idea which is the same for all.  It is the same, in this
respect, with the Old Testament as with the New.   Be ing  7   z,rv.,;uVlrog, "inspired Scripture," it must be
capable of the same expansion from lower to higher do grees of the same fundamental thought.  There  are
those who contend earnestly and ably for it, as a true
part of the sacred canon, and yet somehow adopt a view
which renders the position in a measure worthless, even
after such great pains to establish it.  The course taken
by the "liberal" commentator is certainly more logical,
if not so pious.  If it is God's inspiration it must be every
where full of life  "the Divine breath," to use the words
of M. Guizot, " must  everywhere animate" it.  The
thoughtful reader must especially feel this when he
fixes his mind on the sublime terms of which we now are
treating,.  But there are others every where that expand
themselves, and legitimately expand themselves, in the
same ever widening, ever ascending manner.   Take, for
example, such words as life, salvation, righteousnes~.
It may be the life of the body when the Psalmist says,
' Thy favor is life," but what prevents its being taken
for the life of the soul? " Thou wilt show me the path
of life." It may mean here deliverance from temporal
death; the rationalist has good grounds for such an interpretation, but how much higher ground has the spiritual
mnind for interpreting it of the /ife of the spirit in this
world, or for the life of the spirit as the spirit is the life
,f the body-and even for carrying it out to the eternal
11*
1,25 
ASCENDING SENSES.
life in the olamic kingdom of God.   Salvation may mean,
— it does mean,- temporal deliverance, but what shall
forbid its being understood in a true, yea a truer sense,
of soul health, the true C'WT7-I, even here, and the everlasting salvation both from Satan and from sin, from condemnation and from depravity, when Christ shall have
put all enemies under his feet. Right or righteousness
may be the vindication of a temporal justice, and so it
may be, and truly is, a pardon, nay, more, an absolute
robe of riyhteousness which shall fit one to appear in the
very heaven of heavens. All these senses flow out of
the words, and to the mind that can receive them are as
real in themselves, and as truly the meaniny, as any
lower significance that may be discovered by the dry light
either of mysticism or neology. Those who choose may
feed on the husks and throw away the fruit; for the lower
senses are really there, and the mind that is satisfied
with them may rest in them without seeking anything
higher or more free.*
* In close connection with tlhis there is, in the next verse, another ex-ression that invites commcnt,-"Ascribe ye power unto God whtose glory
;is upon Israel, and his strength in the skies."  The word ts.  is ren.
dered in our version the clouds; but it is more usually a word for the vis.ible or space " heavens."  The primary sense of the root is to make thin,
attenuate, and hence to expand.  IIence it is applied to the ethlier, or the
substance that was regarded as filling all space, and which, on the sanme
,tymological ground, is called by Aristotle o   XE,r' ~iSgg5 xxa' qXo[/   g
u~'a.  Thus etymologically regarded, it would be equivalent to the clas4iceal expression in sum?nto ot(herc, or the frequent Homeric phrase u;i!gi
wal[v.  The word is also used for dust (Isaiah xl, 15,) from the radical
leuse ofattenuation,fineiwss or rarity' and hence, as some think, is applied
to the clouds, either from their rarity, or from the fancied resemblanco
which the dark nimbus, or thunder-cloud, may be supposed to bear to
a rolling bank of dust.  As in that sublime passage, Nahum i, 3,-i" His
~way is in the whirlwind and the tempest, aned the cloude are the duot
126 
SPACE-SENSE OF KEDHEM.
The word Kedhem, it must not be overlooked, has a
space as well as a time sense; but the former would
seem to come naturally from the latter. It means the
East, the ould countrie, the fatherland, where dwelt
" the men of yore," the men who were before us. So
afterwards Phoenicia was Kedhem to Greece, and hence
they said Kacldmus, or the Eastern man, brought to them
the letters of the alphabet.  Thus it never loses its time
idea of beforeness, if we may use such a term, or die
vtorzeit.  Both the LXX and Syriac versions have adopted this space sense in the passage.  They render' Who ascendeth upon the heaven of heavens from the
East," so as to correspond to the translation of v. 5,
where, instead of our rendering, " who rideth on the
heavens," or the more correct translation, "who rideth
on the desert," they have, " who ascendeth on the West."
But the LXX and Syriac version of v. 33 will not suit
the accompanying expression "heaven of heavens," which
must evidently refer to degree either of altitude or time.
Should any feel a misgiving at such an expansion of
these phrases, let it be borne in mind that this Psalm is
distinctly quoted by the Apostle, Eph. iv, 10, as one of
the Messianic prophecies, and, therefore, there must be a
higher and holier sense to it. Let "' rationalism," with all
its learning, go to the winds; we must hold to this, or give
of His feet"-although in this place a different word is used.  In its primary
sense, as well as in its applications, it resembles very much an Arabic
word habaoe, signifying atoms, or the'fine particles of dust that float in the
air, and of which kind of "star dust" the Mohammedan Doctors say God
made the world.  The Hebrew term arrests our attention here, because
it seems to give us the space aspect of God's power, or kingdom, in dis.
tinction from the time and height aspect.  So Gesenius on this word-Designat celum ab expanrione ut'        spatia ata.
127 
TI1E MESSIANIC PSALMS.
up the whole Scriptures; and the more a man heartily
studies them, the more he will see that such a holding is
not a mere blind faith of necessity, but one which com mands (not asks in aid) the firmest assent of all that is
highest in his spiritual perceptions. But "1 rationalism"
is more consistent than that Biblical criticism among.us
which so bravely proves certain Psalms to be Messianic,
and then is perfectly content with such a barren worlk,
making no use of the position after all, seeing no more in
the Scripture, sometimes even less, than the rationalist
himself, and perhaps (after having thus saved its evan gelical credit) showing its learning and its hardihood by
going to an extreme of frigidity of which the more spiritnal German mind would be ashamed.
This sixty-eighth Psalm describes a triumlnphant procession of the theocratic Israel, and a transfer of the ark
into its HIoly Place. But it also has reference to a higher
Israel, and a mightier Conqueror, who has entered into
the highest and holiest Heavens.   " Wherefore he saith,
He hath led captivity captive, Htie hath ascendeth up on
high, far above all heavens, that he might fill all things."
Why should we be simply content with acknowledging
the Psalm to be Messianic, and yet give it no proportionate width and height of interpretation. Let us for a
moment see what is involved in the position. If it be a
Messianic Psalm, then it refers to the llgwfo-ox&o, the
same who is said, Psalm cx, to have been "before the
birth of the morning," who is called by Paul the AoatTa~/a, or First Out-beaming,- that manifestation of the
Divine which preceded all physical creation.  "Who is
it that descended but He who ascended up above all
heavens," to that timeless "glory which He had wlth the
128 
VIEW O0  VEELEMA.
Father before the world was." Our argument is very
simple and very brief.  If the Psalm refers at all to
this higher Conqueror, and this higher victory, then may
the time words applied to him swell out to their higher,
yea, their highest dimensions. If, however, the neolo gist is content with the lower meaning, no objection need
be taken to his philology.
The authority of the Apostle is sufficient for styling
this LXViIIth Psalm Messianic; but the thoughtful reader
mnust see, on the very literal face of it, the evidence of
the greater triumph and the higher heavens. Ever
as the triumphal song advances there is a rapturous
swell, an uplifting higher and higher, until it becomes
a gloria in excelsis, a talleluiah bamromim, a Hosanna
in the highest. How it continually ascends from the
lower to the upper spheres! He who rode on the skies
of the desert, who came down on Mount Sinai with
twice ten thousand angels, who ascended into the heavens leading captivity captive -He it is who  ascended
far above all visible, all conceivable worlds, and sitteth
throned in the Heaven of Heavens of old.*
'Similar to this is the view of Venema, the soberest of
that sober race of Dutch commentators. We always
feel strong in quoting this profoundly learned writer.
In all that is substantial in Oriental scholarship he was
*The sense of riding given to the verb A, is, in fact, a noun sense,
from the noun signifying chariot, as this is feom the older architectural
sense of the root we find in the Syriac and Arabic. The primary idea is
that ofputting one tling upon another, so as to hold it in its place-inzpo,*nens-superimnponens. Hence, in the Syriac version of the New Testamnent, it is applied to the compact joining of the spiritual temple, Eph. ii,20,
(Col. ii, 19. According to this view, the imagery would represent God as
lhroned upon the Heaven of Heavens of Kedhem, thus giving the idea of
permarnence and stability, rather than motion.
12.9 
1,0 EMOTIONAL AND MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTION.
the equal of the modern Germans, while he was far beyond them in what may be called Biblical unction, or
the power of discerning profound ideas in the Scriptures.
In commenting on this remarkable expression, he says:
Had it been the heaven of old, in the singular, it might
have been referred to the heaven of the Mosaic creation,
or to Sinai and Zion, those terre sublimioria which were
to the Jews as Olympus to the Greeks; but as it stands,
in the plural, it must have the older and all transcending sense -" Quia ipse nunc in supremo ccelo, non sicut
antea in coelo inferiore et supra terram in loco sublimi
residet, sid in celis coelorum antiquorum." And again,
-"  Sed nunc Deus adpactus dicitur in celo coelorum
ante-rioritatis:  adeoque supra eelos illos residens, in
loco sublimissimo, purissimo, et summoe glorie ac tranquillitatis, in sede qum respectu ccelorum inferiorum est
et ipsa et dici potest celum.   Plane quemadmodum
Eph. iv, 10, Christus legitur adscendisse supra omnes
eoelos: et Heb.,ii, 26, sublimior cetlisfactus, et iv, 14,
pertransiisse coelos.
There is something inexpressibly sublime in this
thought of Heavens rising in ever mounting stories one
above the other. We have said, that while the time
conceptions of the ancient mind surpassed those of the
modern, its space conceptions fell short. But the latter
remark needs qualification. We may distinguish two
kinds of space conception, the emotional, and the mathematical. Of the first kind, are the ideas and images of
the Scriptures; to the latter belong the numerical esti mates of modern science. In Psalm cxiii, 5, God is re presented as having his throne so high that he looketh
down upon the Heavens themselves as into a depth im 
ASTRONOMY DOES NOT MAKE MEN PIOUS.  131
mensely below. High as are our visible heavens, there
is a loftier dome as far above them as they are above the
earth, and so on, Heaven above Heaven, as far as the
imagination can mount. But what is all this, some may
say, to the calculations of modern science? What are
these conceptions of apparently vaulted domes thus rising
above each other, to the distances reached by the calcu lations of Herschell and Leverrier? We can not give
the mathematical ratio; but if we may judge of the
real magnitude of the conception by its emotional power,
the latter bears no comparison to the former. We rest
the opinion, too, on the most undeniable facts. The
scientific estimate has ever been cold, emotionless, pro ductive of the feeblest religious influence. Pious men pious from other causes -have endeavored sometimes to
extract from them their pious uses; but some of the
greatest names connected with such mere numerical cal culations have belonged to men who have manifested but
little fear of God, but little reverence even for the true
greatness of the universe. The fact, we say, is undeniable.
Let the psychologist, or the historian of philosophy, account
for it as he may. Sines, cosines, tangents, and logarithms, ever so powerfully applied to the cosmical distances, will not make men religious, they will not keep them
such. Neither has the telescope any more converting
power. Atheists, or what is not much better, mere scientific theists, have looked through it and remained atheists and scientific theists still.  But what good, it may
be said, can come out of fiction? One of these may be
called a false conception which science has exploded.
.True-but this image, though false, still represents the
most truthful of ideas. It is that of the ever ascending 
132   " THE KNOWLEDGE THAT PUFFETHI UP."
glory of God, of which time worlds and space worlds are
both- but the visible or conceptual manifestations. The
scientific estimate, on the other hand-as one of them
of highest note has impiously said-"represents the
glory of the astronomer." The heavens are his- diagram,
the stars his figured points.  It is most frequently "a
knowledge that puffeth up," instead of making men devout, and hence in proportion to its scientific accuracy,
is oftentimes the enormity of its spiritual falsehood.
Here we find the explanation of the fact so strange, yet
so susceptible of proof, that men who thought the skies
came down upon the mountain top, have had thoughts of
God so much greater than were ever generated in the
proceedings of academies or the discoveries of science.
David and Pythagoras have, in this way, had a higher
conception of the cosmos and of the divine glory in it,
than men who have calculated eclipses, made tables of
the planets's motions, or spent their lives in astronomical observatories.*
The force and majesty of such sublime Bible images are at once im.
paired, whenever we attempt to give them a scientific interpretation, or
connect them with any scientific notions. The thought is fettered, compromised, restrained to a view which after-science may show to be inadequate, and kept within a sphere where the petty scientific interest is predominant at the expense of the higher and the emotional. We may cite,
as a striking example of this effect, Mr. LoRD'S interpretation of Rev. xx,
11,-" And I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat thereon, from
whose face the earth and the heavens fled awsay, and no place wasfound for
thenm." There is a sublime here that nothing, even in Scripture, surpasses.
Creation would hide from the Holy Presence, but finds no pla(ce where it is
not.  Who can add to this? Who can make it more clear by any scientific
filling up-who can increase its effect by any rhetorical or henneneutical
illustration? The right-minded reader must feel that all science here is out
of place, and most especially a science which must have been unknown to
the writer. Whatever may be its pretensions, it is too small a thing, (to
say nothing of its imperfection and inadequacy,) to be allowed any weig,ht, 
WHERE WAS KEDIIEM?
We are dwelling too long on the spatial view. It is
the time aspect of these cosmical phrases with which we
are chiefly here concerned, and especially the fair meaning, of tile term so expressive of the most remote antiquity.  But where, then, was Kedhem, the oldest Kedhem? In what earliest principium of time, or rather, if
we follow out the thought, in what unknown, inconceivable, yet faith-apprehended state of being, of which we
are compelled to think as of something that was ere time
began or any of those finite acts and finite thoughts of
finite beings, by whose successions alone either time or
chronology can be conceived of as having any existence 7
We have alluded to the rationalist's idea of Kedhem.
Mr. LOID would go a little beyond  this.  He  would
carry it back to a date about three thousand years before
the Psalmist, and nearly six thousand years, perhaps,
from our own time.   here he finds not only a young
and any place, in the awful picture. The splendor of its sublimity pales at
once when we begin to talk of orbits, and aphelia, and the statistics of the
solar system.  But let us hear Mlr. LORD'S interpretation.  "The flight of
the earth from the presence of the Judge, indicates that the scene of the
judgment was at a distance from its orbit.  In other visions it had been
exhibited as stationary in order that the symbolic agents might exert their
agency in the Apostle's sight.  But no such reason remained for its con
tinued presence, and itsflight accordingly, and that of the planets, was that
doubtless, of their real motion around their orbits.  FiTat no place was
found for them, simnply denotes, therefore, that they continued in motion."
Think, for a moment, of the language thus interpreted-F,rom vhosejace the
eartli and the heavens fied away. This means the planetary motions in their
orbits.  AIad there was found no place for them-This means that "they
continued in motion."  Such is the interpretation he would give of the
Greek euy76-they kept moving on, in exact obedience to -the laws of centrifuigal and centripetal forces! WVe would indulge in no disparaging remarks on Mr. LORD'3 scientific view of this remarkable passage.  It issufficient to present it to the consideration of any-thoughltful reader who
oan feel the inexpressible sublimity of the Scriptures.
12
133 
134 SIX THOUSAND YEARS AND SIX THOUSAND DAYS.
Tellus but a young IKosmos new created, or rather, just
brought from absolute nonentity. To this six thousand
years, or thereabouts, add six solar days, of twenty-four
hours each, and all is gone; earth, sun and stars are not,
in any sense -not even an idea of them, or law, or force
from which they might arise, or any " unseen things"
from which they might be created. Matter has yet no
being, the hyle or mother of matter is not yet born, or.
if we may not allude to such a dangerous " Platonic conceit," there is not even an embryo existence of the
"highest (or most elemental) part of the dust of trhe
woild."  Even the light has not yet had its birth.  It
has not yet, in any part of the universe, commenced that
long journey of which the books tell us, as requiring millions of years to reach our own planet. There is no light
anywhere; for there is no outward divine glory to be revealed, and no kosmos to reveal it to..  This "robe of
Deity" is still unwoven, and God has not yet began to
"dwell in light inapproachable and full of glory." Angels
and Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities and
Powers, yea, all the celestial hosts are yet nonentities;
for all this results if such be the true date of the begin —
ning mentioned by Moses, and that beginning is the great
principium, with nothing before it but the very being of
the D-ivine or uncreated essence. On such a view of
dates, we must look for the evidence of such prior exist ences alone in Milton; we search in vain for it in the
Scriptures.
Such an estimate of times may be perfectly consistent
with piety. It may be perfectly consistent with sublime
views of Deity. We find no fault with it on that account. 
TIIE IDEA NOT ABSURD, BUT UNSCRIPTURAL. 135
As well six thousand years ago, as six million ages.
Since the world, regarded as all that is not God, must
Slave had a beginning, an absolute beginning, a precise
beginning of a beginning, then it would be, at a certain
date after that absolute beginning, just six thousand years
and six days old, and why may not that be our own terrestrial date? No reason to the contrary could be
given if the Bible had clearly revealed it.  Science
might raise some objections to trouble us, but science
has ere this dealt in phantoms. The answer then is,
We do not find the evidence of it in the Scriptures.
We  find things that look the other way, and which, the'
mnore we study them, assume more and more the opposite aspect. Not that the Scriptural writers were ambitious to give us cosmical knowledge, but the manner in
which they speak of the great times of God's kingdomtheir language of olams and olams of olams, of ages and
ages of ages, of eternities in the plural, of great chronological divisions in the past and future, instead of blank
continuances after the style of much modern thoughttheir use of these pluralities and these swelling reduplications in a manner inconsistent with the narrow bounds
into which the historical times of our planet would cramp
them- all these produce strongly the conviction that
the Bible does not represent our world, or olam, as an
isolated existence with a eosmical blank before and after,
but as connected with an ongoing series of ages stretching immeasurably back as they reach onward to a distance immeasurably future.
But where is Khedem then?   Some of his clerical
friends, alarmed at the rebuke received at the same time 
136   BUGBEAR OF THE ETERNITY OF MATTER.
from orthodoxy and science, have manifested some concern for the writer's sanity.  There is a bugbear which
haunts their minds on his account. It is the frightful
idea of the eternity of matter.  Hardly any heresy has
such terrors for them as that. A plurality of Adams, or
the dual " theology of the intellect and the affections," or
even a development theory of Christianity, would not be
half so frightful. Do you not, they ask, teach, or, at least,
are you not in danger of teaching, the eternity of matter?
-Ve would set this friendly solicitude at rest, once for all.
'There are two sides to this matter, or this question of
the eternity of the universe. One is clear, positive, and
Icapable of a most clear and positive statement. Let us
state then, very sincerely, our firm belief that this world,
ikosmos, or universe, (using the terms for all dynamical
existence that is not God,) has a certain finite age, as
certain and as finite, although unknown, as the known
age of an individual man or an individual tree.  That is,
— there is an exact number of minutes (by which is
meant a measure of time determined by a certain known
space, or pendulum of a certain knouwn length) since this
world, kosmos, or universe as above defined, or any seed,
r)or embryo, or clement of it, began to be. This number
of minutes is theoretically, if not practically, assignable,
— that is, it is a finite number capable of being expressed
in a certain extent of decimals, if we had space or room
to put such decimals, either in our own known world, or
within the bounds of any distance that has been reached
by the highest lens of Lord Rosse's telescope.  We hope
the answer is clear and definite, and that we shall be relieved, hereafter, of the odious heretical charge, and of
the consequent odium theologicum which a very pious 
THE OTIHER SIDE OF THE MATTER.
science has so scienitifically, and  so magnanimously
labored to fix upon us.
But now there is another side of the matter.  Let us
see what definite ideas, or if there are any definite ideas,
we can get about it. We travel up this road very easily;
for ten billion years are as easily passed over as ten seconds; adcl so we go back, back, in our conceptions,
without any difficulty, till we come to that point at the
head of all undivine being which we term the beginning.
On this side lies all created Juva,g (whether matter, or
force, or each as inseparable from the other,) with all
successions of aets orfaets, and all created spiritualities,
with all successions of thoughts and ideas.  In other
words, we have got to the point beyond which time is
inconceivable, unless we suppose that God's thoughts
are as our thoughts, which the Bible tells us expressly
they are not.  Well, what then?  If there was no time
before this, then this was the beginning of time. iHence,
there was no time when the universe was not. This may
have a very bad look to some, and we would not press
it upon the nervous weakness of some men's orthodoxy;
but yet it is a position which need not occasion much
anxiety whilst we hold fast to the other. We are safe
as long as we do not drag the anchor that is fixed sure
and steadfast in the first and firmer ground. No one
need be unduly alarmed at what they might call a perilous ascent; it will ever be easy to get safely down with
such a foothold as was first secured in the exact numerical age of the world as seen from our own or the finite
side. But why, then, stop at all in the finite? We
can only say it is because we can not help ourselves.
We can not get out of the laws of our own thinking, even
12*
137 
A WORLD ABOVE OUR THINKING.
though they give us certain evidence that there is something above those laws, and that it must be inconceivably more glorious than anything they can directly think
or conceive. There is certainly great gain in this. Even
though it be an unknown and unthought world, it is much
to be certain of its existence; -it is much that our finite
powers can reach the point that assures us of the necessity
of the infinite, of that which not only "eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, but which it hath not entered, and can not
enter, into the mind to think or conceive." Still, it may
be asked-  What do you mean by the timeless state?
We  answer:  We  have no conception, no thought, no
idea of it in its mode of being, and yet some idea of it as
a glorious reality inseparably connected with the divine
as distinguished from finite minds. It is the ante-time,
as well as ante-mundane state, when God inhabited Kedhem, dwelling alone, and yet not alone, in the glory of his
triune existence.   But may not the question be turned
against the interrogator? What do you mean when you
say there was an eternity of time before this principium
of the universe? What succession of facts existed before
this,- what succession of thoughts? Your conceptions
of it are a blank. When you attempt to fill them up,
it is only the poor cheat of figuring over and over again
our successions, our years, our chronology,- out of which
we can not think,- and carrying them out of cosmical
time into what you are pleased to call a past eternal time
before the world began. Such objections, with all possible respect for their makers be it said, are not only unsound, but senseless. The man who talks of matter, or
the material universe, as eternal, meaning thereby. coeval, co-existent, and, therefore, co-essential with God,
138 
"WHO CAN BY THINKING FIND OUT GOD?" 139
talks impiously.  The man who affirms that time was before any cosmical, or undivine existence,- employing the
term in the usual and only conceivable sense of finite
divisible duration, measured by succession of events in
an outward finite physical, or by succession of thoutyhts
in an inward finite spiritual world-that man talks, not
only impiously, but ignorantly, absurdly. His only defence against profanity lies in the fact that he knows not
what he means.  Hie has good sonorous words, indeed,
but all soul, whether of sense, conception, or idea, is
wanting there. Let us cease our prattling. What can
such worms as we are know about the mode of existence
of the Infinite, or what is possible for the Infinite, or
what he ought to be?  The writer is willing to take the
rebuke to himself.  Neither of us know what we are
talking about; yet stil lit may be maintained, that he is
nost reverent who contents himself with negations or exlhausting positions -simply affirming, in the language of
Scripture (our only light here,) that " God's ways are
not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts," but
heaven-high above their highest reach.   The universe is
finite; for it is not God. It is finite in time and space.
It has a certain age; it has existed a certain whole or
fractional number of our years; and there is a certain
number of decimals, if we knew them, or could write
them, by which it is expressible. We both think so,
because we can not help ourselves-we  can not think
(otherwise. Our reasonings about eternity and infinity
are worthless in themselves, and whatever relative value
they may possess is only on that side which proves
their worthlessness. With the Scriptures in our hands,
we can go directly to truths which  philosophy feebly 
140   THIE SCRIPTURIES TRANSCEND PHIIILOSOPIIY.
announces, and of which science knows nothing.  One
of these is that time and thought are not to God what
they are to us.   In going  beyond  this simple  announcement, or in dwelling upon it, one may "darken
counsel by words without knowledge," but his error is
not so great as that of him who wholly rejects this transcending truth, or whose reasonings claim the merit of
common sense and intelligibility only by being directly
opposed to it.*
There is one thing connected with this matter of the " eternity of miat ter," that really tries the patience. We allude to the bugbear of Platonismi, raised by such wrliters as Mr. LoR.D and Professor DAN,A, and the ste -
reotyped charge they make that Plato taught this doctrine.  It has come
firom Church historians either confounding, or, as is the case with the more
respectable, writing so carelessly as to lead their readers to confound, the
old with the ineo-platonismn.  Now, we affirm, that Plato never taught the
doctrine in any such sense as they would attach;to it. We can only mention here three heads of argument that might be conclusively urged in refatation. There is,
1. Plato's labored argument against the atheists, the fundamental position of which is that "soul is older than matter," either in its essence or its
properties.  It is sufficient to say, that the whole foundation, as well as superstructure, of this elaborate argument is destroyed at once by the least
admission of the idea of the eternity of matter, as such writers understand
it. There is,
2. The important distinction so clearly made in the Timaeus, 27, D, between the two great classes of existence, o' o'v aes  -/v vev' ou'x'Xov,
-"the everbeing that hath no origination," and go 71yv6oSvov, or "that
which hath birth," and beginning, as well as change and end; the one uncaused, uncreated, unchanging,-the other born in time, continually changing, having of necessity a cause, and that cause the pre-existent being
which he calls o-b' 6vTr  ov.  To the first class belong God and truthGod as the oldest soul, and truth as his mind, or Novc; to the second, all
that falls, in any way, under the cognizance of the sense, as distinguished
from the vo'tq'v, in short, the world, the world of matter, in all its forms
from the most elementary up to the most organic. We may say, too, the
world with all its dynamical phenomena and physical life; for nothing is
more clear than that Plato represents even his anima muedi, his soul, or 
ETERNITY OF MATTER NOT TAUGHIIT BY PLATO. i41
life Oqf the world, as a distinct creation (whether absurdly or not, we do
not now enquire) made by the Eternal One before its material body.
3. The eternity of the material world, or of matter in any sense, would
be'irreconcilably at war with that doctrine of ideas by which Plato is so
widely distinguished from the Aristotelian philosophy of old, and the Baconian of modern times.  Both of these latter are perfectly consistent with
the idea of the eternity of matter and of a world of eternal causation; nay,
more, they can not disprove it;-nay, more, they are compelled to admit
it, if they remain true to their fundamental law of induction without unconsciously bringing in, from other sources, a lilght that of itself forms no part
of their lauded science. The Platonic, on the other hand, is the only philosophy with which such a doctrine is fundamentally and irreconcilably at
war.  The very esseince of the Platonic system is involved in its great gradations.  Matter is younger than life, life is junior to law, law is junior to
ideas, ideas belong to mind, and mind, in the order of conception, if not of
tuie, (for here all time is transcended,) is born of the Araov, or the ineffable essence. We can only here present the points of an argument. It
is, indeed, an attractive theme; but its full discussion would demand more
erce than can be bestowed upon it in the present volume. 
142 THE FOUR GREAT IDEAS OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT.
CHAPTER V.
THE FOUR GREAT IDEAS OF THE MOSAIC ACCOUNT.
The Word-The TVork- The Rest- The Day- These must
be in Harmony with -Each Other- The Old Arabian View
- The Patriarchal View-Theory  of Guyot- Of Mr.
LORD — Of Pye Smith- The True Scriptural View is the
One that has least Need of Science.
THIS subject of the Creative Days has been pursued at
great length; and we would, therefore, only add to the
present argument a synoptical view covering the whole
ground, yet capable of being set forth in the clearest and
briefest terms.  To the writer's own mind it is irresisti
ble, leaving not a shade of doubt as to the general force
and aspect of the passage.  It is hoped that it will so
strike the mind of the serious reader. The thought has
already been alluded to; but it is one that will bear to
be dwelt upon. We say, then, that to one carefully
reading this remarkable chapter, (Gen. I,) as it ought
to be read, there must present themselves four important
ideas, standing distinctly and prominently out from the
face of the narrative. There is,
1st. The going forth of the Word and Spirit, each time
in wondrous conjunction, and making the division of each
wondrous day.
2d. The Divine Work.
3d. The Divine Rest.
4tho The Divine Day of Working.
I 
THE WORD-THE WORK —THE REST —THE DAY.  143
Now, we appeal to Mr. LoRD himself, blindly determined as he is to peril the whole veracity of the Scriptures on his narrow notion of twenty-four hours.   The
first three of these ideas, he, of course, admits to be ineffable, that is, above all human standard, both as to
manner and degree. The Word, the Work, the Restthey are extraordinary, to say the least.  The divine
Spirit was not a wind, as some say, both among sciolists
and commentators.  The divine Word was not an audible
voice.  Even Mr. LORD would not dare to call a man an
infidel for thus interpreting.  The divine Work was not
a mere exercise of power, a huge Cyclopean, upheaving,
earth-moving strength, differing only in degree (however
immensely) from human work. We cannot repeat it too
often-" His ways are not as our ways," His work is
rot as our work.  It is not the mere quantitative energy
of "the God of Forces;"' it differs from ours not onlyv
in dynamical potency, but wholly in some transcending
mode or series of working. And then that sublimest of
all ideas, the divine Repose; we can not get words for
it; the Hebrew Sabbath furnishes the simplest conception for the human mind; other terms might mar and
pervert, as well as fall short; but no language in respect
to it could be hyperbolical. The divine repose after the
creative days! Are all these, then, the Word, the Work,
the Rest,- are all these extraordinary, ineffable, in a
word, divine? - and shall we not extend the same scale
of measurement, and the same mode of thinking, to that
fourth term, and that fourth idea, which is ever in such
immediate connection with them? If we refuse to do this,
why not bring it all down to the same anthropomorphic
Daniel xi, 38. Deum Maozim, as the Vulgate calls him. 
GOD HIAS EMPLOYED SERIES.
level?  The one view is no more metaphorical, no more
forced, no more an accommodation than the others
Where all else is superhuman, divine, shqall the day be
a human day -just such a day as we now see constantly
measured by the sun and divided by the clock? The
work might have been instantaneous, and that would also
have been wondrous, ineffable.  True -but it is clearly
revealed to us that God has in some way taken times for
his manifestations; he has employed series; and shall
not these times be in admitted harmony with other features of the grand succession? In the contemplation of
such a work, and such a rest, can we without a discord
mingle the idea of days of twenty-four hours each, and
especially when we are expressly told that in the first
four of these mysterious days the sun had not yet appeared in the heavens, nor any outward astronomical phenomena by which such time-periods could be connected
with any outward  cosmical standard?  Shall all else,
then, be in such splendid proportion, and yet this held
to be of such withered dimensions? It is out of all keeping.  The discord of such a view must have been felt by
Moses, and the earliest readers of Moses, as well as by
any modern mind. Science has given us no advantage
here. The world-problem, and especially as it presented
the thought of great successions of ages, was a favorite
of the earliest east. The grand conceptions of cycles,
and series, and olamic periods, came as easily and a
truthfully to the Idumean sages as to the Yale College
Professor of Mineralogy and Conchology. To those sons
of the desert, the thought may have been suggested by
astronomical cyclical appearances, or it may have been
the voice of old traditions that had come over the waters
144 
THE PATRIARCHS-THE XC PSALM.
of the great flood, but it was none the less grand and
free that it lay in their minds unconnected with any
puzzling positions of the rocks, or any doubtful, ever changing statistics of exhumed fossils.  They needed
nothing of this to convince them that the Great Allah
had been working, not from an absolute eternity, (a metaphysical notion with which they did not trouble their
devout, practical brains,) but for ages, and ages of ages,
running on to an extent so vast that our own age, world,
or olam, (for all these words mean the same thing,)
was but as a passing day in the mighty series.  There
can not be a more frigid conceit than that modern science
either gave birth to, or has enlarged, or is at all necessary to, this conception. It might have been entertained by any thoughtful son of the thoughtful Shemitic race.
In perfect consistency with what we know of the Patriarchal character, may it have been thought by Abraham
on the plains of Mamre, or by Jacob on his stone pillow
at Bethel. Above all would it be familiar to that same
Moses, "the man of God," who has given us this history
of the creative days. Who can have a doubt remaining,
as he reads that sublime Ninetieth Psalm, which all
antiquity, with all modern assent, has ascribed to him as
its author-" We  spend our years as a tale  that is
told, as a thought, as a sigh,' but thou, 0 Lord, art
from olam to olam, from world to world! A thousand
years are in thy sight but as yesterday when it is past,
and as a watch in the night."  We have advanced on
the ideas of the ancients, it is vauntingly said. Compare
this conception of the Mosaic Psalm with Mr. LORD'S
* Such is the expressive rendering of the Syriac.
13
145 
146 THE GRAND OUTLINE FOR SCIENCE TO FILL UP.
narrow interpretations, and you have all the answer that
the case demands.
Thus we have the simple yet grand conception as it
lay in that imaging mind to which the Divine Spirit first
gave it. The Times are as extraordinary as the TWord,
the Working, and the Rest. When we come to examine
it closely, we are astonished to find what an absence of
all support there is in the Scriptures for this narrow conception of an exact twenty-four hours. Yet once off
this contracted ground, we have room enough. There
need be no concern about the length of these creative
times. We may dismiss alike from our thoughts the
clock measured solar days, and the stratified eras of the
geologists. We find ourselves among the aeons and
olams of the Bible, those worlds, or ages, that we are
told, Heb. xi, 3, were framed, or put in order, by the
Word of God bringing out the visible from the invisible
There is ample space both for revelation and geology.
Science may fill up the details as she pleases; she may
shift them as she pleases; she may make'as many seeming "harmonies," or seeming discords, as she pleases.
The great and threatening collision was in the idea of
the earth's remote antiquity which science claimed to
have discovered. The opposite cramping view removed,
-the Bible suffered to speak in its own majestic style,
-the times once conceived of, and most rationally con.
ceived of, as in harmony with the other sublimities of the
narration, —the indefinite, the boundless once admitted,
— we need not be troubled about other difficulties. The
grand outline order must, in the main, remain unaffected
by anything that any induction from existing appearances 
MOSES HAD NO THOUGHT OF THE NEBULAR SCHEME. 147
can ever present.  There may be unexplained appear ances of overlapping, in some details, but the great peri ods stand out in bold distinctness,- a dark world of wa ters-light thereon- an atmosphere, or sky appearing
-land appearing- vegetable life- celestial manifes tations - animal life -Man - the world-rest.   These
must remain in their grand chronological order, whatever face science may put on or off. Here, beside
the beginning and the rest, are the six great ineffable
workingos, each  commencing with a new utterance of
the Omnific Word.  Here are the six great divisions,
each supernatural, or God-made, in distinction from the
natural or sun-divided days. hIere are the six great appearances, each making a new morning; and all followed
by that wondrous repose of Deity which distinguishes the
present among the olamic tilmes.
On this we take our stand as opposed to the most narrow anthropomorphism, on the one side, and the evershifting theories of science on the other.  The grand
objections to the view of Guyot, as advocated by Professor DANA, is, that it either makes Moses a mere mechanical revealer of facts of which he had no concepltions at
all, or gives him a science which we are certain he could
not have possessed. He no more thought of nebulae, and
nebular rings, than he did of sun-risings and twenty-four
hours for the first great day, or for any of the great days
that followed. He thought of no other world than this,
a,nd the sky around it which he called the heavens, and
in which the heavenly bodies appeared. These heavenly
bodies are presented, not in their far-off unknown localities, but as they are optically manifested in the near
visible firmament. It was that sun and moon, and not 
148 MOSAIC ACCOUNT BETWEEN THE TWO EXTREMES.
the sun and moon of modern science, with which Moses
had to do. He may have known more or less about
them; but he describes the " things that are seen," and
their origin as things seen, instead of their essential birth
from nonentity, or the causations that are connected with
their phenomenal change. The second day's working
had no reference to nebular condensations or the throwing
off the nebular rings of the solar system, (if there ever
-were such rings,) but to the forming of our earth's atmosphere, and its phenomenal sky. His chaos was a chaotic earth covered with waters, and not the first immeasurably extended matter of the universe. His stars were
luminous points in the firmament, such as they appeared
when the arrangements of the fourth period first suffered
them to shine upon the earth, and not the far off suns
whose light it has taken millions of years to travel down
to us.
Thus stands the Mosaic narrative by itself, unique in
its sublimity.  The views we have rejected, on both sides,
are so rejected, not because of their agreement, or disagreement, with science, but because we can not find any
place for either in the written narrative. Especially do
we fail to find that awful chasm that Professor. DANA
makes in the work of the second day, and on which we
would dwell more fully in another part of the argument.
Mr. LORD'S scheme is at war with the obviously remarkable
or extraordinary character of the first days.  It is tested
at once by the conclusive fact, that it has to bring in
more explanations, or rather guesses, from modern science, than the view which he falsely charges as being
held in deference to science. It has to talk of shifting
axes, and changed ecliptics; it has to falsify the account, 
THE PYE SMITH THEORY.
and go right in its face, by giving the heavenly bodies
their earth-enlightening, day-measuring, and day-making
office in the very beginnings of the periods, and before
th        e     fixed dat e  t hat Scripture assigns to them.   It has
thus   really no work at all for the fourth day; it is a
blank in t         he creative calendar, occupied simply by an
empty announcement of what had been done long before.
Its opposition to well settled science we would not dwell
upon, since it forms no part of our plan. Still, since Mr.
LORD has so much to say of science, it justifies the remark, that no man of ordinary intelligence can now regard his view as agreeing with the most common observations which go to prove the earth's antiquity. The
Pye Smith theory is at war both with science and revelation. It is opposed to the manifest idea, that the
Mosaic account was meant to embrace the whole earth
and the whole sky or atmospherical heavens regarded as
above and around it. Equally obvious is it that the
Mosaic narrative means to commence with our world in
a state of comparative infancy, and to conduct it through
a series of ascending toledoth, or " generations," up to
its present condition as the abode of man. Although
not cosmological in the widest sense, so as to embrace
the remotest universe, it is evidently occupied with the
history of our planet from a period before which it had
not been a world of life or light. There is no intimation
of any previous history known or thought of. There is
no evidence that would justify, on any philological ground,
the throwing back the first verse away by itself, and separating it by a chasm so out of all proportion with the
shorter times, and comparatively modern dates that come
so long after. Like Mr. LORD's guesses, it is a mere defer                         13*
149 
150 THE TRUE VIEW HIAS LEAST NEED OF SCIENCE.
ence to science, and one, too, which creates more scientific difficulties than it removes.   The  indefinite-time
view of the creative day falls in easily with the spirit of
the account, and proves itself to be the true interpretation by the little need it has of any scientific support, or
of any cosmological conception that might not have been
entertained by the earliest minds. It is the Scriptural
view, and science, instead of demanding a forced conformity, must seek a reconciliation within the broad limits
it allows. She must not ask Biblical men to be ever
putting ahead their hermeneutical landmarks every time
she chooses to change her oftshifting positions. 
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.
CHAPTER, VI.
SCIENCE AND THE BIBLE.
Spirit of the Scientifc Patronage-Professor DANA'S Apo
thegm —The Bible "the Boat, Science the Current"  The Natural in Creation- Claim of Prior Discovery  Claim of Science to have Proved the Supernatural-Sci  ence can not find the Supernatural-Must ever assume
a Law for a Fact- Can not even find a God-An Athe  ist as good a Scientific Man as a Theist-Secret Wheels
and Cogs in Nature —The Greater Durations-Science
can not disprove  Development —Can never refute the
"Vestiges of  Creation"-Bible alone can slay " The
Vestiges."
IT is the spirit thus manifested, that is more anti-Biblical
than any particular difficulties raised by science. Without wishing to judge harshly, we can not help regarding
it as in its ultimate effects more injurious to a true and
hearty faith than the unmistakable feeling manifested by
the avowedly unbelieving geologist. The advocates of
this pious talking theism mean well undoubtedly; but
there is in their prominent position in respect to the
Scnriptures, and their favorite talk about nature as a
parallel revelation, as real an undervaluing of the true
and only Divine Word, as is contained in Auguste
Comte's utter rejection of the idea. The author of the
Vestiges of Creation, as far as we can see, has as good
151
i,  
152 " THE BIBLE THE BOAT, SCIENCE THE CURRENT."
a theory of revelation as Professor DANA.   When he
comes to the proper place for it in his book, the latter
writer talks just as piously as our scientific friend, and
as we expect to show, with as much consistency. The
Bible is the boat- the New-Haven authority lets us
know, in his significant comparison -the Bible is the
boat, and geology, or science, the current in which it
floats. There is no mistaking the meaning, or certainly
the spirit, of the representation. The writer did not intend to be impious. The professed orthodoxy of his
literary position would lead him to speak well of the
Bible, and to be rhetorical about " the harmonies," etc.;
but he is sometimes off his guard. He becomes so in
the passage to which we now refer, and which may be
found on page 93 of his review. It had been remarked
in the book, that " geology had been driven more and
more to acknowledge the mixture of the natural and the
supernatural in the production of the earth." This is
taken up as an insult to geology, and the champion of
geology and science in general must repel it with indignation, and not only that, but even "carry the war into
Africa,"- and there he forgets himself. It had not
been said, at all, that Geology had been driven to this
by any Biblical interpretations. We never supposed
her so pious as that. In fact, the thought was the other
way. She had been driven to it by the pious feeling
seeking it in her own discoveries,- the pious feeling
which, although no part of science, and, in truth, no effect
of science, yet was vital in many most excellent scientific
men, and controlled their scientific reasonings. When
it was thus said that Geology had recognized the supernatural, it should have been regarded as something of a 
SCIENTIFIC MEN IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. 153
compliment to this youngest daughter among the sciences.
But the word "driven" was perhaps the offensive term.
It would seem to convey the impression that Geology is
not nzaturally, as some claim, very religious, that she is
not ever seeking the supernatural and rejoicing exceed ingly to find it. And yet such a suspicion might be par doned in one who had only read the works of Lyell, and
knew how scientific men in Germany and France - men
certainly every way the equals of Professor DANA-had
rejected this whole notion of supernaturalism which he
claims to have been a discovery of science.  But such a
thought, it seems, can not be allowed at all; Geology,
as such, must be cleared of every suspicion. It is not
enough to concede to her the supernatural as a frank
admission joyfully made by pious geologists, and on evidlence piously sought in deference to so respectable an
authority as a divine revelation, but it must be an original
or independent discovery of science, which Bible men
must take on her authority, and bring their Bibles up to
it, easily if it may be, but forcibly if no other method remains.  But to give the quotation- This, says Professor
DANA, in reply to the bare suspicion that Geology had
been influenced by revelation, (a false suspicion, too, of
his own as to the meaning of the passage in the book,)
this " is very much, we think, as a current is driven by
the boat it carries; for Geology first proved that the natural was involved in creation, and with a rare exception
has always admitted the supernatural; and she has
finally drawn off exeyesis so completely into the same
course, that some, as they are hurried on by the current,
exclaim in great glee over their wonderful progress, and
in their remarkable self-complacency look down frowning 
154 THE COMPARISON AN INSULT TO THE SCRIPTURES.
upon the current that they imagine is trying to keep up
with them." There is no mistaking this language, nor
the spirit from which it proceeds. It is a spirit, we say
it boldly, that is more odious than the avowed infidelity
that has led scientific men (some of them, perhaps, in
deep sorrow,) to regard the Scriptures and scientific discovery as hopelessly irreconcilable. It is a language,
moreover, we say it fearlessly, which is and ought to be
regarded as an insult to the Christian world.  It was an
insult to the Biblical Editors of that Biblical Review in
which, by a circuitous route, he sought to obtain an influence for his criticism which it never could have had on
its own merits. It was an insult to every elergyman,
unless it be those who regard this mode of defending the
Scriptures as better and more available than interpretation. Such are pleased, doubtless, because it so piously
patronises Moses, and makes him so much more scientific
than they had ever imagined. But what is their occupation, not to speak of their vocation, if the above paragraph be true, either in its letter or its spirit? What are
the clergy, what are orthodox Professorships, what is
Yale College, or Andover theology,- what are Biblical
Reviews, if the Bible is indeed such a nose of wax, which
can be made to suit any countenance, and Biblical faith
such a " floating boat" on the current of science, as this
writer has so unmistakably represented it? There is no
misunderstanding the language, or the air of scientific
pride, with which it is brought in. Biblical interpretation
is "the boat," and science is the broad directing current in which it floats, and by which it is carried down.
The contrary idea that in revelation may be found the
permanent, whilst science sometimes floats, and shifts her 
NO MISTAKING ITS SPIRIT.
place, is treated as a hypocritical pretense. An honest
and hearty study of the Scriptures, with a'conviction
deep as life itself, that all the treasures of human science
and human philosophy could never begin to pay for the
loss of that first chapter of Genesis- or of the deference
which is its due-such a study, and such an expression
of opinion is treated as a hollow ruse on the part of these
men of exegesis. It is all a false pretense to save their
waning credit.  They glorify the old book, and "exclaim
in great glee over their wonderful progress," when, after
all, they are only sailing down that current which they
"imagine is trying to keep up with them," and which
" has drawn off exegesis so completely into its course."
There is no mistaking, we say, the meaning of this language, or the temper which gave it utterance. We have
battled some with the infidels, perhaps, at times, with too
much acrimony, though ever with an irresistible feeling
of the life and death nature of the controversy,-but
there is a patronage of Christianity, and of the Bible,
compared with which unbelief is entitled to our sympathy.
We say it fearlessly, there is no form of Bible rejection
we would not respect more than the spirit of the above
quoted passage; there is no position of infidelity we would
not openly avow rather than be the author of such a declaration. To see how this petty science assumes to lord
it over the Scriptures, and the men of the Scriptures 
for there is no proof that the author of the book assailed
is alone referred to.  A  class is described.  It is the
friends of exegesis, who pretend to find in the Bible evidence of what Geology claims as all her own. The sneering remark has an equal application to all who study the
Bible with the expectation that it will teach them any
165 
.MEETING OF EXTREMES.
thing on the great questions of origin and destiny that
would certainly seem to fall so appropriately within its
revealing province. All such men are invading the domain of Professor DANA and his friend AGASSI&   Their
exegesis is all a mockery. They are in a " floating boat,"
and that boat is in a current from which they can not
get out. Their Biblical studies are all a mere pretense
to enable them to make the best of their poor position in
the rear of science. Strange how apparent extremes do
sometimes agree! Mr. LORD from his stand point has a
similar view, and expresses precisely the same feelingAny man who ventures to think that the wondrous creative day was not exactly twenty-four hours in duration,neither more nor less- he unhesitatingly sets down as
insincere. Their deriving such a view from the Scriptures, he modestly says, is all a pretense. They would
have us believe that they have anchored their exegetical
boat, when they are only floating down the current of
science.
We have had mainly to do with the spirit of the above
extract, but a few words may be given to some of its
statements. " Geology," says Professor DANA, "first
proved that the natural was involved in creation."
Here there is something very sweeping. No room for
modifications or exceptions.  Has he traced the consequences of this far-reaching assertion? What, too, must
we think of its modesty, when we keep in mind the connections in which it is said, and the references it invariably suggests? Geology first proved! -It is a claim of
priority. Against whom? Against what? Who is the
rival in the case? It is no one of the fellow-sciences; it
is no dogma of philosophy; it is no competing theory,
156 
CLAIM OF PRIOR DISCOVERY.
professing to rest itself solely on human reasoning and
human scientific discovery. It is certainly a strange as  sertion; but it reveals the whole spirit of the article in
which it appears. It can have no meaning unless the
supposed rival claimant be the Scriptures, or the Scrip tures so interpreted as in any way to teach the natural
in creation. It reminds us strongly of the comparatively
petty disputes which so often arise within this jealous
field of natural science, such as the question -Who first
thought of steamboats, or who first invented the cotton
picker, or who first discovered the principle of the
daguerreotype.   Such questions may amuse us, but the
competition here presented is revolting to every true feel ing of faith and reverence. " Geology first showed the
natural in creation"! Then it is not taught in the Bible
at all. If so, what becomes of "the harmony," that
boasted "harmony of science and revelation," which
Professor DANA takes as the running title of his article?
Does he mean that Geology first discovered this exegeti cally? That would be nonsense.   But by what other
possible process could she find it out? —we mean, not
simply the natural, but the natural in creation. This is
the essence of the vaunting proposition. Geology might
discover the natural in the rocks; but how does she
know whether this is creation, or any part of creation?
It is mainly a Scriptural word and a Scriptural idea.
How does she know at all what creation is, or what cosmical acts are included in the word, unless the Creator
reveals it to her?  IIow does she know that creation,
whatever it may be, is not now going on? How has she,
learned when it ceased, or where it began, or in what
processes or periods it consists, unless by a revelation
14
157 
158   IDEAS OF LAW AND NATURE VERY OLD.
from some higher plane, or from that higher ground the
Scriptures are assumed to occupy.
If it is not taught in the Scriptures, then Professor DANA
is in opposition to them; for there can be no middle ground
here; the ignoring so important an element in the creative process, is equivalent to a denial of it. Such opposition would not give much trouble to some men; for we
boast of being a free thinking age; but the Professor must,
in some general way, be on Bible ground. Hie would not
wholly discard the old boat as long as it floats so conveniently and so quietly down the current. It may have been
in the Scriptures, however, one might say, yet undis
covered, "until science found it elsewhere.'>   That
would be strange, especially since the idea of the natural, and the words by which we express it, date from
the earliest times, and from the very roots of language.
Their primary images fade away and the words are laid up
as fossils or dried plants in the cabinets of science and philosophy. But the ideas both of nature and law are very
old. There are two reasons for this. The most common
observation discloses the fact of a regular ongoing in this
world in which one thing is continually coming out of
another, and, secondly, it is one of the inward laws of
the mind's thinking, if it think at all, that there must be
an outward law,- a harmony,unity, call it what we may,
that binds these ongoings together in one kosmos as the
idea of one mind. Thus every particular organism is
thought of as having its life and law, without which it
could not be an organism, and the same mode of thinking is irresistibly carried out to the law, or unity of the
great whole as far as it is known to the sense, or con ceived to be. It is the foolish boast, and stale story of 
SOCRATES' UNIVERSAL HIARMONY.
the modern scientific lecturer, or college orator, that
this idea of universal law was never in the world until
Newton saw an apple fall from a tree; but long ago
Socrates spoke of it as an opinion held by the sages of
old, and he might have said the men of old, that "har mony and order (xo a,  law, or regular  harmo nious arrangement,) held together heaven and earth,
and that for this very reason the whole was called kos mos." It was a " geometrical equality or harmony,"
he says, indicating that it was a higher mathematical
law which after-science might trace a few steps farther,
but no science could ever hope to sum in all its glorious
completeness. The idea of Socrates' ancient sages is
no where more clear, to one who will look for it, than on
the pages of the Old Testament.   It is the -,-, the
law of Olam, and the particular manifestations of it, are
the =i  hip~, or the ~'ba    t   h, the laws of the
Heavens and the Earth, Jer. xxxiii, 25, Job xxxviii, 33,
the "laws of the moon and the stars," Jer. xxxi, 35.
It is the "word or law of the Lord (Psalm cxix, 89)
that is established in  the  Heavens" —  In  sternum
Domine, verbum tuum permanet in coelo, in generationem et generationem.   Ordinatione tua perseverat dies;
quoniam omnia serviunt tibi.  "All things stand accordmng to thine ordinances." How much better and nobler
is the mere recognition of such a law,however taught or
acquired, than the science which, in its extravagant
boasting at having traced a few of its links, loses all the
moral grandeur of the idea, in the petty, selfish, scientific
interest.
It may be thought by some that the author, led away
by a favorite idea, is finding too much in the Scriptures
159 
160 THE LECTURERS' TALK OF " PHYSICAL LAWS."
that would seem to him to have a scientific or philosophic
aspect.  But this would be an altogether mistaken view
of his aim and thought. There is no science in the
Bible-God be praised for the fact.  But there is that
which is deeper than science, broader than science; we
mean in respect to nature and the world. There is that
which is fundamental to all sound thinking, and which
science, in its modern acceptation, instead of having discovered or made more clear, oftentimes confuses and
obscures.  It is so with these ideas of law and nature.
M,en thought as distinctly about them, and as truly about
them, with a limited, as they do now with a multiplied
knowledge of physical facts; and the reason is, that
such thinking does not depend on amount of facts, or
quantity of discovery great in one aspect yet ever most
minute in another, but derives its strength, and its certainty, from those broad and universal views that lie
upon the honest, intelligent face of nature, those views
that require not so much the experimenting crucible, as
the musing, meditative mind.  Modern science would
have us believe that these ideas are all her own; that
the terms belong to her vocabulary.   To listen to the
,rigmarole about "physical laws" which so often furnishes
the whole warp and woof of a scientific lecture, one might
almost suppose that the idea, and all connected with it,
had been before utterly unknown to the world, instead of
being interwoven, as it really is, into all language, and
all thinking that deserves the name.  We  mean a true
idea of law, with its two inseparable thoughts- both of
which some kinds of science have a tendency, either
atheistically or pantheistically, to obscure- the thought
of a lawgiver who imposes the law, and of a true subject, 
HEBREWS  BELIEVED IN A REAL NATURE.   161
or nature, made capable of obeying it. As well might
the discovery of the mighty ocean be claimed for those,
and by those, who had made a few shore soundings on
the edge of its unfathomable depths.  This " great and
wide sea" of causality had been gazed upon, and mused
upon, by the human soul, just as effectually (as far as
the higher ideas of philosophy and theology are concerned) before physical science, so called, raised its head, as
since it has filled the age with its noisy claims. The
assertion is made because truth demands and can sustain
it; even if the interest of sound thinking, and sound philosophising, were not both concerned (as they truly are)
in the abatement of these onesided, blinding pretensions.
No man can carefully study the Bible without finding
the fullest recognition of a nature, or order of things,
universal and particular. Yet Deity is ever represented
as working by it, and through it, and over it. It is not
the sentimental notion of "God in nature," the pretentiously pious, yet pantheistic idea of the Power that
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees.
No, the Hebrews believed in a real nature that God
had made to "go of itself," as He had the right and
power to do. It was a real nature under the control
of One who sat above it in the skies, and who made use,
not alone of the matter he had originated, but of the
laws and forces he had created (as well as the matter)
to accomplish his good pleasure in the world, and to bring
to pass what he had eternally decreed should be done.
They distinguished, however, between  two modes of
action in the divine government. They made a more
practical and clear division than is conveyed by our term,
14* 
" THE FINGER OF GOD."
natural and supernatural, especially as now used in their
clouded philosophic sense. It was more properly a distinction of mediate and immediate. It was the mediate
action employing the established ordinances of the world,
or it was that direct immediate action which they called
by the expressive term, "the finger of God."  And this
contented them. The careful student of the Bible can
not fail to see, and to be struck with, the manner of the
sacred writers in this respect. How boldly, and with
how little fear of inconsistency, they set forth these two
agencies, evidently regarding the one recognition as
being as pious, and as honorable to Deity, as the other.
Whether Hle employ "a strong east wind (Exod. xiv,
21,) to make the sea go back," sending his own divine
agency into the linked causalities of nature without
breaking one of them, or make the water gush forth from
the arid rock in crushing defiance of all the laws of solids
and fluids, it is still the same unmistakable divinity.
These primitive men —though with a clear recognition
of nature in its true idea - see no more danger to faith
in the natural, or semi-natural, in the one case, than in
the immediate supernatural of the other. They went
farther than this. They recognized this divine agency
as controlling, not only nature, but something-else which
God had also, in his might and sovereignty, made to
" go of itself" within certain limits, and for certain purposes which he meant to accomplish. They did not hesitate to recognize him' as interfering with the law and
This idea of a divine intervening causality directing, controlling, turn4tg round, events that depend on human volitions, is most significantly ex -
pressed by a curious Hebrew word which sometimes occurs. They called it
A,  Sib-ba, a revolution, conversion, or turning of anything out of itis
,course, or, as we would idiomatically say, a bringing about, There is a
162 
"' HARDENING PHARAOJU'S llEART."
liberty of human wills, turning them this way and that
as important agencies in the bringing about the issue of
his sovereign counsels.  This, also, was sometimes mediate and sometimes direct. He employs the ambition of
Nebuchadnezzar for one end, the weak vanity of Hezekiah for another. Whether it be a vindictive, or a disciplinary purpose, to punish an individual or a nation,-or
to show a man " what was in his heart," still it is the
divine agency, and distinctly recognized as such. There
is, too, the same bold assertion of the fact when he acts
directly on the conduct of human agents; - as when, for
example, he "hardens Pharoah's' heart that he might
striking example, 1 Kings, xii, 15, where, of Rehoboam's most impolitic
answer to the people, it is said-" This was a sibba, or bringing about,
i'rom the Lord, that he might establish his word which he spake by Ahllijah
the Shilonite."  TThe LXX  call it a /,o0, or tum-ning aside.  The
p)rimary image of the verb, which is very common, gives us the favorite
ancient idea of a wheel, or wheels, (cyclical movements,) as denoting me diate and circuitous in distinction from direct or straight causality, and yet
without any breach of the laws of human thinking or human feeling.  The
verb is used in the same manner, I Sam. xxii, 22. Hence in the cognate
Arabic, and modern Syriac, a noun of causality sababuen-Res qua aliquid
c n: altero coijezgit?tr-vineculum affinitatis-aiand hence, as a conjunctive
piarticle-causa, propter-denoting motives, reeasons, as links in a spiritual
(chain or circuit of events.  See also 2 Chron. x, 15.
' The old Jewish writers had as tender a moral sense as we have;  but
they never seem to shrink from such expressions and such an idea. And
why should we? The Hebrew ptM, the verb employed here, does not
mean creating evil where evil did not exist before. We stear clear of that
inexplicable problem iu this case. It does not mean that a tender conscience was indurated either directly or mediately, positively or pernmissively. It does not mean, that a good and pious nature was forced to
evil, or that a good and holy will was turned into a bad will. Let any one
examine carefully the Hebrew verb, and he will see, we venture to think,
why the moral sense of the writers was not shocked, as ours should not
be. The term has no moral or even spiritual meaning in the higher import
of the word spiritual. It means, to strengthen, makefirm, bind hard. The
influence was on the sensitive or lower nature. God nerved this wicked
coward do his owa wicked will, anid so carry out the righteous purposes
163 
164 BOLD STYLE OF THIE OLD TESTAMENT WRITERS.
not let the people go." Whether he acts directly and
positively on the heart of Pharaoh, which is the only
sense the passage will bear, or employs the evil nature
that is already in that vessel of dishonor, it is equally
the Divine power acting according to the high and most
righteous counsel of the Divine Will.
But let us state the bearing of this upon the main argument. We would say, then, that it is this distinct
recognition of each, and yet this fearless mingling of the
ideas of the natural and the supernatural in the divine
action, that forms a peculiar feature of the Old Testament, and renders easy of belief, and easy of interpretation, the assertions which look like setting forth natural
processes, growths, or generations, in the creative account. The inspired writer, and his old readers, were
not concerned lest it should seem to detract from the
honor of Deity. They acknowledged the natural in creation, as easily as they acknowledged the supernatural
in their subsequent history. Whether our modern tendency to crowd all of the one kind into the early days,
and to recognize as little as possible of it anywhere else,
comes from a stronger faith, and a more reverent sense
of Deity, may well be doubted.
If, then, the natural is in the creative account, it may
certainly have been discovered by some minds. If so,
it should not be insulted as a pretense, even though
brought out so late as the nineteenth century.   But, in
of a divine and holy will. He made him strong, which he had as good a
right to do as to keep him alive. He made Pharoah no worse, but gave
this bad man courage (heart strength) to act out what was in him.  Some
may stumble at this, but those who get their theology from the Bible must
regard it as a divine prerogative, righteous in its exercise and glorious in
its display. 
GROWTH IN CREATION.
fact, it was discovered long ago.  If there is no idea of
the naturalin the First of Genesis, it is nowhere in the
Bible, for there is employed there the same language of
birth, of growth, of succession, of generation, in a word,
of nature, that in other parts is applied to what can be
taken in no other possible sense. It is not a new dis covery. Old interpreters saw it, and saw it clearly.
St. Augustine is explicit upon it, as we have shown.
He calls the creative periods by this very name of natures, and founds his idea of the days on this very distinction of the natural and supernatural. We might fill
pages with decisive proof of the utter falsity as well as
recklessness of the assertion. The idea of creative generation is more prominent in the patristric writings, but it
has ever been in the Church as an opinion that might be
orthodoxly held.
But let us look again at the spirit of this boast. The
Scriptures have no meaning, no ascertainable meaning,
at least, on this and kindred questions, until Geology
brings her fossil-lighted lamp for their illumination. It
is the spirit the writer is ever so full of, and which he
can not disguise. And yet how odd it is that those very
passages where a natural growth is most clearly -set forth,
if any language can set it forth, he wholly ignores, and
not only so, but in his exuberant piety brands the interpretation given them (and that, too, without even an
attempt at refuting such interpretation,) with the opprobrious name of naturalism- that bugbear of " the religious world," so well adapted to carry with it the narrow
odium theologicum. Grand work this for our man of
science! It might not be so strange in the narrow polemical theologue, but science boasts of its liberal spirit, its
165 
THE NATURAL IN CREATION.
Baconian progress; it is ever talking of Galileo and free
thought. It would be easy to show that, according to
Professor DANA'S easy rhetoric of "God in nature,"
which he has endeavored to employ against the author
of the book, there could be really no essential distinction
between the natural and the supernatural, or between
creation and rest from creation, between origination and
subsequent ongoing-but of that more fully elsewhere.*
' A clerical critic in one of our religious newspapers, asks with great
simplicity, and yet with an apparent feeling that the question is unanswerable-"If Moses meant growths, births, natures, gradual processions, &c,
why did he not call them so?" This is the substance of the question, although we do not give the exact words.  Why,-we would say to our
clerical friend (for he professes to be a warm friend, and we do not doubt
his sincerity,) Moses does call them so-exactly so. Root meanings of
words must have had some force in the early day, if they ever had force
at all; and the primary ideas of the Hebrew words Moses employs are just
the ones involved in this question of yours. Study carefully your Hebrew
Bible, and you can not fail to see it. "Let the earth bring for?th, and the
earth brought forth."  They are the same words that are applied to vegetable and animal parturition elsewhere. In their radical meanings they,
imply some kind of birth and natural growth, as much as the language
used Gen. iii, 18,-" Thorns and thistles shall it bringforth unto thee." In
this post-creative act, also, was there something miraculous; the earth
would not have fulfilled the curse and broughtforth the thorns and thistles
(there mentioned) of her own unvisited energy, or by the old nature (then
old, we mean, but once new,) which she had received on the third day of
creation. But though miraculous, it was evidently connected with a nature
still-a process of birth and growth divinely and miraculously initiated;
but a growth, a birth, a nature still,-for all these words and ideas, as we
have elsewhere most abundantly shown, are radically the same.  "If
Moses meant births, growths, natures, why did he not call them -so?" He
has called them so, we say again to our anxious friend. That is the very
word and idea, neither more nor less.  "These are the toledoth," he says,
"the Generations, yev8dgj; of the Heavens and the Earth," Gen. ii, 4.
Examine your Lexicon in respect to the meaning of the verb from which
this noun comes. What is better, take your Hebrew Concordance, and
trace it in all its applications, and see if you can discover any radical difference between it and the Greek  7/ —v5vaI,  /vv&w, (with other words
of the same family,) and the Latin nascor, natus natura.  "Why  should
166 
GOD IN NATURE.
We allude to it here to show how inconsistently science
may sometimes talk, especially when it turns pious and
forgets itself.  "Let the earth bring forth,"-" Let the
waters be gathered together, and let the dry land appear"
-these passages are interpreted in the book, (whether
we be wise above what is written?"  We  would retort the language of
our friendly interrogator. But the word is not now so taken by readers
in genera], it may be said. Generations, as there used, may be held per haps to be an accommodation, a figure of speech, a comparison, or it may
be explained in some other unmeaning way. The same method, too, may
be employed to take all significance out of the language of Job and the
Psalmist, especially where the earth is said "to be brought forth" and the
"mountains to be born"-in which expression the root of this very noun
toledoth is thus used for the generations, births, natures of the creative
periods. But "why should we be wise above what is written," we say again,
or put our own faded abstractions, our own lifeless metaphysics, on these
fresh Mosaic words, and then cry out metaphysics against the man who
attemirts to restore them.  It does not at all follow because we now, in
the old age and dotage as it were of language, use nature and similar words
for anything and everything, that therefore Moses employed toledoth in
the same loose way, or meant to depart (least of all in this creative account) from its clear radical sense of one thing, or one state of things, successively born, or generated out of another.  And yet Moses in his simplicity, aud those who thus faithfully interpret his language, may have had
as high and as pious an idea of the divine power, the divine miraculous
power, originating a nature, controlling a nature, working in, upon, or
through a nature previously made, as those over-wise and over-righteous
critics who think that the honor of the Bible and of the author of the Bible
is tarnished by the use of any such phraseology.
Those who would well take exceptions here, ought carefully to inform
themselves in respect to the difference between the ancient and modern
modes of thinking. Even down as late as the times of the Christian
Fathers, there is a style of language which sounds strange to many. It
will not do to call Augustine a heretic, and yet he sets forth the creative
successions by this very word nzature. From our self-sufficient modern
stand-point, we may call it a figure of speech, or skip it easily over in
any way as of no theological or exegetical importance; but he used it
strictly as a translation, and true representative, of the Greek'svo'Glg
even as the Greek means neither more nor less than the Hebrew  l'l.
Had our translators instead of it used births or natures, they would have
expressed radically no other idea.
167 
SCIENCE ALARMED AT HERESY.
correctly or not,) as denoting prolonged processes, and
successions, to which we can give no other name than
nature, or growth, or the birth, or being born of one thing
or one state from another. It is, however, with the most
distinct recognition, derived not from any outside philosophising, but from the direct Scripture testimony, that
each of these growths, or natures, was commenced by
the supernatural going forth of the Divine Word and
Spirit, with a new command, and a new energy. This is
the p5d which our orthodox Professor regards as so dangerous.   He brands it as naturalism.  LHis science,
liberal as it would be thought to be, is excessively
alarmed at the heresy, and hence he deems it his painful duty to warn the good people who may not have the
science and experience of the critic in such matters,
against the dangerous infidel tendency of the work.
This might seem truly ludicrous to those who well understand the theological latitude both of the critic and the
Review through which he gives the alarm; but we would
refer to it here as a beautiful specimen of consistency.
This man who is so disturbed for the cause of orthodoxy,
when one finds a p6d;, or nature, in the Bible, actually
claims for Geology the honor of having been the first to
discover this same pus; in the rocks, or as he calls it,
" the natural in creation"! It can only be explained on
the ground that when a writer has no other or higher
motive than to assail a fancied adversary, he must forget
himself. Consistency becomes, in that case, a lower
virtue which he cannot be expected to preserve.
What does he mean by " the natural in creation?"
With truly intelligent minds this whole matter of naturalis-m may be brought to a, short and decided issue.  What
168 
WHIAT IS MEANT BY THE NATURAL IN CREATION? 169
does he mean by "the natural in creation," and his
empty boast of its having been first discovered by Geo logy? Is it a nature that had no beginning —a nature
unoriginated, unmade, uncontrolled, uninterrupted, un visited? That were indeed an atheism at which Plato
would have shuddered-an atheism
V,usovux~ri'  lsxavregov og~;v~,
blacker than blackest midnight. Is it, on the other
hand, a nature which God created, which He made to do
just what He had eternally foreordained should be done,
to which he gave laws that should bring out in chronolo gical order his own everlasting ideas? Is it a nature
that had its birth in a Divine Word, that is ever and
anon quickened by a new Divine Life, that both in its
general and its particular ongoings, is visited by repeat ed, oft-repeated, Divine interpositions? Is it such a na ture as this he means? Then the writer is defied to find
language in which it can be more clearly set forth than
it is in the book he has, either so ignorantly or so perversely, misrepresented?
It is not enough, however, for him to brand as infidel,
when brought out as an interpretation of the Bible, that
which is most scientific and most pious when found written
in the rocks. The religion of Geology demands a further
concession, and still higher honor, and so the Professor
ventures upon another assertion.  Not only has "Geology first discovered the natural in creation," but, "with
rare exceptions, she has ever admitted the supernatural.'
This we can not help regarding as more perilous ground
than the other, although, perhaps, not so insulting to the
Scriptures. If he means by the supernatural some far
off First Cause brought in as a logical neeessity, or some
......;            s15 
THE SUPERNATURAL IN CREATION.
prime mover, or something like a first originating power
without which we can not reason at all about creation,
the proposition is hardly worth any serious notice. Auguste Comte, much as he has been assailed by inferior
men who are no better believers than himself- Auguste
Comte would admit that. The author of The Vestiges
would admit all that. In such a sense, and in some still
nearer senses, he willingly concedes the supernatural.
But if, taking it in its true, and higher, and more
special sense, the reviewer means that leading geological
minds have been fond of the idea of the supernatural,
that they have not preferred to explain everything by
uninterrupted natural causality, and that the leading
authority among them does not regard this natural causation, as, of itself, sufficient to explain all the phenomena
that science now discovers in the rocks and formations,
-if he means this, he could not well have made a statement more at war with known and indisputable facts
There are men now of highest name in the science who
would laugh at him for the assertion, if so made, and so
understood in the only sense that gives it any importance,
especially any importance in the present argument.
But to examine the position more upon its essential
merits.  By its own Baconian boasting, then, science
(we mean as the naturalist employs the term) can never
really reach the supernatural. Its laws, of which it
talks so much, are, and can be, only generalizations of
facts or appearances. Repeated, or usually recurring
facts, make settled laws-that is, settled in science, not
in re. Unusual facts or single appearances can only
suggest some law of less frequent occurrence, or less
understood; and so they all may be natural; the con
170 
HIDDEN WHEELS AND SPRINGS.
trary supposition would be unscientific, and even irra tional, as far as science is concerned, or in the absence
of any higher light. All may be nature, an eternal
causality, as far as she knows or ever can know.  She
goes by observation and experience,-this is her boast,
-and there can be no scientific proof, or even ground
of belief, that any fact or appearance is isolated, or
stands out single, and unconnected with the combined
causalities of the universe;-there can be no scientific
admission of this except from the experience of an eter
nity. Revelation and all a priori ideas once shut out,
there is no evidencce short of this she can consistently
admit.  There may be hidden springs touched once in
an immensely long time. She has no right to deny it.
Nay, more, she is bound to assume it, as long as she remains truly upon her own ground.  The more usual manifestations of forces she finds in the coils of the seemingly
eternal spring she is seeking to unwind; she has no right,
therefore, to say, and, when not " driven" by something
from without her field, she never does say, that the less
usual appearances, even the very rare appearances, are
not equally so contained in its everlasting folds. Professor DANA himself, unphilosophical and even unscientific as he is, betrays a consciousness of this, although
his eagerness to magnify Geology prevents its standing
out objectively and distinctively before him. "Admits
the supernatural"! he says. But what language is this
for science? It is worse than the Professor's " physiecal
nature"; that was simply an absurd tautology; this is
absurdity itself. Science does not s1 admit"; she proves
-such is her claim.   She discovers; sometimes she
graciously accepts -as   Profes sor DANA accepts the Mo
171 
172 WHIAT SCIENCE SEES, AND HOW SHE SEES IT.
saic account -but admitting looks like a force of some
kind, an influence from without. It suggests the thought
of a reluctation; - it has something of the appearance
of being "driven" -to use again the word that has
aroused so much indignation- or at least of " floating"
in some boat carried down the current of certain opin ions, higher or lower, true or false, which are not science,
,nor any effect of science, but belong to another sphere.
Let everything keep its own place. We are not reproaching science, but exposing the false claims of some
soientifie men.  Science can not be expected to see what
she has no eyes to see.  She makes good use of her natural vision, short sighted as it is, when she confines it to
her  own field.  She sees appearances, facts, events;
she observes how they come and go, and deduces laws
which are but the summings,- nothing more,-of these
her observations. Where the facts are numerous, she
has a very strong probability, such as the inhabitants of
Plato's cave might have deduced respecting the laws of
the shadows that were ever flitting across the rear wall
of their prison. Where the facts are few, she must do
the best she can, and make a theory; where she has but
one, she must guess and wait for more, or consult some
higher authority of philosophy or revelation in respect to
it; but, as far as she is concerned, and in her own province of observation and induction, she must ever, as we
have'said, assume that there is, somehow and somewhere,
a law, a natural law, for every phenomenon, and so she
can not get out of nature,- she can not look out of nature-she can not find the supernatural.   But science,
we repeat, is not to blame for this. We can not expect
to see these things through her lens, any more than we 
NATURAL SCIENCE A SEEKER OF NATURAL LAW. 173
could rationally hope to discover spirits in the crucible,
or see angels through the telescope.
Natural science, then, it can not be too firmly main tained, both for the cause of science as well as for that
of all sound thinking, is a seeker of law, of natural law,
in her own sense of the term, as a generalizing of appear ances ever assumed to have come from one universal
force. Atheism can not exclude from her brotherhood
Piety can give no title to admission. Auguste Comte
would have a fair right to a seat in any convention. A
man may deny the existence of God, and be just,as sci entific as the most devout Professor. Experience has
shown this by most abundant evidence, if there were not
the strongest a priori proof of the fact in the very laws
of ideas. Science, natural science, is a hunter of natural
causalities;  that is her business, and she can never
legitimately find anything else. If she does so, it is out
of her line; she " admits" it from some influence more or
less distinctly felt, of some higher authority.  She " accepts" it, more or less willingly, but can never be said
to discover it, without violating, or, at least, ignoring for
the time, her own essential law. We want no better
proof of this than Professor DANA'S own article. Will
he pretend that he has not been influenced by the sound
theology of New-Haven, and the old standard orthodoxy of Andover; or, in other words, that the "currents" setting round these venerable institutions have
not "driven" his own geological boat in a pious direction, it might not, perhaps, have taken in Germany or
France?
Now we have no fear that the drift of these remarks
can be mistaken. It is not denied that scientific men
15* 
174   FAITH A SUPERNATURAL STATE OF MIND.
have maintained the supernatural truly, religiously, biblically, in its real and divine sense. There have been
those who were scientific men, and, at the same time,
something more, and better. There have been many
such, we rejoice to say it, who have found the supernatural, and recognized it amony their scientific discoveries, but not from them. There was something better,
higher, yea, stronger than science, that led them to it.
It was a mental temperament, original in some respects,
but more truly produced by revelation either in its direct
or social influence. It was devout religious feeling which
never would have been developed, to say the least, without revelation in some form. That of which we speak is of
itself a supernatural state of mind, acting as well as acted
upon, and leading men to believe truly in such a revelation as the great first supernatural fact of facts, the
solid ground of credence in all other supernatural. The
evidence of this suggests itself in a supposition which
comes home to every mind. Let revelation die out of the
souls of men (if it ever can die out,) and how long would
science find the supernatural? In certain regions the old
habit of believing might retain some of its power for a
generation perhaps; in others, we may say, the experiment has, to some extent, been already tried. There
are parts of the world, there are schools of thinking,
where faith in any objective or supernatural revelation
has in the main already died out. They are able schools,
too, most scientific thinkers, as good thinkers as can be
found among us; but where do they find the supernatural? As far as science is concerned, or their rank in
science, these foreign free-thinking naturalists ought to
be, at least, as pious as Professor SILLIMAN or Professor 
RESERVE LAWS OF NATURE.
DANA.   But "faith comes from hearing," the hearing
both of the ear and the heart.  " By faith we understand
that the worlds were built by the Word of God;" by
faith we find the true supernatural,-by faith, itself a
supernatural state of soul as well as a supernatural gift.
Even the false or superstitious belief in the supernatural
came originally from the same divine source. It is an
echo, broken, indeed, into wild and wizard sounds, yet
still an echo from the earliest revelations made to the
human race. Most true it is, therefore, that science,
natural science, proceeding on its own fundamental principles, can never get out of nature, unless "driven" by
some power lying fairly beyond its own domain.
We dwell on this because the position is a cardinal
one, and it is of the utmost importance to keep separate
the bounds of ideas that are so absurdly jumbled together. We should closely distinguish between what
may be found by some scientific men, according to the
latitude in which they live, or the outside theological
currents in which their "boat is floating," and that which
is found by science per se.  Prof. DANA should be careful here. With all his fine talk about "God in nature,"
and "laws and types," he may, if he lets go revelation
as the only revealer of the supernatural- itself a supernatural work - or treats it as a secondary authority,
have a development theory before he is aware of it.
That is, for all he knows, or for all his science can affirm
or deny, there may be reserve laws of nature, which, in
this vast machinery of law and types, may be represented
by little cogs or springs going round and round unseen
by the sharpest science, because they are touched, perhaps, in the revolution of some greater wheels, only once
lT5 
ALL GENERATION MYSTERIOUS.
in ten thousand or ten million years, but which, nevertheless, when the clock strikes the true time of the mag
nus annus, may bring out species from species just as
certainly as the ordinary wheels that go round visibly in
our times, or the less ordinary whose movements we can
trace, bring out individuals from individuals;- there being no more, or, we may rather say, no less a priori
mystery in the one form of generation than in the other.
"Knowest thou the way of the spirit, or how the bones
do grow in the womb of her that is with child?" Nothing can be more absurd than the claim that any mere
science can disprove the fact of such a mnore interior law
in nature, or of such a rarer and more occult form of
generation.  But do you believe it? it may be retorted
on the author. Alas, we have little or no belief about
it, unless as we can get some glimpse of evidence from
a divine revelation.  "We are but of yesterday and know
nothing." Individuals, species, and all, came from the
creating will and power of God. That is quite clear
from the Scriptures. There is also pretty fair evidence,
if we can interpret language at all, that this creation of
vegetables, and of the lower animals at least, was some
how connected with a new word or command, and a new
power given to the then nature, or the earth. But which
law of generation God saw fit in the first place to create,
(for in spite of Mr. LORD and Prof. DANA, we must still
continue to regard the creation of laws, principles, and
ideas, as sound common sense as well as sound metaphysics,) or whether he created many such laws acting successively or concurrently, there are the scantiest means
of knowing from revelation, and none at all from science.
God made the plants and lower animals by some created
176 
TWO IDEAS OF DEVELOPMENT.
law, or laws, of generation, connected originally with
the earth.  This is all we truly know.  Any theory of
generation that is consistent with this, or does not con tradict this, a man may orthodoxly and Biblically hold.
We  care nothing about "The Vestiges of Creation,"
or its degree of piety. It is the famous book, we know,
of which some clergymen are so afraid- a fear that does
not argue much for their firm belief in the Scripturesand on which certain scientific men of a certain calibre,
and placed in positions peculiarly favorable to a kind of
orthodoxy, are ever and anon trying their steel. It
teaches development, they say, and that is impious.
But what do they know about it? If the author of that
book means an eternal development which God did not
in time originate, and from time to time control, then we
refute him  very easily-not from science, but from
Scripture. Goliah as he is, or is said to be, with that
shepherd's sling even a Sabbath-school child can overthrow him. But if it be development without this impious,
unscriptural idea,- if it be development as a more remote
and interior form of generation simply, then his theory,
as a theory, is as good as theirs, and they cannot refute
him from any science built on present observation.  Their
mode of attempting it is certainly very curious.  These
hidden wheels, or cogs, or springs, of development have
not acted, or even been visible during their inch of time
and space, and therefore, say they, there are no such
wheels. God could not make them; for such a creation
of laws and principles is all Platonic nonsense. Creation,
they hold, is ever of hard matter made right out and out,
-of matter in some way, hard or soft, of a certain density,
of a certain shape, of a certain extent, and in a certain
177 
178   THE REAL BEING-MATTER THE SHADOW.
place. In other words, it is a creation of death before life,
inert mass before organizing law, eidolon before idea, effect
before cause, or shadow before substance;-unless our
consistent nominalists  should  say,  as they doubtless
would, that hard matter is the real being  (o' "O'vrC e'v)
next in birth to deity, whilst life, and law, and idea, have
but dependent, shadowy, and unreal existence.'
But there are no such wheels. Of that they are certain,
for the best of all reasons-they have never seen them.
What is more, they have never seen, they say, a trace
or vestige of them-the reason of which we may give in
another chapter. They go wholly by experience and
induction.  The clock has not struck in their day-their
minute we might rather say-nor for many a day before
them; in other words, they know no other nature, and
therefore, there is no other nature- never has been,
never can be.t And so they claim the merit of having
' Should any be disposed to come half way, and say that laws and principles are in their being and origin independent realities, but have not existence in tine before the material things or movements, manifest or concealed, of which they are the organic laws or principles,-it would be sufficient for our argument.  They are before the matter, then, in the order of
being, if not of time.  They are independent existences that do not grow
out of the matter, but come into it from some other source, or are put into
it by a higher Power who made them as really as he made the matter,and made them, too, of immensely greater variety and higher workmanship. This is sufficient. In this sense they are creations, true independent
creations, of a higher order than the matter, and from which (as we go farther and say) the matter derives, if not its substance as matter, yet that
organization which makes each material thing that is, what it is.
t Had our present olam, or the whole day of the race been a single re volution of the earth upon its axis (a supposition neither incredible nor absurd,
since the race might have been made so as to live as much ill such a period
Ks in'the one allotted,) then these immutable laws of science would, on such
a view, have been altogether different. The natural, or what is the natural
now, would become the supernatural, because the scientific men of such
an age had seen nothing like it.  The generation of a tree, or its revival 
SCIENTIFIC ORTHODOXY DUE TO THE CHURCH. 179
slain The Vestiges of Creation, when, in fact, it is their
cowardice, or their prudence, that stops short of conclusions following plausibly from their boasted premises,
and which that writer has had the boldness to carry out.
Their "floating boat" is driven timidly in by currents
which his stronger oar enables him to stem. Their orthodoxy here is not owing to any science so much as to other
influences, for which, if they have any real piety, they
should thank God and the Church. It is the Bible-nurtured and Church-nurtured belief in a supernatural revelation that has made them find the supernatural where
the author of The Vestiges has not discovered it, and
where their Baconian induction never would have discovered it, never could have discovered it, whilst remaining
true to its own boasted fundamental law of laws.  The
Professors of this pious naturalism wofully deceive themselves when they thus attempt to patronize the Scriptures,
and give them the benefit of their discoveries. It may
be said, too, that they fight The Vestiges of Creation in
very much the same feeling that leads men in the Church,
whose orthodoxy is but a shell, and whose position, therefore, lies nearest to the infidel camp, to be ever writing
books on the evidences of Christianity, and assailing the
infidels. These fight valiantly against Hobbes and Paine;
they are ever running a tilt against Hume and Voltaire;
when the earnest believer looks upon Hobbes, and Paine,
and Hume, as being actually of great service to the
Church, by showing men-at least all thinking menwhat they must come to if they will not docilely and
after a season of torpor, or a new tree springing out, either like or unlike
the old, would be as incredible as anything we now denounce under the
name of development. 
180 POWER OF " THE VESTIGES" - WHY iT LIYES.
reverently, and most thankfully receive the Scriptures.
And se they slay The Vestiges, these valiant men!yea, thrice do they slay the slain, and yet the ghost will
not be laid. The book still lives and has a deep hold
upon the common mind. The reason is, that whatever
may be its errors, it presents that thought which- revelation gone, or once supposed to be gone,- presses so
heavily upon the soul.  It is the thought to which
every true thinking man feels he must come if he has to
give up the Bible.  He may dread it as a sane mind
sometimes dreads the horrors of apprehended insanity,
but he knows of no true security against it unless it be a
voice from heaven believed through a supernatural faith
whose essence, incipiency, and power, is heaven's own
gift readily and lovingly bestowed upon all devout and
docile minds. It is the thought so feared by some, so
loved by others, because it is so natural, —-the thought
that perhaps all is natnre, and nature all,- eternal law,
eternal nature - unmodified by anything that has ever
come into it from any higher world of being. When
faith in revelation once wholly departs from an age, or
a country, or an individual, there will not long remain
any belief in the supernatural. Geology can not cure
this, even if it does not aid it. Science can not help the
matter;  Its times are too short. Long as they may
seem, as compared with shorter cycles, yet when reckoned on the greater scale they too vanish like passing
shadows. On this illimitable field of an ever outstretching eternity, or olam of clams, the geological epochs disappear like the solar days of the literalist. A stand
point may be assumed from which the difference between
them becomes too small for metaphor. The eonic and 
THE GREATER DURATIONS.
the solar times come to seem alike literal, alike figura tive, alike evanescent, when regarded as measures of the
still greater cycles in the kingdom of all eternities.
Alas, we are lost.! In such a survey of an immeasurable
universe of space and time, we can have no assurance,
no hope, except in a voice from the highest heavens, a
voice of God coming very nigh unto us, speaking by di rect communication of mind to mind, whether primarily
or through mediate minds, instead of the ever uncertain
vestiges of nature, or the illegible book of the rocks which
some are so fond of placing in rhetorical comparison with
IHeaven's written volume.
But this whole question of the greater durations, lies
away beyond the fair field of scientific induction. The
scientific naturalist examines present appearances. He
examines them very carefully. This, he says, was before that. Hie is pretty safe in saying, that if there has
been no disturbance -a caveat he can never wisely neglect-the lower deposit, or the lower fossil, most probably went to its rest before the upper. When he would
assign periods, however, he measures the times of nature
then by its movements now. But this is all a guess.
He can never get an expression, or a formula, for a time,
except through a space, or effects appearing in such
space; but what was once the rate of that efficiency he
can not know.   There is no hypothesis that he  can
prove, none that he can render probable. The time pendulum, the comparative time pendulum (for all time mea —
sured by space is thus comparative,) varies in its measuring movements so that the variation is perceptible
even on the narrow field of this earth; it changes with
the latitude; the sun minute and the same pendulum
16
181 
THE SURE WORD OF THE LORD.
minute do not always and everywhere agree. Even the
sun minute is shown by certain discoveries in astronomy
to be not a constant quantity. Our years vary, and with
them all subordinate degrees of all subordinate arcs.
Now, if this be true, as we may say, right around us, in
phenomena that come home to the observations of our
own fleeting sense, or our own fleeting historical reminiscences, what calculus of variations shall be applied totime and causal succession (the only real measurement
of time) in those far off regions of space, and those immeasurable remotenesses of eternity, where the imagination utterly faints, and even reason reels and staggers
like the inebriate in his delirium. Even the Koran here
is better for us, has more light for us, than science.
" We flee for refuge to the King of the Worlds, the Lord
of the day-break." But we have something better than
either. It is the sure Word of the Lord, revealing the
true supernatural, revealing the creative process, whether
it be of all worlds, or of our own world, whether of all
times, or of our- own olam, whether of the great cosmical
principium, or any nearer beginning on our own earth -
revealing just what God deems best for us to know of
earthly or mundane origin,-above all revealing Himself,
as having his abode in " Light unapproachable and full
of glory," and yet "his peoples' dwelling place in all
generations." It is this Word of the Lord, faithfully
interpreted, heartily believed, and placed in its proper
rank, before all science, and all philosophy-it is this,
and this alone, that will effectually slay'"The Vestiges,"
and all other forms of naturalism that come, whether innocently or not, from the modern extravagant boasting,
and extravagant estimation of physical science. For it
182 
THE REAL NATURALISM.
is this spirit, more than any particular difficulties now
and then raised by seience, that is to be dreaded. It is
this putting nature and the Bible on a seeming par; a
practice of which some are so fond, though all the real
deference is in reality paid to science in every case of'
seeming collision. It is this patronizing parallel, now so
commonly run between the "two books," as they are
styled, "the book of Nature and the book of Revelation," and of which we have such a fine specimen at the
close of Professor DANA'S article.  These are the things
mnost hostile to the Bible, most injurious to a true and
hearty faith   This is the real naturalism.
183 
184 ORIGIN UNKNOWN EXCEPT FROM REVELATION.
CHAPTER VII.
,WE KNOW NOTHING OF ORIGIN EXCEPT FROM A DIVINE
REVELATION.
$he Vestiges of Creation- Who Killed the A~onster?-Indi  vidual Generation as AMysterious as the Generic-Revela  tion itself the Highest Supernatural- Why should we be
afraid of the Natural in Creation? —Animalcule-Ayas  siz's Doctrine of Man   The Primus Homo-Science Oe  tcupied with what is, and how it is- The Cosmical Move  ment-Science does not take it into Account-Iypotheti  cal Discussion between the Vestigian and the Anti-vesti  gian-Nature's  Gestation long, her Births sudden and
complete-Doctrine of Types- No Meaning in the Lan  guage as used by some Scientijfc Men- The Atheism of
The Vestiges," in what it truly consists.
WE KNOW NOTIIING OF ORIGIN EXCEPT FROM A DIVINE
.ItEVELATIoN.. This we would take as the motto, not only
-of the present chapter, but of all that we have written
on this and kindred subjects. God may make things
directly, or he may make natures, laws, etc., through
which things and phenomena are produced, or he may
combine both methods, and work by them concurrently
or successively. We know here only as he has told us.
In pursuing this theme, the reader will pardon us for
dwelling a little longer on this famous book entitled The
Vestiges of Creation. The bugbear that has been made 
WHO KILLED THE VESTIGES?
)f it in the religious world, the dishonor which the alarm
about it has cast upon our faith in the Bible, the unfair
and disreputable efforts to excite odium against certain
opinions by connecting them with this unpopular name,
all demand some further consideration of the grounds on
which it is assailed, and especially of the manner in
which others are assailed under cover of a protest against
it. Aside from its fairer and more effective theological
opponents, certain men of science* have felt it their interest to keep up a batrachian clamor about the honor of
slaying the monster.   Who killed the Vestiges? may
come, in time, to excite as much interest as the famous
question of the nursery book with which we are all familiar. The author, not being a man of science, can not
engage scientifically in this melee;  but having some
general information on such subjects, and a little reading
in the Scriptures, he would respectfully venture the opinion, as one among many others, that this terrible book
must be overthrown by the Scriptures, or-ot at all.  If
the Bible does not refute it, or furnish any means of refuting it, then its doctrines should not be the cause of
any great alarm. They become in that case indifferent
to a true faith, whatever aspect they may assume. Now,
aside from what a supernatural revelation may affirm of
these primordial matters, all that we can say with any
tolerable safety is, that a certain theory of generation
may be true, or it may not be true; or it may be partly
* It is just that we should speak in terms of the highest respect of the
writings of Hugh Miller. His attack upon the Vestiges was the most effective, as combining more of philosophy and theology than can be found
in any other scientific argument. Although we do not wholly agree with
this writer, yet no one can be more sensible of the great good he has done
.n this department.
16*
185 
SCIENCE CAN NOT FIND ORIGIN.
true and partly false; or the whole region of speculation
may be regarded as a land of shadows of which we know
less than we know of the constitution of the monstrous
shapes that go under the name of nebula in some late
maps of the astronomical heavens.  In other words, science can no more disprove than she can prove any such
theory of origin. Both sides of such questions, we venture timidly to think, lie out of her clear domain of observed facts and laws generalized therefrom. To speak
with any certainty here, as science, she must have had
an immensely greater space for her observations, and an
immensely greater time for her inductive experience;
unless she insists upon intuitions, or something like a priori
ideas which must not be contradicted, and then she is
clearly out of her record. There are some such a priori
ideas, or laws of thinking, that have a bearing upon these
(questions, but science has nothing to do with them; she
floes not acknowledge them; she regards them as shadowy and unreal as compared with her own "exactness."
So that we may safely say, that the author of The Vestiges has a science as good as that of Professor DANA,'and
wte think the theology of the book will also present a fair
comparison.* The superiority, however, in this latter
aspect may be freely given to the Yale College authority,
if he will only frankly admit that his pious notions may
have had their birth in his Scriptural education, rather
than in his geological and conchological researches.
It is a number of years since we read this book. The impression left
.ponI the mind was not favorable to its piety. It appeared to us decidedly
:anti-biblical in its tone and spirit. Its style, both of thought and expression, is very different from that of the Old Testament. It does not talk
,,ke Moses. If we may judge, however, from its very confident matller,
~o much resembling that of certain other productions of a similar Bacozioa.a
;eous, it must certainly be considered a work of respectable science.
186 
FAITH NOT AFRAID OF NATURALISM.
But to keep to the issue we have presented. If the
Scriptures teach anything of origin, that is conclusive for
the believer. He sits down to the study of them, knowing nothing as far as the facts to be revealed are concerned, and prepared to receive whatever they may
teach,- even should it be found that they reveal something like a development doctrine in some form, or after
some of the varied uses of that wide and much abused
word. For development is simply the outgoing of one
existence, whether individual or generic, from another
existence in which the first is supposed to be contained
or wrapped up. Such a development may be single
and almost immediate, or it may be varied and multifold.
It may have one, or more, or many supernatural beginnings, with ongoings after each determined by laws
which God has made to do that very thing just how, and
when, and where he has foreordained it should be done.
Thus should the Scriptures say,  "Let the earth bring
forth," "Let the waters bring forth," he will not be
frightened by it, or set himself to work to devise some
way in which he may consult the honor of the Scriptures
by relieving them of this odious appearance of naturalism. He will not attempt to be wise above what is
written, if he can only fairly get its meaning. lie will
frankly admit the fallibility of his own particular interpretations; but the principle he will never surrenderthe principle that we know nothing on these subjects except what we may get from the divine teachings, given
to us in such way, and after such measure, as the divine
wisdom may prescribe. Even should the Scriptures
seem to teach a growth, a nature, or what some would
call a development in its narrower or wider senses, the
187 
188 REVELATION ITSELF THE GREAT SUPERNATURAL.
reception of it is still as much a matter of faith as though
it had disclosed an instantaneous transition from not-being
to perfect or finished being, or a succession yet consummated in the twinkling of an eye, or in twenty-four seconds, or twenty-four hours, or six indefinite periods,or had revealed to him any other method in this unknown
and unknowable region. It satisfies the true believer
either way. The mere fact of a revelation from God of
what is otherwise inscrutably hidden, is the great supernatural for him, the warrant for believing in all other
supernatural. Has a voice truly come to him from the
All-knowing? Then its revelations as to the origin of
lower things will have for his faith enough of other supernatural, whether that supernatural is presented in the
origination of the general order, or orders, of vegetable
and lower animal life, with the creation, at the same time,
of laws and types for their development,- or is taught
as coming more specially in at the generic birth, or specific making, as some would say, of every species of animation by itself, or of each individual progenitor of such
species by itself, from the " great whales" (which the
Bible seems to speak of as a special formation) down to
the lowest and most invisible forms of the million-formed
animalculle that have their habitation among the closest
particles of other matter animate and inanimate, or that
are found in every globule of living blood, and in every
drop of stagnant water. Let him have for it something
which he can trust as a" thus saith the Lord"- some
word from the supernatural sphere itself-speaking not
to his science but to his faith, and he will believe the
natural, or the supernatural, without confounding either,
and whether the latter be rare or frequent,- revealed 
WHERE SCRIPTURE SAYS LITTLE WE KNOW LITTLE. 189
only as acting in the most general beginnings of life, or,
as the Scriptures would seem to intimate, and science
would perhaps deny, carried clear through in some
cases, so as to be present in some part of the quickening
process of every individual, at least every individual
human generation.
What, then, has Scripture revealed in respect to the
origin of the earth,- the origin of things that grow
upon it - the origin of man? Our object here is not so
much to answer these questions, as to state certain principles in relation to them.  If the Bible has something to
say on these matters, let us hear it and thankfully receive it. We shall never get any reliable information
from any other quarter. If Scripture says little here,
-we know little; where it says nothing, we know nothing.
If its language is general, our knowledge is general; if
it gives us but an outline, we can be only certain of the
outline facts, although it will be no irreverence, we think,
to suppose a filling up, if we are careful to keep out everything that may be inconsistent, or may seem inconsistent, with such outline view. It may be, and it is, rational to think, that the account is limited to an outline
view because we could not comprehend the more detailed
processes, or their ineffable rationale, as given, or attempted to be given, in any human language. There
are such ineffable processes in the generations that are
constantly taking place around us, even in this settled
condition of things; how much more full of them may
have been the primordia rerum! There is something
which all the science on earth can not explain, and never
will explain, in the life germination of every garden seed;
there is an every day mystery, O! how much higher and 
190    MYSTERIES IN ORDINARY CAUSATION.
more hidden still! in the wondrous transmission of the
human vitality, even considered in its lowest sensitive
form, and aside from the rational and divine element in
our being! If there are such inscrutable hiding places,
impenetrable chasms, we may say, in the links of this
ordinary causation as it is passing continually under the
eye of our sharpest science, what an abyss of the unknown,
and to us unknowable, must there be in the awful transitions from nonentity,-in the principiis principiorum, the
transcending primeval births, the quickening, not of
transmitted life, but of vitality itself.  " Vestiges" of
Creation! Who shall dare talk of them, except as his
way is illumined by the lamp of God's own Word? In
opposition to such a claim of science, how appropriately
may we accommodate the grand Vulgate version of the
LXxvIIth Psalm? -  Tu es Deus qui facis mirabilia; in
aquis multis semite tuse, et vestigia tua non cognoscentur.: a1 1t,       "Thy footsteps are unknown."
Why should we be afraid of the idea of the natural in
creation, or of the mediate as distinguished from the immediate. If God chooses to make a nature, give it its
laws, ideas, potencies, times or periods, and then work
by it, making other creations by this creation, what have
we to say against it? Whose pious science, or scientific
piety, "shall touch His hand and say unto Him, what
doest Thou?" This hyper-religionism is not for the honor
of the Scriptures.  It is to save to science, or to certain
aspects of science surrounded by religious influences,
that honor through which it especially claims to patronize
the Scriptures, and to assume a controlling voice in its
interpretation. What does such science know of physical life, or the conditions under which it may be devel 
ORIGIN OF MAN.
oped? To deny that God could make a provision by
which it could be brought out in some manner different
from what we call ordinary generation, is to run into a
Charybdis of materialism worse than the Scylla of which
they affect so pious a horror.
We are naturally in the same condition of utter ignorance in respect to the origin of man. The Bible represents it to have been specially supernatural -something
not to be resolved into a wider life that had a beginning
in some former supernatural, but, standing by itself, a
special isolated act. The creation of other animate existences isrgiven generally and generically.  It is represented as somehow connected with nature or the earth.
Nothing is said about the making of individuals, even in
multitudes, much less of pairs, or any individual progenitors. There must have been some reason for the
absence of this kind of language in the one case, while
it is so marked and peculiar in the other. The origin of
man in two individuals —one of these created out of the
other-is the great and striking feature of the account.
And yet this sacred region, too, has this false science
lately invaded, whilst, as has been already intimated,
some of the religious world who are determined to have
a harmony at any cost, are preparing, as usual, to strike
in tune with whatever key-note she may sound, or to follow wherever she may make her move. But here, again,
this kind of science has undertaken something clean out
of her inductive province. She can only define a species
in one of two ways -theoretically, by the philosophical
idea (that is, borrowed from philosophy,) of generic unity
of life, or practically, by the scientific law of a certain
amount of resemblance held together by a greater or less
191 
AGISSIZ'S DEFINITION.
permanency. This latter, or the mode which though the
more. defective more truly belongs to science, has-been
chosen. As thus given, it is strictly a matter of quantity,
and in this direction the science that employs it can never
get out of the ever changing quantitative idea. But all
such definitions grounded on quantity or degree, whether
of resemblance or anything else, must be ever inconstant,
continually varied by new facts,- these facts, too, changing even within the range of our very narrow known,
but which, when compared with the unknown in time
and space, become absolutely worthless terms in the series, too vanishing to enter into any trustworthy analysis.
Thus an amount of resemblance that might make a pretty
fair probability for one extent of time and space (supposing that to be all that is, or is to be, affected by it) could
afford no ground for a classification demanded for another.
The application of the rule to a short historic term might
make many separate varieties of man,- a vastly longer
time might shut up, not only man, but all the lower animals with him, into one universal brotherhood. Mr.
Agassiz, for example, defines as difference of species, all
differences that were distinctly such when known history
commences. Put back this date of history, or put it forward, and the definition is good for nothing. If science
defines a species by the other mode of a supposed once
existing actual unity of life, from which the whole species has diverged, that will do; but in the case of the
human race, such unity, or want of unity, is a fact necessarily transcending human history, and only capable of
being made known to us, or disproved to us, by a supernatural revelation. To find this historical point of unity,
we must take the Bible account, or step back to some
0
192 
DIGNITY NOT DEPENDENT ON MODE OF ORIGIN.  193
antiquity that may furnish the time necessary for such a
back convergency of varieties into one. But in doing
this we have no guide in science. The amount of it all,
then, is this-of the origin of our planet, of the origin
of life upon it, and of the origin of man, we must have
a revelation from the Creator himself, or remain in im penetrable ignorance.
In respect to these matters, therefore, our only busi ness is to study that revelation. If what it reveals is
scanty, it must be either because God did not deem the
knowledge omitted as of any great importance, or did
not deem us capable of fully receiving it. With sunlike
clearness has it made known to us the most important,
but, otherwise, undiscoverable, fact of a primus homo, the very fact which modern science, or that which claims
to be most scientific, is taking upon itself to deny. It
gives us, with like clearness, the fact of his divine supernatural birth; it teaches us something, less distinctly,
of his physical origin, but still the Bible does not make
the dignity of man to depend so much on his mode of
origin, especially his material origin, as on the divine
dealing in the important covenant transaction made with
that one man as the physical, spiritual, and forensic representative of all his posterity.
But of all this, and of all that relates to the origin of
man and the world, we repeat it,- and it will bear to be
repeated-we know only from the Bible.  By the living
Word of the Lord alone can we refute The Vestiges.
Just as the Bible is firmly believed, will the latter book,
and all similar books, have but little hold upon the common mind. With such hearty and general belief in a
Divine Word, there will be no need of any geological aid
17 
194    SCIENCE EVER DISCOVERS MYSTERIES.
to faith, and without it, powerless will be all the efforts
of one kind of science to lay the evil spirit which another
kind of science has been so efficient in raising.
Such must ever be the position of science in respect
to revelation. And even in regard to cosmical knowledge in general, we may safely say, that from the very
nature of man, and his confined position, natural knowledge must ever be relatively very small. It looks large
to some who are in the midst of it, but to a true thinking
it contracts with its own discoveries. Paradox as it may
seem, it grows darker with every addition that is made
to its feeble light, because, in fact, that light, if we have
no other or higher, must eyer reveal mysteries faster than
it can solve them, and so continually throw a denser and
still denser gloom on the dark back ground of human existence, making more and more inexplicable the problem
of human life and the enigma of the vast and terrible
nature in which we seem to be sunk and lost.  So, we
say, it must be to the thinking; but there is a great deal
of science that never thinks, strange as the assertion may
seem; it only watches for phenomena, makes experiments, adds to its little heap of curious facts, attends
scientific conventions, reads scientific papers thereon, and
therewith is content. Take it in its widest field, science
is legitimately occupied only with what is, (or rather is
seen to be,) and how it is. The future and the past
belong to her only as she can safely carry the present
into them and measure them by it. But the moment
she begins to do this her boasted exactness begins to
fade. She can calculate an eclipse, but it is only on
the supposition'that not only the observed phenomena
remain the same, but that the rate of movement, and the 
FASTER THAN SHE CAN SOLVE THEM.
sate of the rate of movement, remain the same; just as
we tell the time of day by the clock, or predict any future
position of the hour and minute hands, if its rate of motion does not in the mean time suffer any variation.
This does well enough for a relatively near past, or near
future, such as the time of day, or the movements of the
clock, in respect to the astronomical changes, and the
visible astronomical changes in respect to some great
cosmical movement that may be neglected in ordinary
calculations, but which it would be very unscientific for
us to leave out of the account when we are rash enough
to apply present scientific observations to the measurement of the great olamic times. Thus viewed, in either
case, whether it be that of the clock or of the eclipse,
the changes in the cosmical time-table become infinitessimals in regard to our magnified present.  They imperceptibly vary the result. But move off either way, advancing into the future, or receding into the past, and
the unknown comes pouring continually into the scale,
faster and faster, until it forms quite a disturbing quantity,- yea, so as to affect the very balance of fact that
must be known and taken in to form anything like a
true induction.   Carry it still farther, either way, into
the very remote, and unless we fall back upon revelation,
o)r some unscientific a priori principles, as some would
sneeringly call them, all becomes a guess, a fool-hardy
assumption that has not even the dignity of a conjecture.
But when we keep our thoughts upon our own world,
and our own race, the ground assumed becomes still
more sure and incontrovertible. On the supposition of
no supernatural revelation having ever been made, or of
Its being lost to knowledge or belief, it may be safely af
195 
196 THE TRAVELLER LOST IN THE WILDERNESS.
firmed that the real darkness hanging over the problem of
human life, yea, of existence in general, would be greater
now than in the days of Pythagoras, and that the increase
would be in the direct ratio of the increase of natural
knowledge from that time to this. It would be like the
traveller lost in the wilderness. He collects specimens
of herb and mineral, he examines the curious positions of
rocks, he gazes upon the stars above his head, and ex-plores the earth beneath his feet, but he is ever inore
]ost still.  The multiplicity of objects only adds to his
,confusion and perplexity. Darker and darker grows the
interminable forest, or wider and wider spreads out before
'him the blinding bewildering waste of the boundless desert.  In view of this, there is no trifling like that of certain kinds of science, especially when regarded in con;nection with its inane boasting.  "Is it not true," asks
Professor DANA, "that science (meaning of course natural science) is ever tending to the clearing away of
doubts"? No, we answer boldly.   We  take a direct
issue here, and we have proved our side of it.  Natural
science alone - let the qualification be ever remembered,
-for it is of the utmost importance in the argument- natural science alone, and with all that the widest claim
,ecan bring within her province, is ever, to a thinking-man,
'breeding difficulties and doubts inexplicable. There is
enough darkness in one magnified drop of water to lead
such a one to implore light from a higher world, or to flee
for protection to the least evidence of a revelation from
above the sphere of the natural.  Again he asks-" Is
there no foundation for full faith in the teachings of nature, or the deductions of the human mind therefrom?"
The sentence is ambiguous; it may mean faith inz nature 
" WHERE SHALL WISDOM BE FOUND?"
as the object of belief, (for which there is certainly a
foundation, a blessed foundation, though not in nature
herself,) or it may mean a foundationin nature for faith.
If such be the meaning, again we amver, no.  There is
darkness in nature, there ever will be darkness in nature,
growing ever, the more we explore her by her own light
alone.  God meant it should be so,-we may reverently
say it-to drive us to himself without this endless circuitous mode of seeking him. It is for our moral discipline
that we should walk in the wilderness, but the true light
that shines on nature, and renders scientific progress any
thing more than a blinding maze, is not from nature herself,- as would soon be found should there ever be a setting of that ancient Star in the East, whose beams so many
mistake for their own or nature's illumination.  "The
Heavens declare the glory of God," but it is to those
who receive the "higher law" than nature, that "law
which-is perfect, converting the soul, that testimony of
the Lord which is sure, making wise the simple." How
dlifferent this " declaring" is from that search for links
without beginnings or ends, that tracing of utilities and
designs ever terminating in nature, which is boasted of
under certain aspects of science and "natural theology,"
may be elsewhere shown. It is alluded to here, simply
that our meaning may not be mistaken. There is, indeed, an outward glory in God's works to those "who
seek Him in his Word." But from nature alone there
ever comes forth to the thinking soul that query she so
solemnly suggests but never answers —" Where, then,
shall Wisdom be found, and where is the place of understanding? The Deep saith, It is not in me; the Sea saith,
It is not in me." Nature can not tell why God made
17*
197 
198     WHO PUT LIES IN NATURE'S MOUTHII?
her, or why He made man. She might give up all her
secrets to science, if that were ever possible, and yet be
as far as ever from revealing the secret of the universe,
or that wisdom which alone makes nature herself intelligible.
But though we say no to Professor DANA'S queries, we
can not subscribe to the conclusion he would attach to
such denial.  "If such," he says, "be actually the end
of man's contemplations, he would be forced, in just indignation, to write FALSE over the whole face of nature,
and to replace the word GOD with that of DEMON." Who
charges nature with being false? They put lies into her
mouth who find in her what God alone can reveal, and
has chosen to reveal in some other way. They make
her false who would place her at the foundation of what
she can not support, and which God meant should be the
foundation, the available support, of any true living faith
in her.  They thus "write false over the face of nature,"
when they should rather write ignorance and folly on
their own boasting knowledge of her revealings. They
"'replace the word God with that of idol," we will not
say demon, when they make nature the fountain of light,
and all but worship this veiled power, or talk of her as in
any sense a parallel revelation.  There was once a pretty
thing they called natural religion, with its five moral articles, after the style of the Herbert and Bolingbroke
school. Some even thought they could have it, and, at
the same time, the written revelation, too, as a sort of
reflection of the higher creed. Butler swept this all
away.  There has since grown up what may be called
not so much natural religion, as the religion of nature,
or of natural science as a parallel revelation, to say the 
NO MIDDLE GROUND — REVELATION OR AITHEISM. 199
least, with the written Scriptures. The same service
is demanded by the Church in respect to this assumption, and when it is done, then may we expect the "restoration of the old belief," in something like its old
strength. When this confused middle ground is all
cleared up, or men are shown that there is, in truth, no
such middle ground between revelation and atheism, we
may trust the better feelings of humanity, fallen as it is,
for a return to the book of God with a firmer hold, and
a faith more strongly anchored, perhaps, than any the
Church has ever before possessed.
We are not defending the author of The Vestiges, or
adopting his theory. We know not how that theory
might strike us, if compelled to give up revelation.
After such a sad event, there would be but little difference in value between any systems of science or philo
sophy.  But we have not come to that yet.   We hold
the doctrine of one Moses, "a man of God," who derived
his facts from the mind to which there is no unknown in
time and space, or height of being. Yet, still, since
there has been so much said about it, it might be expected
of us to state briefly some of the objections that might
fairly be made to such a doctrine of development of species from species. There are two principal ones that we
have read of, or that occur to the mind as of chief importance. The first is physical, the second metaphysical.
It is not the law or mode now, and from appearances
that we discover, or, rather, the want of appearances,
we infer that it was not the law or method in the long
geological epochs. This is the physical objection. The
proof of it is supposed to be found in the absence of all
transition marks, transition forms, or half-way stages, 
200   PHYSICAL OBJECTION TO DEVELOPMENT.
such as there would have been remains of had there ever
been such a thing in nature, creative or otherwise, as
species changing into species, or a new species coming
from some natural.  We think we have stated the position fairly, and since our stand point as followers of
Moses renders us perfectly impartial here, we may also
give a reply that may be offered, if our scientific friend,
Professor DANA, does not find in such a " hypothetical
statement" the seeds of another alarming heresy. It
might be said by the man who has found, or thinks he
has found, the vestiges, and whom for the sake of distinction we may call the Vestigian, that analogy, as he reads
it, is against such an objection. In the individual birth,
he might say, nature is sudden, though her gestation is
comparatively long, silent, secret. Even in her most remarkable changes, as we know they take place, you do
not commonly find marks, at least any visible or prominent marks, of the transition state.  The preparation is
made slowly, imperceptibly, stilly; the consummation,
when it comes, is quick, clean, and complete. There is
much analogy to show that in her mysterious births,
nature modestly vails her face, and chooses the night,
whether it be of the shorter or the longer day. So may
it be, he would say, in the still higher mystery of specific
generation, higher, it may be called, in some respects,
and yet, in itself, no more a mystery than what is called
ordinary generation. Gestation is long, but birth is sudden and mysterious. He finds many curious facts in
evidence of such a general law. Nature may now be
carrying in her womb embryo powers, and embryo laws,
which no naturalist hath seen, or can discover, and yet
as really there as the power that sends forth the new 
GESTATION LONG, BIRTH SUDDEN AND PERFECT. 201
life in the spring after the long torpor of winter, or quickly
ripens the new fruit in every recurring autumn. True
generative powers are never wholly inert, although
they may lie long apparently dormant. There was
something going on all the time in the grain of wheat
that lay three thousand years in the cloths of the Egyp tian mummy, and then grew again in English earth  It
was doing something all the time; for we can not conceive of a physical power that is not, in some sense, doing,
energizing, producing some effect in time and space;
and yet no science could discover such an energy.  And
so in nature on a wider scale.  The process may be too
noiseless, too deep down for any scientific lens; it may
be too slow for the watching of any experience though it
be that of successive generations; it may be too hidden
for any science to find any of its links; and tie them together in any inductive series; and yet, when the hour
of travail comes, the evolution may be as rapid and as
sudden on the transcending or the wider scale of generation, if there be such wider scale, as we know it to be
comparatively in ordinary or more usual growth. In
nature, thus contemplated, even though there might be
transition movements, there would not be intermediate
transition forms, or, if so, rare and obscurely visible.
When the long cycle of gestation is drawing to its close,
and the long invisibly revolving wheels (invisible because
science can only see powers in their effects) touch at last
the hidden springs to which they have been coming nearer
and nearer at every successive revolution, then comes
forth quickly, and perfectly, the new birth, the new
growth, which may have been as truly in the original 
TRANSITION FORMS.
law, or great wheel of the cycle, as any of the more usual
powers and forms of reproduction.
We need not give at length the rebutter to this, or the
surrebutter. The anti-Vestigian who sticks to nature as
he sees her, may talk of polywogs and tadpoles, and collect his statistics of transition marks that nature, the
present nature, leaves when she does, or seems to do, her
present   work irregularly.  For she does sometimes blunder,-it must be confessed,- and make faults in generation, as well as those that are found in geological strata.
Though possessed of artistic skill of the highest order,
yet,      like other finite and imperfect agents whom God has
made, she sometimes works out an idea badly. And
this,  says the other party, or he might say it, shows that
had there been any such strange transitions in the olden,
the very olden time, there would have been left in the
rocks  some visible traces of such abnormal, or to us abnormal ways. HIe might maintain, also, that the birth
in its highest outward completeness, may be throughout
discovered in the gestation if we watch it close enough,
and      have glasses powerful enough; and he may be right,
wholly or partially right; we think he is right in the
main; especially against any Vestigian opponent, who,
like himself, is content to appeal to no higher authority
than inductive science. Yet still we decide not dogmatically between them             Non nobis tantas componere lites.
Our only business here is to get, if we can, the fair meaning of the Scripture teachings, be they full or scanty, on
these primordial matters into which neither of these contending parties have either right or power to carry their
speculations.  If revelation gives us something, be it
202 
METAPHYSICAL OBJECTION TO DEVELOPMENT. 203
ever so little, by which we may hope to reach a conclu sion, we will make the most of it. If it gives us nothing
of the kind, then we have scientific and philosophic liberty
to adopt either side, without fear of any charge of heresy,
or of any hard names that either the scientific or religious
bigotry may cast upon us.
The other, or metaphysical argument, has a still
stronger look against the Vestigian, and yet we can not
pronounce it perfect. To talk of the higher coming out
of the lower, it says, and says truly, is something worse
than any contradiction of nature's laws; it is a contradiction of ideas.  "What is not in, can not come out."
It would be plus e minore, more from less, and that is
the same as something from nothing.  This is well taken,
we say, if we assume a certain hypothesis, or adopt one
which present facts seem to establish. What is not in.
can not come out. True; but in the absence of any
facts to the contrary, it may be said that it is in, and
therefore may come out. There are, however, such
facts, furnishing proof which we can not deny without
danger of universal scepticism. There is more in the
man than in the monkey, and, therefore, man never could
have been. it the- monkey.  We  need not be troubled
about man here, as we have special Scriptural proof in
his case, and in conservation of his dignity, but some
consideration is also due to the nobler species among the
lower animals, who can not be so well shielded by direct
Scriptural interpretation from this derogating suspicion
of development from seemingly inferior natures.   To
develop the mammalia from the reptiles would also seem
like getting more from less, or bringing out what was
never in.  So the dog seems to have a higher nature, to 
204 WHIIAT DOES GEOLOGY MEAN BY HER TYPES?
have more in him in fact, than ever could have been supposed to be contained, dormant or otherwise, in the stupid masses of half-animated flesh that inhabit the water
or the mud. In the same manner might be stated many
other cases. And yet this is a difficulty for geological
science rather than for a development theory, or partial
development theory, which might be so framed, and on
pretty fair Scriptural proof, as wholly to escape it. We
say partial development theory, for it would have so far
to depart from uninterrupted development, (a thing
which any one who holds it would very cheerfully do,)
as to admit the Scriptural idea of a divine Word, or a
divine interposition, supplying this higher or plus quantity, every time there was such an ascent in the animal
scale, although building each time on the lower physical.
We do not maintain, and have not maintained, even this
in respect to man; we were rather cautious about carrying so far this super-building of the higher upon the lower,
although we speculated and hypothesized some about it;
but if our scientific friends are shocked at it, will they,
pray, tell us, in all clearness and honesty, what they
mean by that doctrine of types of which they say so 
much, and which Professor DANA is so fond of exhibiting, even at the expense of all consistency, in his charges
against the author. We would enquire of him elsewhere
what he means by his " laws;" but we would ask here,
and with a deep sense, too, of the difficulty of understanding him,- What does he mean by his types? If he
does not find the man in the fish, he certainly finds the
fish in the man, the mammalia in the man, the monkey
in the man, the whole caravan of lower animation, we
may say, in this single all-containing homo. We have 
OUR OWIN NATURE TAKEN INTO A HIGHER. 205
no particular objection to this speculation of Geology;
on the whole, we rather like it, although the special
Scriptural account of Adam contents us; but does not
this look something like development? If it is not a de velopment of man out of the lower animals, it is certainly
an envelopment of the lower animals into man; and that
equally affects our dignity by making them physically
bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh. But we need
not be humbled at that thought, or, if humbled, it should
be with joy and penitence, when we remember how a
higher and heavenly nature (if we may use the word
nature in this connection) took upon himself, or rather
into himself, the nature of man, thus raising us from our
deep abyss of animality, internal and surrounding, to a
dignity which no psychological rank could impart, and
no connection with lower orders of being ever diminish.
Geology teaches,- Professor DANA teaches,- that the
lower nature of the fish is the ground on which is somehow built (in type at least the most important part of
the process) the higher nature of the reptile, whilst this
becomes the ground of that which is next above, and so
on until we come to the upper stories of the scale.  Has
this doctrine of types any meaning as taught by science?
Or what does it mean? If we would have anything more
than a most inane figure of speech, it can denote nothing
less than an actual stream of life flowing on without
breaks in its continuity, and yet, from time to time, re —
ceiving from a higher source a new energy and a new
elevation. In this stream, as their constant materiel,
(to use the term in its philosophic sense,) the types are,
impressed,- each time with a higher beauty, a higher
finish, and a higher life.  It is, in fact, when rightly
18 
206    THE TYPES AND THE PLATONIC IDEAS.
viewed, precisely that. doctrine of Platonic ideas against
which Professor DANA attempts to excite the easily excited religious odium. Under another form of language,
and without knowing precisely what it is, he admires it
greatly, and is never tired of introducing it into his article. Some scientific men, of highest note abroad, had
brought this mode of speech into the scientific dialect
Others have adopted it, pleased with the pretty sound,
yet with so little clear knowledge of its real force that
they are ever running into inconsistencies in the use of
it.  Plato represents these types or ineas  in nature as
something distinct from her laws.  They are the eirg
tJ~ox; o5oi, the spermatic words sown in the stream of
natural causality. It is a figure, indeed, and yet something more than a figure. The type is an impression
sinking into the nature as it flows, and not merely a
material mass separately originated, outwardly affected,
and artificially formed, each time, in imitation of something outward that was not vitally present in its organization. The lower type is carried by the stream into the
higher life, and there it receives a real addition of beauty
and design that is transmitted to the next, and so onbecoming more ideal, that is, less gross, sensual, utilitarian,
merely animal, at every step.  Above it all is the great
Architect of Ideas carrying on the creative work- making a nature,-that is, originating a nature, sustaining
that nature against the necessary deterioration of its own
finity, making it the mold to receive the divine ideas, and,
as the plastic stream flows on, impressing upon it continually a higher and still higher idea from that eternal para digm, that timeless thought, which was with Him ~fo TC   ".vxv  "before the ages or the worlds began." 
FALSE TYPES-NOT TYPES BUT IMITATIONS.  207
Whether this doctrine of types, or ideas, be true or
false, the view we have thus presented is the only one
that makes it anything more than an unmeaning simile.
We have endeavored to put some meaning into this lan —
guage Professor DANA is so fond of employing.  Types
sounds well; it is, indeed, a beautiful, as well as most
significant word, but, then, as he uses them they are not
really er-roi, but,.cs not types, but imitations, not
the true in-forming architectural design, as wrought in
and constituting the real molding, but a mere delusive
fresco painting.  This cheating fancy can only make
itself intelligible at all by representing each work of God
as separate, and Deity as each time separately imitating
iin every after production of his creative hand something
which he had done in earlier efforts.  It represents the
Great Printer -with all reverence  be it spoken- as
making over and over again the same type or types, not
only at the printing of every volume, but for every impression of every page, and word, and letter,-nay,
more, as casting again each time, and for every letter, a
new metallic mold. This is not printing. In such a process there are really no types, no molds, but only imitations of them. All this results, if ideas, and types, and
that in which they flow, the continuous life, are not by
themselves, in natura reruan, as real existences as the
matter hard or soft,-yea, more real in any true and
proper notion we can attach to the word reality. In the
other view, or rather want of all definite view, which prevails among some scientific men, there is nothing truly
t,ypical or ideal-nothing even that can be called comprehensible, or of which we can perceive any idea or
meaning.  All comparisons we know, and all words fail 
208  ATTEMPT TO GIVE MEANING TO THE TYPES.
here. There is no difficulty in taking exceptions to any
expressions, however carefully guarded. Still there is a
fitness in this language of types that has struck the mnost
religious as well as the most philosophic minds, although
as sometimes used they are mere sound and shadow from
which all significance and all ideas have departed.
We may well ask, again -Has this doctrine any meangin, as taught in scientific books?  If it has, then what
consistency is there in branding with an odious name a
statement which only attempts to bring out that signifi,cance, and in holding up as a bugbear that Platonism
from which the idea has been filched, although, it may
very well be, without any definite knowledge on the part
,of some who make the greatest parade of the language.'
But we would not lose sight of the only conclusion we
'have sought to establish in this chapter. We may guess,
we may fancy, we may philosophize, we may pursue analogies clear or dim; but, after all, we know nothing of
<origin aside from revelation. The writer would say for
* The author, in that passage of The Six Days of Creation Which has
called out one of Professor DANA'S most pious rebuke s, did not go as far
as this.  He was very cautious-more cautious, perhaps, than he need to
have been.  Instead of thus building the man on the fish, as this scientific
,doctrine of types must do, if it meanls anything, he simply said that j' the
-Scriptures had taught that the huma,n body had been a growth from lower
to hligher, he would not pronounce it monstrous or incredihle.  Pretty safe
,this.  And then he proceeds to show some reasons from Scripture which
would seem to be against it. Professor DAXNA has only left out an if; that
-most unimportant word in a hypothetical statement.  The amount of it,
then, is simply this.  The author said he could believe with the Scriltq)urcs,
what Professor DANA holds without the Scriptures and, we may even say,
without any intelligible idea.  This is the ground, too, on which he pronoun.ces the book "decidedly infidel in its tendency."  It is hard to decide
which is the more striking here, thie unconscious inconsistency, the gross
absurdity, or the extreme narrowness of the charge as comling from one
who would be thought a liberal minded and liberal thinkling man of siecice. 
PSALM CXXXIX,.
himself, that away from this authority he has no-theory of
development or undevelopment; none, at least, that he
would not surrender, in a moment, to any fair demand of
interpretation against it. For the doctrine of ideas he
must confess an exceeding fondness. lie thinks Scripture is not against it, if there is not rather something
which, although in the Hebrew or Oriental way, looks
very much like a recognition of at least a similar view.
"Thine eyes did see our substance yet unformed,* and
Psalm cxxxix, 16.  LXX, Axcare?yacr7v  tou.   Symmachus,  /&og o-rov  es, when 1 weas form2!ess.  Vulgate, imperfectum meumn, my un.
w ztor unfinished.  "'ln the days."  This is not expressed, although
significantly given by the words ill our translation,  "in continunt ce."
The passage, doubtless, refers, in the first place, to ordinary generation in
the maternal womb, but it suggests the greater sense; and may there not
be a transition to the greater sense,-in other words, from the individual
to the mysterious creative generation?  May not that remarkable lan
guage,' t,e lowestparts of the earth," be exegetical of the words in Genesis
ii, 7, " And the Lord God formed man of the earth,",I'   t?  Was
there a process in this primitive formation, or generation, of the first huinanity in the perfecting of the first individual man? Those who say that
the brevity and tone of the language excludes such an idea, should compare with it the expression, Jer. i, 5,-" ifJormed thee in the womb."  Had
we known as little of ordinary, as we do of primitive generation, or the
creative  th, some zealous advocate of literality, as he styles it, might
call a man an infidel for suggesting that the language in this latter text
might be consistent with the idea of a process, long or short, or a gestation, that is, a formation, or making, through a system of law and causal
agency. It may be as much outline language, in the one case as in the
other, and should render us cautious how we make our knowledge, in
fact our ignorance, the infallible measure of the meaning of God's brief yet
mysterious language. There are difficulties, certainly, attending this view
of Psalmn cxxxix, and the mere suggestion of such a transition sense is offered with great diffidence; but there are also difficulties, which every commnentator has felt, as existing in some parts of this language, when we attempt to confine it wholly to the first view. Especially is this the case
with -that strange expression, "the lowest parts of the earth." If a figure
for the maternal womb, it is no where else so employed in Scripture. Still,
in either view, our leading thought of a super-material formation, in some
18*
209 
210    " THE LOWEST PARTS OF THE EARTHi.9"
in thy book our members all were written when as yet
there were none of them"- "in the daeys" when they had
not yet come out in outward being, but were being formed
and " curiously wrought" in the divinely formed womb
of nature, amid the interiora of generic causation,- in
the very depths-" the lowest parts of the earth." Is
it true of the maternal gestation, (which would seem to be
the first meaning of the passage,) and is it not also true,
and may we not suppose it to be affirmed as true of the
higher and older birth of our humanity?  God made the
tree " before it was in the earth,"- that same tree which
the earth afterwards so mysteriously brought forth individually and specifically into outward materiality. He made
it " before it grew,"-that same thing, in one and a most
important sense, which afterwards did grow. He made,from no material seed, or outward material substance, as
way transcending the material, and going continually before the material,
receives the same support. Just as the tree is made before it grows, so
here something is made and regarded as truly it being before it ex-istss-tands outt-visibly, tangibly, outwardly. Every one who studies the passage closely, must feel, we think, that the idea of foreknowledge, simply,
of a future event, or of events as future, does not come up to the mysterious strength and breadth of the language.  Not fore-knowledge, (pre-sci.ece,) but omni-science, is the great thought of the Psalm.  "No darknes.s
can hide from Thee."  " The darkness is light abo?t Him."   He looks
through shades which neither our optical nor our spiritual vision can hope
to penetrate, and sees what IS-sees it directly, not only in the timeless
ideas, but in the very natures he has made to bring it out in chronological
existence.
We might say, in addition, that such a thought of human origin, if we
-could suppose it entertained by the Psalmist, could not be called scientific
or philosophical. Though inspired, it might still lie naturally in his mind,
and in perfect harmony with the ancient thinking about man as the child
of earth, formed somehow in her womb, yet having, at the same time, a
high and heavenly origin not only of his spiritual being, but also of his
physical existence.  "He is of the earth earthy," and yet we are not driven
by this to suppose that there was not an unearthly, a supernatural, a trans-cending process even in his physical creation. 
HOW LID GOD MAKE THE FIRST TREE?   211
we can learn,that same potency which afterwards pro duced its first material seed, and had its first material
semination, after the manner which nature has ever since
exhibited. Did he make the tree by outward plastic
shaping, leaves, branches, roots and all, with its perfect
seed fully formed, a tree that never grew, a seed that
was never born from any parent stem, and then place it in
the earth, just as a human gardener makes a place for the
transplanted oak and gathers the earth around its roots?
If the strangely mysterious language will not allow us to
hold this, then must we take a view, which, whatever
may have been the duration or manner of the growth,
involves all the difficulties about antecedent lawis, and
types, and organizing seminal powers, which some men
would so easily and so ignorantly avoid under cover of
the opprobrious name, as it seems to them, of Platonism.
But the whole ground is too serious and too sacred for
any rash speculation. We are greatly attracted, we say
again, by this doctrine of ideas, and that corresponding
doctrine of types whose adoption by modern science we
would regard as one of its highest glories; yet, still, we
can as truly say, that, if demanded by any clear authority of revelation, we would yield it, at once, to the higher
teacher, if not without a passing regret, yet with a conviction that the truth which comes in its place must far
more than make compensation for its loss. The Bible
here is everything or nothing. On this great question
of origin, as well as on that of destiny, there must be no
thrusting it aside on the ground of its province being
solely the moral, as some would define the term, in distinction from the physical. Who gave them power to
run this line, or what peculiar qualifications have they 
212  THE REAL ATHEISM OF e THE VESTIGES.5
for settling this boundary? In determining the line, and
on both sides of the line, as far as it assumes to teach, the
Bible is everything or nothing. If we can only establish
this position in the minds and hearts of our readers, we
shall have done some service to the Church, for the sake
of which we- would yield any of our own particular interpretations, however prized as falling in with certain views,
or whatever of personal value they may have acquired
as the fruit of severe labor and some faithful study.
The atheism of "The Vestiges" is not simply in its
doctrine of development of new species in nature; for
all science may be defied to show why God might not
have made such a law, and put into nature such a continuation of life, as well as the equally wondrous, if not
in some of its aspects still more wondrous development
of individual life from individual -certainly more wondrous when predicated of the higher organisms, and especially of humanity, than any mere growth of animalculao out of conditions hitherto unperceived by science.
The atheism of The Vestiges, we say, is not in this, but
in its studied exclusion of the divine and supernatural, as
far as in conception they can be excluded, although barely
admitted from a logical necessity at one and that the
remotest end of the scale. It is, along with this, the
ignoring of the Bible, although the author professes all
respect for the Scriptures. We have no right to say
that this profession of respect is any less sincere than
that of the writer in the Bibliotheca. In both, Biblical
interpretation is the boat, and science the strong current
in which it floats, and by which its course is to be controlled and harmonized. The religious world may, perhaps, get its eyes open to discover that if the helm is to 
MlYTIICAL VIEW OF MOSAIC ACCOUNT.
be thus surrendered, it will make but little difference in
what direction the boat drifts. Faith is as truly gone in
the one case as in the other. It is this claim of sciences
and this giving up of the pilotage that is the real natural ism, the more dangerous, perhaps, the more piously it
talks of harmonies. These have not been made from in terpretation. In fact, the very thought is contemptuously
discarded as a false pretense-as a " clapping of the
hands in great glee at the thought of keeping up with the
progress of science," when they are only carried along on
its triumphant wave. Have we not some grounds for
saying, that there is really less heart in such an easy
harmony than in doubt itself? -the sorrowful doubt, it
may be, that rejects all hope of reconciliation.   The
writer feels that he can never stand on any other ground
than that of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures in
the most common sense of the term, and of the absolute
verity of the Mosaic account. If forced from this, he
must " walk mournfully beneath the sun" in utter despair
of any satisfying light from science or philosophy on the
great questions of origin and destiny. But he would not
judge others by his own temperament, or his own position.
If any can hold on in some other resting place, God keep
their feet from slipping. It may be that one who, pressed
with difficulties, takes the Mosaic account as mythical, or
adopts the theory of partial inspiration, may really have
a more honest and hearty love for the Bible than others
who claim a higher orthodoxy. It may be, that he sees
not, or that he shuts his eyes to the difficulties that press
upon his own lower path, but it is very possible, too, that
he may have a deeper sense of the preciousness of the
Scriptures, and that he would feel more grief for their
213 
214      NO HEART IN SCIENTIFIC HARMONIES.
total loss, than many, whether in the scientific or religious ranks, who prattle away about harmonies, and yet
have too little hearty interest in the great question of a
written revelation, to make them feel a doubt, or gird
themselves to the encounter of a serious difficulty.
-W 
THE SIX DAYS AS FOUND BY SCIENCE.
CHAPTER VIII,
THE SIX DAYS AS FOUND BY SCIENCE.
The Writer in the Andover Bibliotheca-His Nebular The  ory- The Reviewer finds no Didfculties-A hearty Faith
is not so easily satisfied-The chief interest of the Mosaic
Account-Ist. Its Supernatural Character-2d. Its Hex  ameral Division-The true Greatness of the Mosaic Ac  count- Greatness of Moses as compared with Aristotle or
Bacon —Professor DANA'S Seven Points- Of the First
Three Geology knows nothing-Her Protests or Acceptan  ces of no Value-Rests in Nature- The Scientific Scheme
of Creation-As well Six Hundred Days as Six-The
Reviewer's Boat driven by two Forces- The Word Begin  ning-Sudden leap from the Birth of the Light to the
Growing of the Mosses-Immense Distances from which
Light travels- Want of Chronological Harmony-Im  mense Hiatus in the Second Day-A zModest Note-Spec  tral Light of Geology- The Rakia or Firmament- W'as
it the Breaking up of the Nebular Rings?-Had Moses
any such View, either as Fact or Conception?
IT would seem to be a part of Professor DANA'S plan, in
his two Andover articles, to give a scientific theory of
Creation.  The book reviewed  is condemned, not so
much for a failure in the only thing it professed to do,
.hat is in its interpretation of the Scriptural account, (for
of this the reviewer has not a word to say,) as for some
215 
SCIENTIFIC RELIGIOMSff.
deficiency in not coming fully up to that nebular hypothesis of creation which has become so great a favorite
with certain scientific writers, and with which they so
please some of the religious people delighted as they are
to be taught that Moses is so much more scientific than
they had ever imagined, and still more delighted to find
the Bible actually believed by such wonderfully clever
men. It strengthens their faith greatly. The testimony
of a mere theologian, or of a mere Bible student, would
not have half the value. It is this assumption of the
widest cosmological view, that in the estimation of some
minds gives the article in the Bibliotheca Sacra a credit,
perhaps, that would not have been conceded to a less
ambitious attempt. And yet it is not easy to make out
what the outlines and features of this hypothesis truly
are. It is presented in such a rambling method, and
there are so many ambitious suggestions that lead the
writer away from any regular path, that it is very difficult
to determine what it really is in itself, and still more difficult to determine that "harmony" between it and the
Scriptures, without which the title of the article is all a
deceptive misnomer, in other words- a pious fraud.
He makes the Mosaic creation commence with the very
beginning of matter and all worlds. It is cosmological
in its widest sense, embracing the nebulae and nebular
condensations, the throwing off the rings that formed the
solar system, and that whole process which belongs as
much to the material formation of the remotest visible
or invisible bodies, as of our earth and moon. There is
no other meaning to be attached to his remarks on the
author's use of the word beginning.  He  is altogether
hypercritical, or this word " beginning," as employed
216 
FINDS NO DIFFICULTIES.
in the Bible account of creation, is taken by him for the
absolute beginning of all material existence, the widest
in space, the remotest in time. But it is folly to talk of
Professor DANA'S views of the Bible account. What he
presents does not lean upon the Bible at all, and he takes
no pains even to give it that appearance. In general
it marches on independent of the Scriptures, all along
assuming a harmony, but made out on no Bible grounds.
It is taken for granted that it must be so, and this, per haps, to a careless reader, might look like a reverence for
the Scriptures too profound to allow the question of dif ference to be even so much as raised. Now we have
not the least doubt of Professor DANA's sincere belief in
the Scriptures, and yet we venture the paradox that a very
hearty faith would not have been so quiet, so calm, in its
undisturbed assurance of a hypothetical harmony. The
immeasurable importance of the questions concerned
would have made it more anxious. It would have found
more difficulties, such as a hearty study of the Bible ever
finds, although, at the same time, it gets from the same
source a light, and strength, and grace, we may say,
to overcome them.  Now this is a peculiar feature of
Professor DANA'S articles; there are no difficulties in
them, none whatever; everything is as easy as the
latest geological theory. All he had to do was to weave.
in his nebular hypothesis in the way best adapted to show
off this latest science in some of its more specious aspects.
To look into the Bible, and to study the Bible with the
hearty purpose of seeing how all this really agreed with
the language of Moses, would have been troublesome.
It would have been to meet with perplexities. There
would have been some danger, too, of running on posit
19
217 
A HEARTY ANTAGONISM.
tions that certain minds might, perhaps, call infidel. It
would have required, moreover, let us boldly say it, a
patience and a discrimination of mind that are not demanded by the easy natural sciences, and we do not except even Geology from the remark. It is easier to form
theories here than to get at the fair meaning of old words,
and to lay a good foundation for the interpretation of an
ancient document. It is this absence of all difficulties
in the Andover articles that we would especially present
to the reader's notice. If he is intelligent he can not
help drawing the right inference. It must be seen, however, that it gave their writer in some respects the advantage as a critic. Having nothing in his own way, he
had the more leisure to make objections, and find difficulties in the way of others. To use the language of a
gentleman of high scientific standing_-" having no real
disagreement with the ultimate conclusions of the work,
he had the fairer opportunity for charging on the book
faults and deficiencies which, even if real, had nothing
to do with its true design. Had there been a hearty
antagonism on the merits, instead of a spirit of mere scientific petulance, it would have given a different tone to
the whole article. Such a hearty antagonism on the
merits, would naturally have compelled something like
a fair statement of the real positions of the book assailed,
for the very purpose that they might be the more squarely
and availably met."
But to return to Professor DANA'S theory of creation.
We see but little of outline or feature in it any waynothing but that which the next general change in geological language, and geological speculation, may destroy
as easily as it has created. But how does it agree with
218 
AS WELL SIX HUNDRED DAYS AS SIX.
the Scriptural account? This is here the question, the
only question. Where is the Omnific Word, the Brood ing Spirit, the naming, the dividing, the working-  the
rest? Not but that these ideas, or some of them, may be
suggested by the scientific theory if such theory is read
by the lamp of the Bible,- but are they words or ideas
that would have ever come out of any discoveries of science alone, and upon its own ground? Hie has much to
say of light and life; talks eloquently of types and laws,
taking good care, however, not to have much meaning in
the phrases, and specially avoiding all the great and real
difficulties connected with these most mysterious ideas.
He preaches finely about "God in nature," trying to represent the author as very heathenish on these points, or
at least far less orthodox than the Reviewer. He tells us
why God made mammalia, when he did, and why he did
not make them before. He has much to say,- in fact
he talks everywhere about " the harmony;" but where
do we find the six days? No man can read this pretentious article, so ostentatiously entitled "' Science and the
Bible," and derive from it any reason why there should
be six days any more than sixty or six hundred. In the
book they are the prominent feature.   In interpretation
they could not be overlooked. They were the res geste,
the real matters of fact narrated. In the scientific theory
they are made entirely subordinate. They are to be
taken only in a very loose and general way. It is one
of the points of the harmony where we must not be too
pressing.  The scientific side is so taken up with that
other idea of antiquity that it almost wholly overlooks the
remarkable Scriptural feature of the hexameral succession, so distinctly defined by the regular supernatural
219 
IDEA OF DURATION SUBORDINATE.
division, and of so much more importance, both in itself,
and for the consistency of the narrative, than any duration be it long or short. It is just as much a succession,
whether passed through in six very long days, or in six
very short days.  The six-fold aspect preserved, nothing
more need be asked for the integrity or consistency of
Scripture; but take this away, or render it confused, or
indefinite, with nothing but forced arbitrary lines to mark
the divisions, and the fair face of the narrative is blotted;
that by which we know it is no longer recognized; its
identity is gone.
The other idea of duration is subordinate to this. We
believe the Bible language to be fully and fairly consistent with the most remote antiquity,-  using the term
relatively as compared with historical times now mea"sured and passing upon the earth; yet still short times
might satisfy the same language, especially in the absence
of any outward view that might give interest or importance to one or the other aspect. Now, it is this idea of
antiquity that has been regarded as the legitimate prize
of Geological science. Hence the absurd sensitiveness
-at the claim of discovery from any other source, even
though that source be the Word of God. Hence, too,
the strange disposition, not only to sacrifice to this every
,other feature of the Mosaic account, but even to assail
with unfair criticism and odiously disparaging epithets
-any effort that may arrive at the same or a similar conclusion by the hermeneutical road.
We have spoken of the six day division as being a very
prominent and indispensable feature of the Mosaic history
of creation. But it is not even here we are to look for
its' highest interest. This lies rather in the fact of its
220 
TRUE GRANDEUR OF SCIENCE.
being a supernatural revelation from God himself. It is
its own supernaturalism, whatever it may reveal of the
natural, or of any other facts. In some previous remarks
we may seem to have disparaged the objects both of science and of revelation, by representing our greatest times
and spaces as such comparative infinitesimals. But, in
truth, such a view does not at all affect the latter, or diminish its true greatness. We might say the same of
science when considered in a proper light. The true
grandeur of science is this discovery of its own littleness.
It is most sublime when most lowly, most truly great,
when, instead of boasting of its exploits in the spirit of
our scientific Reviewer,  "it puts its hand upon its mouth
and its mouth in the dust,"-if not in the true fear of
the Lord, at least in the awe of the Infinite and the Unknown.  But taking science as exhibited to us by such
writers, it can never have any real or absolute greatness.
It must ever be a quantitative thing, and can, therefore,
never be certain of anything more than an infinitesimal
rank. It has no other rule than that of amount in some
aspect-amount in time, in space, or in power.  This is
the only value it knows or can know,- how long a thing
exists, how much space it occupies, what it does, or the
amount of dynamical action it manifests in such spaceand these are all comparative. Their rank ever varies
with a supposed extent of the universe. Their value,
intellectual as well as physical, ever sinks with the supposition, the rational supposition, of an unknown immeasurably if not infinitely exceeding the utmost that is
known or can be known respecting them. In the same
ratio sinks the intellectual rank of minds whose utmost
attainment in the knowledge of the universe can only be
19*
221 
222    TRUE GREATNESS OF THE SCRIPTURES.
measured on the same comparative scale. HIence it is
no dream, no fancy, but a most sober deduction from the
seeming infinity we see stretching out around us and
above us, when we say, that the times of the scientific
man may be infinitesimal moments, his worlds, of which
he has so much to say, miscroscopic motes, himself an
animalcule, and his boasted knowledge, as compared
with higher intelligences, but the dullest instinct of the
worm. This may be true. Leave him to his science
alone, and all her boasted laws and analogies would go
to show that in the immensity of space, time, and power,
it actually is true.
Such is its greatness on its own favorite scale of measurement. Nothing can protect it from the rigid application of its own rule of quantity in one of these three
degrees.   Such is the greatness of Geology, in itself considered. But the Scriptures have a different greatness,
an absolute greatness not depending for its rank or value
on any known or unknown size or age of the universe.
It has the same greatness whether there be one earth, or
billions of solar and stellar systems, whether its creative
times be six solar days, or a thousand years, or ten thou,sand times ten thousand ages. It has a greatness differing essentially from this, and which no comparison, or
mere quantitative relations, can ever affect.   In what,
then, does it consist? We answer,- Not in its times and
divisions, great as they are, not in its antiquity, or its
revelations of antiquity, comparatively vast as we believe
,them to be, but in the fact of its being a revelation. This
takes it at once out of the inconstant and ever depressing
Tule of quantity, by connecting it directly with the Eter;nal and the Infinite. It is the fact that it is God speak 
NOT COMPARATIVE B3UT CONSTANT.
ing to us worms of the dust- the Great Soul of the Universe (we are not afraid to use the language) throwing
nature aside, taking off her vail, manifesting his ineffable
personality by talking directly to us, not waiting till by
searching nature we find out God, but finding us who
were otherwise eternally lost,-graciously coming down to
us through all space and time and height of being, telling us of himself, and how he made this world in which
we live, giving us some of the steps in the process, and
that, too, in language wherein the common mind is on a
par with the most scientific, revealing to us wherein he
made use of nature, and how from time to time (be they
long or short) he came forth personally from his own
supernatural celestial sphere.  This is the interest of the
Mosaic narrative, an interest, we say, remaining the same
constant quantity whether there be none, or billions of
other worlds beside this, or billions of other ages before
our mundane history commenced. There is a sublimity
in the other features; but it sinks in presence of this fact
that the wondrous history itself is a voice from the sphere
above nature, from the " firmament that is over  the
heads of the living powers," a voice from the Eternal
and the Infinite, talking to us and telling us what science
never could have told, and for which she never would
have had even a language, had not revelation, from the
earliest times, furnished the ideas and conceptions on
which such language is founded. She might have found
the same facts she now finds, and traced the same phenomena, and the same sequences of phenomena; but she
would never have known creation, she would never have
found the supernatural, she would never have risen above
the sphere of physical causation. As long as men kept
223 
224   MOSES GREATER THAN NEWTON - WHY?
this early light, the "visible things did manifest to them
the Eternal Power and Godhead." When they lost it,
as Paul tells us, the religious instinct remained, but it
sank into that nature worship of which all heathen mythologies, and nearly all heathen philosophy, were but the
direct or mediate products.
This, then, is that other kind of greatness which the
unphilosophical science, if we may employ the term for
an important yet too little recognized distinction, can
never reach. This is the greatness which is dependent
on no real or hypothetical size of the universe sinking
every part into nothingness by its comparison with the
whole. This is a greatness which is measured by no
flowing terms of quantity, but by a constant equation
giving the constant term of nearness to God the great
central heart of the world. It is the value that never
changes; it is the theo-centric position that has no parallax. It is that which made Moses so much greater than
Aristotle, or Archimedes, or Galileo, or Newton. This
is the greatness that makes one verse of the revelation
given through Moses of more value, and its right interpretation of more real importance, than all the demonstrations of the Mechanique Celeste, and all the discoveries of all the Geologists. It is not the extent of the
supernatural announcemeut, nor the amount made known
to us respecting the world; for when we are once assured
that the divine voice has truly broken through nature,
there may be as much ground for faith in the scantiness
as in the abundance of the revelations.   The silence in
respect to that over which the vail still remains, may be
even more expressive, more sublime, having more reli gious awe, and thus producing a closer confidence, than 
REVELATION EQUALLY GREAT THOUGH PARTIAL. 225
might have come from its removal, even if our souls could
bear the unveiled aspect of what God has not seen fit to
make known. This might be our reply to some who
think that the creative revelation is degraded, and made
unworthy of Deity, by being supposed to be confined to
our inferior earth instead of taking in the whole universe
in space and time. rThe rational soul longs for the super naturnal; it listens for the supernatural; yet let it be
assured of the voice and a whisper may suffice it. A
revelation thus given may have respect to the smallest
part of the kosmos, to a satellite, or a satellite of a satellite, and yet, on this very account of its being a revelation, have something for us more precious, immeasurably
more glorious, than all that any inductive science has
discovered, or may yet discover in the widest fields of
space and time. The most astonishing thing of all, is
the fact that this poor natural knowledge-poor, we
mean, in the attitude assumed by the Reviewer, though
having a beauty and an honor when it chooses to be modest - should so dare to put itself face to face with the
Scriptures; not in the attitude of a manly though impious antagonism, but in the far more insulting spirit of
petulant rivalship. For we can give it no other name
than this when it pretends to have superseded the necessity of interpretation, and claims priority of discovery, as
though it were some contemptible quarrel about the invention of a new machine, or the first sight of some
shower of meteoric stones, or of some broken asteroid, or
some worthless comet still roaming among the unsettled
irregularities of nature. There are scientific men of
noblest stamp; we have professed our sincere respect
for them and can not be repeating it for fear of being 
226 A GREAT WONDER REVEALED BY SCIENCE.
misunderstood. But it may be also said, that among all
the wonders science reveals, there is nothing so truly
wonderful as the fact that some of its professors can stand
in the presence of these four great Scriptural ideas, the
Word, the Spirit, the Ineffable Working, the Divine Repose, and yet babble away about their " rock written
revelation," when their highest decypherings of these
old palimpsests, even where they reveal some clear and
orderly ideas, do not so much as make an approach to
these transcending verities of the Mosaic account.  They
are still in a region far below, if not in space and time,
yet in the rank and grandeur of idea. We have a specimen of this in what may be called Professor DANA's
summing up. He makes seven points. The first three
refer to the great primordial questions-the true ideas
of nature, of matter, of natural causality, or growth as
having its origin in a Divine Word, and its efficiency in
a Divine Spirit. The others relate to the phenomenal
facts as they occur in the order of the Scriptures, or the
supposed order of science. With regard to the last four
points, " Geology," says the Reviewer, " can make little
exception to the author's conclusions;" —implying that
she differs from him on the first three. Geology is very
gracious here; but need any intelligent reader be told
that all this parade of points is shown to be absurd, and
all this graciousness of Geology is nullified at once, by
the simple consideration that these first three must, from
their very nature, lie entirely out of her domain, so that
her protests, or her acceptances, should she make any,
are really of no value whatever. Revelation may settle
these points, or leave them unsettled. Philosophy may
legitimately entertain them as matters of abstract specu 
RESTS IiN NATURE.
lation; but to Geology, or natural science, in the corm mon acceptation of the term, they belong not at all, and
no true man of science who is, at the same time, philosophical enough to understand what truly falls within
her province, would ever think of claiming them as subjects of any inductive or scientific decision.
In a similar absurd tone of authority, the Reviewer
asserts that "the intervals of rest in nature which Professor L. speaks of, are not in the records of the earth."
Has he decyphered those records? Has he clearly interpreted even their title pages? Is he sure that he understands the language in which they are written?  Men
may get hold of an alphabet to some imperfect extent, as
is the case in respect to some of the Assyrian inscriptions,
and yet the words, much more the meaning, remain a
deep enigma. Does he certainly know what really is
retrogradation in these movements,- what part of the
cycle is directly onward and upward, what is the reverse,
or the apparently reverse direction, or what is the standard by which up and down, higher and lower, are really
to be determined? He contradicts himself, moreover, in
the very next sentence; or else it has no meaning.
" The longest suspension of life in North America took
place, as nearly as we can learn, between the coal period
and the middle reptilian." There the reader has it as
exact as it can be fixed by the geological almanack,
within a few thousand years more or less; or "as near
as we can learn" about such ancient matters; a very
modest proviso truly. An occasion for the display of
geological technics and scientific exactness blinds the
writer, as usual, to the inconsistency in which they involve him. A suspension of life certainly looks very
227 
228  SCIENCE TAKES REFUGE IN A PRIORI IDEAS.
much like a "rest in nature."  The Reviewer, however,
shudders at the impious thought that there may be deteriorations or backward movements in the physical history.
It is in the way of the favorite notion of an ever right
onward, right upward, or rectilineal progress. And this
might be rational, if physical development, or the perfection of nature, were the great end in the divine kingdom.
This end, to be sure, is all that science can legitimately
look for, as long as she confines her vision within her own
field, and even this she can only guess. As she walks
alone among the catacombs of geology, with her dim lamp
revealing more darkness than light, with death and dissolution all around her, and the ghosts of long extinguished
life starting up everywhere in the midst of former ruin
and decay, what can she do, or rather what can her
votary do, but to assume that there is some clue to the
labyrinth, some path that amid all these windings and
turnings may lead again to the upper air of heaven, thus
making every seemingly backward or circular movement
a progress after all. But where does science, or rather
the scientific man, get this idea? Nature does not teach
it to him. She reveals broken planets, extinguished
stars; her nebula may be systems going out, the smoke
and cinders of old wasted worlds. What has been may
be again; this is certainly fair Baconianism; the shifting
scenes may bring once more upon the stage the old catastrophies with ten-fold greater ruin. What right has science, frightened by this, to leave her old inductions, to
abandon in terror her facts, of which, at other times she
boasts so loudly, and run for shelter to a priori ideas, or
to the lessons really learnt from revelation but which
she pretends to read in the worn rocks of the earth and 
NO SURE EVIDENCE  OF PROGRESS IN NATURE. 229
the shadowy nebulae of the skies. In nature there is no
sure evidence of progress, that may not, at any time, be
destroyed by the signs of some greater catastrophe.  If
we believe in a progress on the whole, or of the whole, it
is an a priori idea having its birth in an irrepressible longing of the soul, instead of any reliable conclusion of in ductive science; but even such a progress of the whole,
as a whole, may be perfectly consistent, scientifically consistent, with the relentless sacrifice and destruction of
parts,- yea, of parts having an immeasurably higher
rankthan any that science can assure us of as belonging
to us or to our world. But when we think of parts alone,
the highest known parts, nothing but a revelation from
God can give us assurance of exemption, or any hope of
progress or even of rest that can fear no change. Let
revelation go, let appearances be our only guide, and
what is our position on the great wheel, that any human
science should pretend to determine in what direction it
is turning, or the angle of curvature as it slowly bends
from the apparent tangent line, or on what side of us is
that unknown centre of motion from which the upward or
downward, or advancing or retrograding course of that
curvature is to be reckoned?'
When viewed in the light of science alone, there is much pertinency,,
and much interest, in a strange query started by Aristotle in his Book ot
Problems, (if it be his,) Sect. xvii, Prob. 3: "The question is, how shall
we take the terms before and after, old and young? Or, if there can be a
beginning, a middle, and an end, in a system which goes through all stages,
and returns into itself, why may not we be in the beginning, as well as
anywhere else? And if, moreover, there is a circle of the universe, why
may not the birth and going out of things be such that they continually
come again, and again perish? On which supposition of a cycle, there
could neither be beginning nor end properly; nor would there be any ab.
solute before and after, such as would come from being nearer to, or moredistant from, any fixed beginning.  Nor would we, in that sense, be before
20 
230  WORLDS MAY DECAY AS WELL AS TREE,
But to pursue this thought, full of interest as it is,
would lead us too far out of our proposed path. Professor DANA says he can not read even rests, much less
decays in nature. Other men, however, of highest science, say they have discovered them, or what looks very
much like them.  Analogy, too, might teach that if there
are decays in the lesser organisms, and this goes on as
far as we can see, there may be also decays in the greater.
If the flower, the fruit, the tree, the animal, the man, the
nation, the race even, may decay, so also may a world;
and so all nature, the universal physical kosmos, may
have its growth, its maximum, its retrogradation, perhaps
in time its disappearance or going back among things
unseen; or it may suffer any whole or partial changes
as subservient to some higher world than nature, or some
higher state of being, to which all physical existence may
be regarded as introductory and probationary.
Our Reviewer can not find in the rocks, or the "records of the earth," as he calls them, "any evidence of
nature's rests," and, therefore, he holds to an eternal
right onward physical progress.* But if he can not read
it in the records of the earth, has he never read in the
Book of the Lord, that even " the Heavens grow old,"
others, nor would they be before us-and this because of the coltinuity,'~
ereg OuvSEeiag.  We have given a very free translation, but preserving
the thought. It is certainly a strange idea, and yet science might be challenged for a better view of the time existence of the universe than that of
this repeating cycle. An everlasting right onward progress, without rests,
maxima, or perfections such as the Bible discloses, would be far more difficult, besides seeming to necessitate a similar past.
This would seem to necessitate an eternal growth and progress in the
past. But the natural or scientifico-religionism can not be consistent.
The past eternity of nature or matter is a horrid dogma;  its eternal futurity
of progress is not only most scientific, but most pious! 
THE s NEW HEAVENS AND NEW EARTH."  231
(for this is the fair meaning of the Hebrew I, Psalm
cii, 27): They wear away through age; they are wasted
and renewed like a garment; "like a vesture are they
folded up and laid aside," when purposes in God's kingdom that the science of Newton is as incapable of fathoming as that of Thales, may require that nature should
decay, go out, yea, at some period, perhaps, be wholly
dispensed with in the higher economy of the olams.
The Scriptures also tell us of a "renewed Heavens and a
renewed earth," when "the former things shall have
passed away," and even the old book of the Heavens, so
much more glorious than the dark book of the rocks,
shall be " rolled up as a scroll," to make way for the still
grander volume of the grander spiritual dispensation.
What shall be in the future may have been in the past.
We prefer these ideas of the Bible to any guesses derived
from the rocks; even though it had not been that a science equal in all respects to that which finds no deteriorations in nature had found just the contrary. There
are various readings of this old book of the rocks; he is
a rash critic who decides dogmatically about disputed
meanings without waiting for the full variorum edition
which may, perhaps, be in time expected. To read the
Bible by them, at least before that time, would be something like the parallel attempt now made to confirm the
dark annals of the kings of Judah from the supposed
clearer records of Assyrian dynasties, or to illume the
visions of Isaiah by the phosphorescent light that is dug
out of the mounds of long-buried Ninevah. We would be
far from disparaging the scientific interest in the one cases
or the deep historical interest in the other.  It is the false
parallelism in which each are sometimes placed with the 
SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF CREATION.
Scriptures that calls out our remark.  What a terra umbrarum would Geology be if we had no higher truths
than science furnishes? HIlow dark would be the resurrection of these long buried cities if they did not rise
before us in the light which the Bible itself sheds over
their mournful ruins?
Some further attention is due to the scientific theory
of creation presented in the two articles in the Andover
Bibliotheca Sacra.   We find it almost as much a chaos
as the condition of the earth on the first day. There
seems to have been in the writer's mind a disproportioned
combination of two schemes, one the purely scientific, as
he would say, expressed in scientific language  with a
great display of its technical richness, the other forced
'into-some faint resemblance to the Scriptural division.
-It is evident, however, that this does not come out natur:ally. It would never have been thought of, had it not
been for the obvious propriety of having something to
justify the title of the article-" Science and Revelation."  It is a division that does not occur to scientific
men in other countries where the boat drifts on a freer
,current, and the real influence from which it is derived
is shown in the comparative disposition of the two author"ties. The boasted harmony is all on one side. It is
the swelling and jubilant song of science, with a very
slender thread of Scriptural accompaniment. If it were
not so serious a subject, we might say that the full and
crowded notes of the one are in almost ludicrous contrast
to the few thin quavers that here and there betoken the
presence of the other.  It is, in fact, an accompaniment
more marked by its rests than by its notes; and especi
232 
FINDS NO DIFFICULTIES.
ally may we say this of that second bar where a long
semi-breve silence fills up the whole mysterious space.
That there is really no heart in this harmony, is shown,
moreover, by the fact of the writer's so completely shunning all difficulties. These met the interpreter directly
in the face. Hie could not go round them, nor over
them, nor keep silence about them. The critic, however,
has very easy work; he may notice them or not, just as
he pleases, or just so far as it suits his science to recognize them. There is, for example, the remarkable language of the second day wholly ignored. There is the
still stranger language of the third and fifth,-" Let the
earth bring forth"-" Let  the waters bring forth."
This, too, is passed over in utter silence, unless we regard as a notice of it the attempt to charge the book
with naturalism in the interpretation, without, however,
any effort to show how the idea of natural growth could
be kept out of the fair exegesis. But it may be, that
the critic admits, in some way, the natural growth of the
first plants. He does not believe, perhaps, that they
were all outwardly made, like waxen toys, made roots and
all, and then stuck in the earth to grow or that thus the
earth " might bring them forth." Was it the outward
formation of an outward seed outwardly sown in the
earth by the Almighty hand? That has the same difficulties; besides, we are plainly told that the first seeds
grew, in some way, out of the first plants. Was it the
creation of a seminal power older than both tree and seed
-in other words, the creation of a law, force, or causal
power, of which the outward material tree, instead of
being the germinative source, was itself, in truth, the
first effect_? That would look like creating them before
20*
233 
PHILOSOPHICAL DIFFICULTIES.
they were in the earth, before they had outward material
being, whether this before was to be taken in the order
of nature or in that of time,-a piece of Platonic mysticism, (take it in either sense,) in which the Reviewer
finds "no  edification."    It would be  the creation of
ideas and laws, and these, as separate from their products, are things hard to be conceived of. Aside, then,
from the philological, there are great philosophical difficulties attending every'view we may take of this most
mysterious process of creation,-being in fact almost
equally mysterious on whatever side we may survey them.
What appears very simple in one aspect, is full of obscurity when contemplated in another. The direct outward
making of every new material form, and the imitation,
each time, of some former type, without any real growth
therefrom, or physical connection therewith, would appear to some minds perfectly easy and intelligible; to
others it would be most unmeaning, and, therefore, most
difficult of comprehension.   Why  could  not God have
made the higher creations at once without the previous
imperfect stages that must come and pass away before
them? There is no science that can even begin to answer this question. The lizard without toes must go before the lizard that has toes, and a most scientific zoologist entertains an audience with this as a marvellous
proof of the divine wisdom and omniscience.* We must
*The lecturer expatiated on this at great length. Some lizards had toes
on their right foot, some on their left, and some on both feet. Some had
one toe, some two toes, some three, and some no toes at all. It was in all
evangelical latitude, and so there was adapted to it a very fine peroration
,on the Divine plan and Divine Omniscience as displayed in this arrange ment, and the glory of science in thus revealing it. It put us inll mind of
the impious yet frank declaration of the French atheist, that "the heav.ens declare the glory of the astronomer."  It did look as if the glorification
2a4 
SKILL IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF LIZARDS.  285
admit, of course, the divine presence in every real transition from less to more; but where is the wisdom of
these repetitions, or the need of these imitations, if there
be no physical connection between the stages, no connection, in some way, of a varied yet unbroken life? There
is no vaticination in it for the lower irrational race, and
of zoology or of the zoologist, was really the uppermost thought in the
mind of the lecturer.  Nor can this remark be deemed uncharitable, when
it is borne in mind that all this rapture about the divine plan in the construction of lizards, was from one who has so vehemently opposed and denied
the great central truth in the divine plan for the salvation of human souls,
But in itselfthe whole argument is a deception aud an abuse of language
There is a plan in these lizards, undoubtedly, and so there would be if
they had been made in any other manner, with toes, or without toes. But
as far as science can see, it is a plan terminating in itself, it is an adapta.
tion terminating in itself, or in something of the same physical order.  A
follower of Democritus and Lucretius admits of series and order in nature,
and so, in one sense, of plans. They said it was the nature of nature to
work so, and so they even held to a kind of instinctive intelligence in nature, but were no less atheists still.  The divine Wisdom or Omniscience,
of which the lecturer speaks so confidently, is quite a different thing. It
has respect not to the plan of the lizard alone, in itself considered, or as
a means of showing curious arrangement, and thus the glory of science in
discovering it, but to the connection of the lizard, the serpent, the animals
noxious and innoxious, and of man himself, in the great plan of being.
The facts, in themselves, may  be very curious, very worthy of scientific
exposition, they may show an admirable adaptation in the toes of the lizard to the use the lizard makes of them; but when we talk of the divine
wisdom in this thing there is a higher question-Why was the lizard made
at all, and the rattlesnake with his fangs, and the horrid monsters whose
long-lifeless remains the geologists find in the rocks,-those horrid monsters whose teeth were so admirably adapted to devour other contempo.
rary monsters in the pre-Adamic ages. The zoologist examines those ancient teeth, he exhibits them to his staring audience, he points out'how
well adapted they were to their devouring purposes, he expatiates on the
wisdom and omniscience of God as therein displayed, and the religious
world is delighted to find that men who know so much can talk so piously.
It begins to be thought that those who are so orthodox on the genus Lacerta, can not be so far out of the way in their doctrine of the genus Homo
and the human pluralities. But there are some who are too irreverent, or
it may be, have too little faith, for the ready reception of this naturalizing
piety. As they listen to the aeeount of these pre-Adamic monsters, na. 
236   SKILL AS DISTINGUISHED FROM WISDOM.,
for the higher there would seem to be other and more
direct modes of conveying the lesson of the divine presence and the divine omniscience,- such as we find in
the First of Genesis, the Twentieth of Exodus, and the
One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Psalm.   Of course, we
are here only expressing our own difficulties, and not
ture's curious adaptations are all regarded as of inferior moment, if not utterly forgotten, in view of another suggested query that overwhelms the
thinking soul.  The thought will come up that every time those horrid
jaws have closed, it has been on some mortal agony, some writhing, quivering flesh, some palpitating system of sensation as wonderfully harmonized, and as well adapted as the cruel teeth themselves to show the marvellous skill exhibited in nature's plans. Explanations of this are now and
then attempted by some of our physico-luoralists; but they seem less than
superficial; they do not even touch the surface of the matter; if they have
any effect, it is only to suggest another difficulty, ever greater than the one
they attempt to solve. Skill, indeed! There is no doubt of the skill. That
may be detected in abundance.  But "where shall wisdom be found? The
Sea saith it is not in me; the Deep saith it is not in me; Sheol and Abaddon, the Grave and Dissolution, say we have'heard a rumor thereof with
our ears: It is not found in the land of the living."  And yet one who thus
queries may believe in the Divine Wisdom and Omniscience as strongly
as the scientific lecturer-perhaps with a stronger faith: for he goes by
faith here and not by sight, whether it be ordinary or scientific vision. He
can not wait until his natural knowledge connects together all those in-umerable links which would make such belief an unanswerable inductive
conclusion. God has given him a better guide in certain feelings and ideas
of the soul, and when they have become dim or dead, grace, it may be, has
renewed them, and so he believes, most rationally believes, where he call
not see. He believes in,the wisdom, where he can not see the wisdom.
God is certainly wise, though nature were even still more full of enigmas.
God is certainly good, he would say, though his lot were cast in some region of the physical universe where the natural adaptations for producing
pain far outnumbered all that are found in our own Valley of Baca. We
have no wish to underrate what is really curious and interesting in science
per se, and such would we regard the lecturer's facts in relation to the lizard. We would not wish uselessly to disturb any pious sentiment, though
fed merely by natural contemplations. But it does seem to us, that that
higher ground of faith which every truly religious miind must admit to be
necessary, is obscured, to say the least, by the modern tendency to rest in
mere physical adaptation, and to applaud that physical religionism whose
main worship is ever the laudation and glorification of science. 
WISDOM WHERE WE CAN NOT SEE.
making our own exceedingly limited vision the measure
of the divine intelligence. There may be, there must be
vast wisdom where we can not see; God has given man
a priori intelligence enough to see that, and this may,
perhaps, be one great difference between him and the
lower animals, with whom sense and experience are the
only measure of things and thought. The mode of creation is full of difficulties, philosophical as well as philological. This is our position here. But science, the
science we are characterizing, passes glibly over them,
or goes silently around them. At all events, it does not
think of encountering them.  This  may  be ewing to
modesty in "the Student of Nature," or it may be that
he is so dazzled by his own' light, that he does not see
the difficulties that lie below his facts, and which trouble
other minds of a different temperament, and a lower order of thinking.
We must, however, make the exceptional remark, in
passing, that Professor DANA seems to have had some
trouble in his mind about the birds. Hie looks into the
Bible here, and finds that our old translation represents
them as the product of the waters. This is rather startling, although, in itself, not a particle more mysterious
than the other language, and so he resorts to Professor
Bush to show that the Hebrew may be rendered " Let
the birds fly," -thus making the language indefinite,
and getting rid of the seemingly troublesome connection
with the waters. We have certainly very high respect
for Professor Bush, both as a man and as a scholar, but
this will not do.  If he will examine the passage more
carefully, he must see that this rendering, which seems,
at first view, rather plausible, can not stand the test.
337 
THE BIRDS FROM THE WATERS.
The Hebrew construction will not admit it. It is the
descriptive future with omission of the relative,(qt'  tAc)
an idiom well marked in the sacred language, especially as forming a peculiarity of its earliest state, and
therefore, as we might expect, occurring so often in the
Arabic. In fact, we have precisely the same expression, and in the same order, in the Koran, Surat vi, v.
38, tot.mo, bird that flies.  It is equivalent to a descriptive participle with the article as it occurs in Greek,
and is used by the Septuagint as a translation of this
very passage,.rs-.-va qrserolva, birds that fljy,-or to the,
verb with the relative, aves quce volant, or volantes -
theflying birds. This is the rendering of all the old
versions, together with the Targum of Onkelos,        M-r ar
"bird that flies." The other, or the imperative use of
the future, "Let the birds fly," requires a different order
of the words, and this order, when that sense is demanded,
is not departed from. The New Baptist Version gives
the same rendering as Professor Bush, and to avoid, perhaps, the same apparent difficulty. We have all respect,
too, for some of the scholars engaged in that work; but
our old translation here is right. The volatile as well as
the reptile, to use the words of the Vulgate, had a marine origin. Moses does teach this, whether it be naturalism or not. The expression would seem to intimate,
that in some way, directly or mediately, nearly or remotely, through the types, or through the life, or through
the matter, the divine creative power did bring them from
the waters. Now we have heard that science finds fish
types in the birds,- thereby testifying on the side of
Moses.  If so, it is all the better for the credit of science.
But be tha.t as it may, such we believe to be the only
238 
THE SCIENTIFIC SIX DAYS.
fair interpretation of the strange Mosaic language, whatever difficulties it may be supposed to bring, either to the
religious or the scientific side of these questions.
The Reviewer's " boat" has evidently been driven by
two forces producing a sort of compound motion. There
must be some appearance of accommodation to the Scriptures, and this occasionally warps its course; but the
mind is ever and mainly upon something else. The Harmony of Science and the Bible! The reconciliation of
Faith and Geology! In the book reviewed, there is no
such unmeaning, and we may say untruthful aim prod
posed. It is in fact ever kept out. The Scriptures are
to be interpreted, not reconciled.  Science and the Bible
have nfothing in common. Even in respect to prime physical facts of origin and destiny, they occupy two distinct
departments, one of which is far below the other. But
in the Review there must, in some way, be a harmony to
correspond with the title, and so in one place, there is a
general enumeration of six periods. We have, lst, Light,
2d, a mysterious blank, 3d, Division of Land and Water
with commencing vegetation, 4th, Celestial Bodies or
manifestations, 5th, The Long Marine Period, 6th, all
that follows, though without any division Scriptural or
scientific. This long marine period being a favorite notion, and there being but one period remaining, all of a
later date must be thrown together, and without any of
the reasons for its being a day by itself which in the
Bible are so prominently presented. This scanty act of
homage once rendered to the Spiritual Power, very much
as the Italian Machiavelli makes his appeasing bow to
the Conclave, science breathes freer and passes on.  It
239 
THE HEXAMERALs FEATURE.
gets into the larger field, and gives its larger view. The
boat is now on its own buoyant element.  It is out of
the narrow perplexing currents of Moses, and here the
pilot, in his freedom and his jubilancy, forgets himself
again. In the outline just stated, there is some faint resemblance. In what follows, it is almost wholly obliterated,- we mean, in its principal feature, or that by
which chiefly Moses would know its face. The hexameral aspect disappears. We are justified in what we
have already said, that if Moses were unthought of by
the reader, he would as easily find in this scheme sixty,
or even six hundred days, as well as six. There is no
supernatural Word dividing the one from the other,nay, more, there are no divisions, which, for all that any
inductive science can legitimately deny, nature could not
have run over as easily as she runs through any of the
intercluded sections. In the Mosaic account these divisions are distinctly made by the Word of the Lord, each
time,* and we want no other proof. The geological account
with which we are now dealing does not exhibit them in
any distinct manner, and if it did so, could not, as we
have before proved, ever show, by any scientific reasons,
that the same nature could not have developed them all,
or, which is the same thing, that they were not all contained in the first nature which God made and endowed
with laws for that purpose. Science could never satisfy
us that the Author of nature might not have given, and
did not, in fact, give to her, the wider as well as the nar
"And God said," etc.  Let the reader observe how regularly this occurs each time.  Then let him compare it with the " goings forth of old"
of the Logos, Mich. vi, "The outgoings" of "Wisdom," Prov. viii, and the
TlVord, Heb. xi, 3, "by which the worlds, or ages, were framed."
240 
WHAT NEED OF SUCCESSIVE NATURES.
rower limit. And this is the point to which we are especially desirous to call the reader's attention. It is all
important in determining what science may legitimately
claim, and for showing, what is far more vital to our true
faith, how entirely we must be dependent on a revelation
for any sure knowledge of the metes and boundaries in
this matter. Now the Bible has given us just this knowledge. When Moses tells us the Word went forth, or
uses that transcending formula " And God said," we
know that it was to do some work which naturewhether a new nature then made, or any older or previous nature- could not have done, and was not made
to do, without a new divine energy. We know it from the
divine teaching; we certainly know it in no other way.'
It is, in general, more wise, as well as more reverent, to seek for the
meaning of revelation, than to ask why God has given it to us as he has.
And yet the latter question may be sometimes involved in the former, and,
to some extent, inseparable from it. It might have been revealed to us
simply that God made the world, or that he made all things, leaving the
timues, the manner, the order, the succession, and even the fact whether
there had been a succession, an entire blank.  Some think that this is, in
fact, all that is meant; everything else being a mere accommodation to
human notions, or a mythical adornment.  We can not, however, thus regard it. There is, at least, an outline. We think we can see a reason
why it was not more, and yet enough given to show us a succession, or a
series of consecutive steps or natures in the divine working. It may have
been to teach us that with Him there is a reserve fountain of power immensely greater than he has ever yet manifested. Had there been given
to nature, in the first place, all the potentiality necessary to bring out the
universe in time as it was intended to be, and had such, accordingly, been
the revelation made to us, it would have been no less divine, but far less
impressive. It would have removed the supernatural so far away, that
the idea would have been dim, if not wholly lost. Had the supernatural,
on the other hand, been more frequent, the depravity of fallen beings would
have run into a similar, or we might say, perhaps, the same error, by confounding it with ordinary nature. There would be resemblances in such
events, as well as in the strictly natural.  Hence, science would begin to
classify, talk about laes, and thus attempt to bring them under her juris.
diction.
241
,)I 
EXTRAORDINARY LEAP.
It could be shown, that there are direct inconsistencies in this scheme. We have assurances from the highest scientific authority that its geological science is really
no better than its philosophy; but we prefer to keep here
on the higher and wider ground. In his attempt to be
cosmological in the widest sense, the writer involves
himself in difficulties surpassing all explanation whether
of geology or of exegesis. From the wide universe in its
earliest dawn of physical being, down to our little earth,
there is a forced and sudden leap which is out of all scientific as well as Scriptural harmony. And so in respect
to time; we come from the birth of the light in its essence,
from the primordial nebulous matter that first issued forth
from the invisible nonexistence, right down to the mossbreeding, grass-growing days, which, in comparison with
the first, would be like the ratio of Mr. LORD'S clock
measured times to the common geological epochs. The
Reviewer finds fault with the interpretation given of the
word  beginning.  He  would be more  orthodox here,
which it was perfectly easy for him to be, since science,
when it assumes this attitude, may just as well take at
once the widest as-any more limited ground. One costs
no more than the other; and, Scripture being ignored,
it is as easy to find the six days in the earliest as in the
later chronology. There is, however, some attempt here
at exegetical criticism. It is so striking that we can not
pass it over.  The writer really thinks "that Moses by
the word beginning meant the beginning," and seems to
fancy that such an argument is truly a settlement of the
great questions whether it was the beginning of time, the
beginning of God's first energizing in the universe, the
first going forth of the Logos, without which we are
242 
MATTER AN ENERGY, AN EVER-DOING-.
plainly taught in the Scriptures there is no creation of
any kind, —-. whether it was the beginning before which
there was no beginning, or the beginning of a special
work in time and space more directly connected with our
own mundane habitation,- a beginning commencing
with some existing state of the thing which is the subject
of such working, and with a special act (such as the
brooding of the spirit upon the waters,) that was the
beginning of a subsequent and well ordered process. All
thtse questions he would regard as answered, or, at least
as silenced by the profound exegetical opinion that " Moses by the word beginning really meant the beginning"!
This closes the argument, and renders any other view or
remark quite superfluous.
But let us look at this soaring view, and see where it
really carries us. The writer would make it the beginning of the first material, yea, of the first dynamical existence of any kind. We say the first dynamical; for
although there is an attempt, very unscientific and much
after the manner of the Italian priests, to excite the theological hatred against the author by the common bugbear of the eternity of matter, yet all science may be
defied to show what matter is, if it is not resolvable ultimately into the idea of pure force regarded as something
subsistent, and separate from a spiritual energy in which
it had its origin. Life, we have before said (p. 201)
was inconceivable except as an energy, a doing something, whether by way of outward effect (outdoing) in
space, or of resistance, that is, maintaining itself against
other forees,- as we might there have qualified and
rendered unexceptionable our remark. All latent fores,, as they are called:, -mav in this way be reg,arded as
243 
244  DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REST AND INERTIA.
continually acting energies,-an inert power being  a
contradiction both in terms and idea. The same may
be affirmed, though in a lower sense of matter itself.
Life is organizing power, acting or resisting according to
an idea.  But matter, in the lowest conception we can
form of it, is still energy.  Rest is not inertia.   The
latter is strictly a mere  negative idea that can only
be predicated of nothingness. It can have no place in
a real universe.   The former, as is implied  in its
etymology (re-sto, resisto,) is an equilibrium of powers,
a quiescent balance of forces, but none the less a'continual energy, an ever doing, as the very ground and con-dition of its existence.  If so, then the first material creation must have been the first dynamical creation, or the
beginning of any energizing in space and time below the
purely spiritual or divine.
It is his determination to bring in his nebular theory
that leads the writer to this. The light mentioned by
MAoses he would have to be the first light,-not simply
the first light upon our earth, and which the plain interpretation of Genesis makes to be posterior to the waters,
-but the first light that ever shone in the universe, the
first light ever called into being, the first light in its very
essence as it came forth from the invisible, the first outbeaming of the Shekinah, the very birth of that unapproachable entity that forms the robe' of the IKing Im
We hesitate to regard such expressions in the Scripture as meree
figures of speech. It would certainly seem to be taught that Deity has,
somehow, and somewhere, a physical splendor which the humana  eye could
not behold and live.  MIoses could only look upon its =i::q, its darlker
side, or rear shadow. It would seem to be the same that Peter calls
~S~/cz k0~ sgJ'g o~c, "the Excellent Glory," or the izmcienifceezt glory,
'2 Pet. i, 17, from which, or rather e7zde) which (uro 7eg) came forth the 
RIRST LIGHIT OF PHYSICAL BEING.
mortal.  This birth of the light, then, if it is referred to
by Moses, was in the work of the first day.   We might
say, earth's first day, if we followed Moses at all, for he
makes his first mention of it in the verse wherein he begins to speak of the creation of the earth as being before
that of the heavens, and this mention is immediately after
what is antithetically said of the darkness on the face of
the terrestrial deep. The Spirit broods upon the Waters;
then comes forth the Word, and the luminous manifestati6n is made. But in the scientific theory, which, although, professing to be in harmony with Moses, is too
ambitious to take him for a guide, we are yet far off from
the earth; we have not yet come near its lower orb; we
are immensely distant from it in time and space; we are
not merely in the heavens, the astronomical heavens of
nebular and stellar systems, but in the very remotest
time and space bounds of the all but infinite universe.
The scheme requires that the light mentioned by Moses should be the first light of physical being, the first
born of the cosmical creation, and this would carry us to
a time before any division of the universal fluid, before
the active commencement of gravitation, or of any drawing to separate centres of motion as the initial embryotie
voice that proclaimed the Eternal Son.  The truth that God is a Spirit is
not at all at war with the thought that he has made for himself such a peculiar residence in an outward glory.  If, however, we regard it as a material splendor in any sense, it must be older than that light that first "shone
out of the darkness" (aX ~x<rot,g, 2 Cor. iv, 6,) which rested on the early
Tellurian waters. For other mention of this Shekinal glory, of which the
Jewish Shekinah was the earthly representative, the reader is referred to
such passages as Isa. vi, 1, John xii,41, Acts vii, 55, Luke ii, 9, Psalm civ, 1,
1 Tim. vi, 16, 1 Kings viii, 11, Ezekiel i, 26, 27, 28. Certain very strange
notions of the Jewish doctors respecting it, may be found in Buxtorf's Chal,daic Lexicon, on the word  ~.
21*
245 
MOTION OF LIGHT.
conception of systems and worlds.  We  take this nebular theory as we find it presented by scientific men; but
although greatly admiring it, in some of its sublime outlines, we can not be responsible for the difficulties it
throws in the way of that scientific exegesis of the Mosaic creation which would make it cosmical in the widest
and oldest extent of the term. The chief difficulty arises
from what is said, in the books, of the motion of light.
If the consideration of it draws us into a seeming digression from our main course of argument, we ask the reader's kind indulgence. Science tells us, and we are inclined to believe her, that there are worlds now visible
through the most powerful telescopes, yet so inconceivably distant, that to have reached our earth within any
historical period their light must have been traveling
toward us for millions of years before man appeared.
The ray that now terminates its long journey on the
retina of a human eye, commenced that long journey
when our infant earth had not yet been "robed in its
garment of clouds,'i or "wrapped in its swaddling band
of thick darkness,"*  yea, had not even been born, or
come forth from the nebulous womb; unless we regard
it-which, scientifically, we have no right to do- as
among the oldest cosmical existences that came out in
distinct form and position. But we are not confined to
the visible, even though it be the most remotely visible
coming to us through the most far-seeing, or tele-scopie
powers that have ever been brought to the aid of the human optics. The same scientific analogy presses us on
to multiples even of such an inconceivable space and
tfime, and to multiples of multiples so vast that all of the
Job xxxviii, 9.
246 
INC1ONCEIVABLE EXNTENI OF THE UNIVERSE.  247
past and future that our mightiest computations can exCress are insufficient for the journey.  Is any science so
narrow, not to say trifling, as to limit the universe to the
range of Lord Rosse's telescope, or to fancy that all be
yond this arbitrary limit is a dreary void-a boundless
space that a boundless time has never yet seen occupied,
in any part, with creations? Let us test the reasonableness of this by some of its own numerical estimates.  Instead of the clumsy and utterly inadequate methods
sometimes employed to denote immense distances, let us
take a pure mathematical expression whose inconceivable
power is:in direct and striking contrast with its extreme
simplicity.  Take at once, as its basis, the remotest celestial object from which there ever fell a ray upon the
spectrum of our mightiest telescope.  Call its mile distance x.  Then take that transcendental power xx, and
if this be not enough, carry it up the ascending scale xz,
until the degrees of involution themselves amount to x.
We are now where the mightiest distance to which the
mightiest lens ever penetrated becomes a vanishing infinitesimal; and yet we have no right to stop, no analogy
that does not carry us still onward, no "stffieent reason"
to suppose that we have done anything more than make
a beginning of a beginning in the estimate of God's creation. Do we shrink from calling it infiniteo? Certain a
priori theological ideas do, indeed, forbid the supposition;
but science has no resting place. The same induction
that compels her to take the steps already taken, presses
her onward forever and forever more. A necessary
theology teaches that the universe must be finite; and
yet it may be so, and still extend, most probably does
extend, beyond any bounds that even such a formula 
248 EACH WORLD WITH A LONG PROJECTING RAY.
could reach.   We may be near the centre; we may be
near the outer verge, and yet this immeasurable nearness such, that even between us and that outer verge
there may be a wilderness, not merely of solar and stellar
but of cosmical systems,- a wilderness of worlds compared with which the whole cosmical region through
which light has ever travelled to us may be like a single
leaf in the forests of the Oronoco.
Now the first light that ever shone on, or out of, these
distant worlds, or in these inconceivably remote times
and spaces, may have been, must have been, junior to
the birth itself of that luminous essence, than which we
can conceive of nothing older in time and creation. But
fixing the mind upon this later cosmical radiating light,
we may muse upon the question, although we can not
venture to ask it -how long has even this light, this first
and most distant radiation, been travelling down to us?
How long before it will ever reach us, or where, perhaps,
will be our world, when it arrives? We are lost. The
geological epochs disappear like the fast falling autumnal
leaves, or the rapid rain-drops as they vanish in the measureless waters of the ocean. All proportions fail us;
all numerical  ratios become  incommensurable.    Mr.
LORD has a very easy way of getting along with this.
If he takes the common scientific idea of the motion of
light, which we think he does,- for he, too, would be
scientific- then he has only to form the very easy hypothesis, that all these remote worlds, being all created
d(luring the solar week of our earth, were each of them
made with an immense projecting horn (         x, x~S Sagauvv6Y,) or ray of light, issuing from them, and just so long
or carried so sufficiently near to us on their first crea 
FAITH UNSHAKEN BY SIZE OF THE UNIVNRSE. 249
tion, that their continued light would just reach our earth
on the evening of the fourth day.  Professor DANA would
doubtless regard that as all folly, and would think, perhaps, that he wholly avoids it in his more scientific view
of the Mosaic creation.  He has increased the scale, to
be sure, but losing sight of the principle which should
govern in the management of so unwieldy an instrument,
he has only increased the difficulties in the like ratio.
Carry it fairly out, where it will fairly go, and the necessary elongation it demands for the Mosaic First day, and
especially the disproportion it must bear to all the rest,
involve us in an absurdity the more disgraceful as the
scheme from which it comes is the more pretentious.
But is not revelation, too, and all religion, overwhelmed
by such a view? Not at all.  Faith stands unmoved and
undisquieted, if we will only keep in mind the estimating
principle that has before been adverted to. The greatness which science computes is quantitative; hence, too,
comparative, and self-overwhelming. However far it may
stretch itself, it is driven in to nothingness by conceiving
still greater bounds to the physical universe.* On the
other hand, Faith and Revelation connect themselves
Thie same remark is applicable to that kindred system of theology that
grounds itselfon trtilitis, and "greatest happiness," and makes its'zeasure
of sin dependent on the a'mozet? t of mischief or unhappiness produced by it,
)r by its example of impunity, and this, of course, on somie supposed extent
,)f the universe,-sin rising in moral enormity (if we may use the word
ioral in such a connection) as the universe is supposed to expand, and
sinking as it withdraws itself into narrower spaces. Hence it must be as
wMlolly q7,eaetifiative as the inductive science to which it is allied.  It canll
have no real qrality, or absolute essence, independent of outward computation.   For happiness (we/l;feel:i,-a) and utilities are ever terms  of
(a1,O0?1t in some order or degree, and whatever is grounded upon them
mnlst partake of the same changing character.  But the idea of the Good
mtust be something constant, ever the same, be the universe small or great. 
2D0O  THE UNIVERSAL TEHOM OR NEBULAR DEEP.
with the supernatural, where the " least in the kingdom"
is greater than all physical existence. In a fixed relation to a Divine Centre, they present a constant value for
each single world, and each individual rationality. It
is the same as though that world were the only world,
and that individual rationality the only rationality, except the divine, in the universe both of space and time.
HIence no comparison, and no variation of quantity, can
derange it. As far, at least, as any such scientific difficulty is concerned, it is a faith that might unshrinkingly
accept even an infinity of natural worlds, without drawing its anchors, or parting its cables from their strong
hold in God's supernatural revelation of a distinct supernatural world, or state of being.
Now, to connect this with our main argument, the scientific or nebular scheme of the Mosaic creation requires
that the light mentioned Genesis i, 3, should be the first
light of universal being, and so, of course, the poreviously
mentioned waters must be sublimated into the all-pervading nebular fluid.  Instead of being, in any sense, a chaotic earth, a telorm (t   ) of waters, it is the nebular
tehom, or nebular deep of the universe, out of which came
all worlds and all systems as well as our own. This,
then, was thle work of the first day; but how are we to
travel from it to our own " little earth," as it is called,
when such a name is thought to suit other parts of the
theory? How are we to get safely down from such dizzy
heights of space, and such remotenesses of time, into this
' inferior satellite" which God has seen fit to make our
secluded habitation, and to which is really confined all
our cosmical knowledge that is not the merest mathematical estimate of masses, distances, or comparative visual 
THE NEBULAR THEORY.
angles in space. Such a rash leap might be expected
from a mere blundering man of exegesis, but cautious
and " exact science," as she calls herself, should have
furnished a more secure ladder for so perilous an achieve ment. She should have made a bridge for us over this
tremendous chasm. She should have shown more clearly
in which one of the six days, whether in the first or se cond, we cross from the nebular deep of the kosmos to
the dry land, or terra firma, of our own little islet of the
earth.
Now, we have nothing to say against the nebular theory. Aside from any scientific knowledge on our own
part, be it less or more, we could not help respecting
what had been advocated by a Henry, a Peirce, and an
Alexander among ourselves, to- say nothing of distinguished names abroad. We must confess, too, a great
admiration of the sublime physical views it presents, as
well as of the genius displayed in their scientific exhibition. But, at the same time, there may be a very reasonable doubt whether it can be exegetically forced into
any accommodation with the Mosaic creative history. If
this nebular theory is to pursue any consistent analogy,
the first works it discloses, or the first energizings in matter, can only be regarded as concerned with the rudimentary formation of immense systems of worlds instead of
the later individual organic growth of single planets.
This is judged on the same principle that leads us to regard the growth of a tree as a much longer and much
older work than the special growth of its fruit. It is a
fair comparison that would represent single worlds, and
even systems, as the later quick-germinating branches,
or ultimate mature products, of the great slow growing
251 
NEBULOUS FLUID BREAKING UP.
organic body, which, although only preparatory to the
fruit, takes a vastly longer time for being brought to the
perfection of that fruit-bearing state. Now, the product
of the nebular movements are conceived to be (whether
truly or falsely does not concern our argument,) immense
systems of worlds emerging after inconceivable times,
and countless stages, from the at first universally and
equally diffused nebular ocean. This primal deep of
matter, which the ambitious scientific interpreter would
thus make to be the tehom of Moses, is regarded as condensing, cooling, separating into immense primal divisions, and thus acquiring separate centres of cohesive
gravitation that divide, if they do not destroy, the allegiance to the universal power. These slowly float away;
increasing condensations again part from each other the
immensely distant extremities, or separate them from
their central parts; new centres of gravity are formed,
and thus the great mass is ever breaking up into initial
and succeeding portions, dividing and subdividing themselves in degrees and stages unknown, and only conceivable in the ratio their number bears to the vastness of
the finite yet immeasurable space and time they may be
supposed to occupy. Next come the smaller yet still
immeasurable nebular masses containing the embryo
germs of unnumbered systems.   The imagination,the rational imagination, if there be any rationality in
this scientific hypothesis-traces them as throwing off
their rings, parting and parting again into concentric
waves, surging and eddying in their abysmal vortices,
whence first emerge islets of nebular worlds still greater,
perhaps, than all our sight or thought includes in the
visible universe. Kosmoi next appear, end, at last, stel
252 
SOLAR SYSTEMS BORN.
lar systems come forth from this grand march of progress.
Planets are-yet unborn; the sun is but an embryo, earth
still lower down, an embryo of an embryo. Solar sys tems are among the things that next take rank and posi tion in space-First, floating banks of still condensing
nebulous ether, disturbed again, and parting into smaller
rings which somehow (though science has never explained
to us the strange process) break up into spheres and
throw off their satellites, until, at last, we but begin to
approach the confines of that time and space where geo logy finds the first dim letters of her real alphabet, the
first rude cyphers of her vaunted "book."   In fact,
there may have been innumerably more stages than
these. Adopt this scientific hypothesis, and there is no
place in an all butinfinite universe where we may scien tifically stop. Ascending above satellites, planets, solar
systems, stellar systems, cosmical systems regarded as a
still wider and more ancient elimination, we may have
many more as well -earlier in time, more extended in,
space.  The divisions and subdivisions may be beyond
any through which the almost invisible speck that floats
in the deep currents of the ocean may have been parted:
successively from its position in the larger floating mass,.
the earth bank, the boulder, the rock, the mountain, up
to the continent, and the globe. We may be but the,
detritus of the universe.  A  division carried, in idea,*
even to such an extent, would not, as we have shown>
affect our true moral rank, or our true moral value; butin determining, or conjecturing, our physical place, we
have as good a right to draw on the philosophic imagination for the greater as for any lesser series, and science
253
9c 
254     DISPROPORTION AMONG THE PERIODS.
is defied to prove the one any the less rational than the
other.
All this, however, may be true or false. We care but
little about it- little, we mean, in comparison with the
preciousness of what God has actually revealed to us
about our own secluded satellite - all the more precious,
too, because so graciously revealed by Him. But we
take science as we find her in her exact or inexact departments; we carry out her hypotheses as they may be
legitimately carried out; and we deduce that conclusion,
which, however startling, is strictly deducible from the
assumption of some scientific men when they would teach
us that the Mosaic creation is an expression for their
nebular system of the universe.
Thus the absurdity of such assumption is shown from
the utter disproportion and confusion it would introduce
between the creative periods which Moses has defined
so distinctly with their regular evening and morning divisions. Especially would this be the case in regard to
the first and second. The commencement of the nebular
movement, and the primeval light that preceded it, must
be assigned to the first day. Its first evening, or darkness,
with which it commences, must, in that case, have been
the darkness of the old privation, the antithesis not of
the luminous presence but of being itself, the darkness
that rested "upon the face" of nothing,- contrary to
every impression we get from the Mosaic account.  Its
morning was not the first morning of the now visible earth
and illumined waters, when the previously created
"morning stars sang together, and all the Sons of God
shouted for joy," but the first gray dawn of the first
nebulous undulation that faintly stirred the ocean of none
F- ---- 
ARE ALL PARTS OF THE WlORLD OF EQUAL AGE? 25
entity. Thus it lies far away from the other days. It
is immensely remote from them in space; its locality is
not the earth, but the broad field of the universe; its time
;s measured by no earthly change marking any terrestrial
evening and morning, while its least period runs through
the course of inconceivable ages before earth was born.
Yet from such an unimaginable magnitude of space and
time, a magnitude for which mathematical analysis finds
no expression that does not start with a measuring unit
transcending all that sight reveals, there is a sudden
jump right down to this earth, and all the rest is occupied
with earth's mosses, earth's reptiles, and the dispersion
of the earthly vapor that the sun may shine upon them.
What is still more absurd, the second day must be wholly
overlooked, as having no work assignable to it.  There
are difficulties in the Scriptures, but none to be compared
to this into which we get ourselves by departing from
interpretation, and taking this pious talking science for
our guide.
Some answer might be attempted to this, by the supposition, for it would be nothing more, that all organic
bodies in the universe are of equal age, that all parts
have proceeded pari passeu from the first nebular stages,
exhibiting, at every date, and at the present time, an
equal advancement; so that the same days, the same
periods of gaseous fluid, water, atmosphere, land, vegetation, animal life, ete., would do for all. In other words.
that the day of the week for each might be found from
the same almanack, and the age of each determined from
the same chronological table. But there is no evidence
of this. The visible analogy of things furnishes strong
evidence to the contrary.   Even to the naked eye there
I 
256 " STAR DIFFERETHI FROM STAR IN GLORY."
are striking differences in the apparent states of different
parts of the visible universe.   " One star differeth from
another star in glory." It is probable that there is a
like difference in their ages. We mean their relative
age; for one organism may have existed for thousands
of centuries and yet be in its youth, whilst another, measured but by days or years, has already reached its decrepitude. The telescope carries the proof of this much
farther.  Modern discovery shows that the varieties are
incalculable. They run through all degrees of infancy,
,.of juniority, and perhaps of senile decay. Even in our
lear solar system, right round us we may say, great varieties present  themselves  in  the stages of  progress.
There is good evidence that some of the planets are not
yet as far advanced as earth in its first and second days.
Jupiter, huge as he is, has not yet got off his " swad,dling bands."  (See Job xxxviii.)  He is where the earth
was when the cloud was its permanent garment.   Our
best astronomers have just shown that the rings of Saturn
are in a fluid state.  He exhibits what some, with much
plausibility, think Moses may have meant of an ancient
state of the earth, when there was a real sea of waters
above as well as below the firmament.* Our more distant neighbor, Neptune, may be nothing but gas, or have
ihardly arrived at the density of liquid ether.  Mars
mnay be yet azoic, or, "as nearly as we can learn, somewhere between the coal period and the middle reptilian";
whilst Mercury may have passed that stage of condensa
* In this way, perhaps, we mi,ht account for the flood, as has been attempted by some writers. Indeed, we know of no hypothesis that would
so readily explain some of the difficulties that are involved in every other
view we can take of that event. It would correspond well to certain
parts of the language employed, and yet be none the less miraculous. 
IMMENSE DIVERSITY IN THE UNIVERSE.    257
tion where life exists no more, and the mass, again become
azoic, remains simply to preserve the balance of the systom, or to ghow that worlds may die as well as }the beings
that dwell upon them,- or to serve some other among the
inscrutable purposes of God. In the more distant parts
of the heavens the differences become still wider. Thin
nebular films flit across the field of the telescope, presenting continuous magnitudes, which, though barely visible, must occupy more space than all between our northern Pole Star and the Southern Cross, or, perhaps, than
all included in the universe of stars that reach our naked
eye; and yet these immense cosmical nebulae may have
not yet begun to form their initial vortices around their first
centres of motion. The evidence is all in favor of diversity, immense diversity, in rank, in magnitude, and so in
time and age. Some of these worlds, if we choose to call
them such, may have reached their full formed organism;
others have just broken their shell, or to use more scientific language, thrown off their rings; whilst, in others,
the foetal albumen out of which is to come the future
G5ov, has barely commenced its inceptive coagulation.
There may be, there must be, if there is any truth in
scientific analogy, (and those who would charge us with
impiety should remember we are only following science
here,) the same variety of age and condition in the greater
as in the lesser organisms of the universe. To deny it is
to go counter to all analogy and all induction. As well
talk of the plant in our gardens, which comes up "the
son of a night," like Jonah's gourd, having a pari passu
germination with the oak of Etna that threw off its first
rings centuries ago. The one would be no more unscientific than the other. And yet all this must be done to
22* 
THE CHASM OF THE SECOND DAY,
accommodate a scheme that even then has to put a still
greater force upon the simple language in which Moses
presents the indefinite periods in his creative history of
our earth.  LORD'S exact twenty-four hour times, opposed
as they are to the most common observation of terrestrial phenomena, as well as to any fair interpretation of
the Mosaic words, are still more rational, more consistent,
than this pious science.
But how to bridge the chasm. This is the question to
which we return. Prof. DANA has a most ingenious way.
He leaves out the second day entirely; or, rather, disposes of it by way of apology in a modest, retiring note,
thus leaving his lost reader to choose any such way of
crossing this immense hiatus as his imagination might
suggest. The writer was evidently pressed with some
difficulty here, and with good reason; for on his theory
he could make nothing of this second day.  Here must
be somehow found the sudden descent from the nebular
heights into this "little satellite of ours."   The difficulty,
indeed, is great; it is evidently felt to be such; but,
instead of admitting it, as students of exegesis are in the
habit of doing, the writer finds ease and refuge in a
note. Now we have no objection to the note per se, as
our readers, perhaps, have found to their vexation. But
in this case there is something quite peculiar about it.
The humble appearance of this marginal remark is in
curious contrast with the vaunting style of the large-print
text above, where there is such a magniloquent account
of what geology has brought to light. Alas, the mummy
light of geology! -we cannot help repeating the thought
- alas for us if we had no other! It cannot better be
4escribed than in the language of Milton,                  Not light, but darkness visible.
258 
PBRIDGED BY A MODEST NOTE.
We Many, indeed, see something when we cast among its
shadow.s the reflection of certain a priori ideas, or carry
with us amid its caverns the torch of revelation, if not as
a scientific guide, at least as an assurer of the divine
wisdom.   But, the Bible gone- forever gone -what
then would be the light of geology? It would be a revelation of horrors- of dissolving, upheaving, ruined worlds,
- of progress, if it has any apparent progress, full of
loops and retrogressions, wvithoutany security, even in its
most rapidly advancing, or seemingly advancing stages,
against catastrophies greater than any before  experienced.   It would reveal to us long races of mutually devouring monsters, with a human race at last " coming in
with vanity and departing in darkness," born in darkness, living in darkness, dying in darkness, and, as far
as all mere scientific analogy can give us any lesson, destined to furnish the exhumed fossils of another geological
era, ages after they have passed off to make room for
another race, it may be higher, it may be lower, according as the wheel of nature turns, or the terms higher
and lower can have any meaning in her everlasting cycles
of a seeming retrogradation or procession.
But we are too much tempted to digress on such a
a theme. The reader is, perhaps, impatient for this
lucid note.  Here it is: "We have omitted"- it timidly
ventures to say, " We have omitted any special reference to the second day, as neither
geology nor general science, apart from astronomy and general reasoning,
afford much aid in interpreting the account. The step of progress was one
between that of light through universal space on the first day, and the
separation of the lands and seas in the second. The event of the highest
importance in that interval, that marking a grand epoch in terrestrial time,
was the elimination or separation of the earth itself from the deep of waters, (admitted to mean fluid in its most extended sense.)"
259 
260 DATE AND PLACE OF THE TELLURIAN BIRTH.
This very curious production may be found at the bottom
of the 116th page of the January number of the Andover
Bibliotheca Sacra for 1856. We propose to make it the
subject of a brief exegesis.  The writer starts from the
absolute beginning of all created entity, and rambles
about the roomy regions of time and space, though seemingly without chart or compass, until he finds himself
brought up in the "dry land of Labrador," and among
the azoic rocks of this Western continent. He takes an
observation, and finds it must be somewhere about the
beginning or middle of the third day. But what has
become of the second? The question seems to have startled him. It is too important a period to be passed wholly
over; some account must be taken of it, and as "neither
geology nor general science apart from general reasoning
afford much aid," the only resource was this guessing
note, which, after all, affords no explanation, or even hint
at explanation, of the mighty difficulty. And this is all the
light "Geology," though aided by " general science and
general reasoning," can throw upon the grand epoch
which Moses sets forth in such graphic and lucid images.
The author of the note, however, means to have room
enough. " The step of progress was somewhere between
that of light through universal s)ace, on the first day,
and the lands and seas." Somewhere, then, between
these two bounds of" universal space" and the "dry
land of Labrador," and at some time between these two
dates, the absolute beginning of all things, and the azoic
period of this Western Continent, our mother earth was
born. The author of the Book of Job was not so ambitious to determine the exact natal chronology. Hie takes
the infant Tellus in her swaddling robes, and this poetical 
CAN " THE WATERS" MEAN ANY FLUIDITY?  261
description corresponds well to the birth-day as written
by Moses in the old Family Bible, when thick darkness rested upon the waters. " These waters," says the
note, " are admitted to mean fluid in its most extended
sense." The writer means, in the sense of his nebular
,ether, or whatever might be that first matter of the universe that just rose above nonentity. But by whom is
this admitted? There would be no objection to it if other
things in the account favored such an interpretation; for
the two ideas of the liquid and the aeriform fluidity run
into each other, and terms to express the one, in any language, may very easily and naturally flow into the other
sense. If, therefore, it could be shown that such a blending was in harmony, or might have been in harmony,
with the thinking of the Mosaic age, (in such a way as
has been abundantly proved in respect to the indefinite
extension of the word day) there might, in that case, be
constructed a very respectable argument in favor of such
a view. But we do not think that this can be shown.
No hermeneutical evidence could be brought from any
word or passage in the Bible for its support.'  There is,
? Something might be conceded to this view, it there could be found a
single instance, in the Old Testament, of the Hebrew  ".  being used in
this extended sense.  It is employed sometimes to denote other liquids
than water, but never anything in a gaseous or aeriform state, even if we
may suppose the Hebrews to have had that idea at all.  The air or wind
they hardly regarded as material substance. The Greeks had the notion,
but they never employ vdwf for it. The plural form of the Hebrew word
comes from the idea of abundance as suggested by the image of the vast
waters of the sea or ocean, and from this comes its metaphorical sense of
overwhelming sorrow or affliction.  But throughout, there is the thought
of the element water instead of the general idea of fluidity as opposed to
solidity. The term fluid savors of science. It denotes a state rather than
any particular substance, and we look in vain for anything like it in the
use of the Hebrew word. 
EXEGESIS OF THE NOTE.
moreover, no need of it to elevate our view of the passage, or to give it any additional grandeur. For, unless
we make greatness consist alone in space, the conception
of a world of waters with darkness resting upon them,
and the Divine Spirit brooding over them, and the Divine
Word commanding the light to shine out of them, is a
much grander conception than that of thin gaseous nebulae, or universal ethers, having aside from their vastness hardly anything for the imaging faculty, and furnishing even still less material for the constructive views
of the scientific reason.
There are a few remarks more to be made on this very
remarkable note.  "We  have omitted," it says, "any
special reference to the second day."  Why is the word
special used here, except from a sense of difficulty, and
a consciousness on the part of the writer that he was not
using the Mosaic Record fairly? It would seem to imply
that there has been a 7eneral mention of this important
period,- something which, though not carried out in scientific detail, would, in some other way, be worthy of its
rank and value in the creative calendar. But there is
no mention of it whatever, either general or special, except in this apologizing note. It remains a dreary vacuity, an ominous blank in a scheme that is ushered in with
so much parade as the grand diapason harmony of the
creative revelation. Again- it says, with still more
modesty-" we have omitted any special reference to
the second day, as neither geology nor general science,
apart from astronomy and general reasoning, afford much
aid." There is certainly a great deal of generalizing
here, and no little effort, it would seem, to keep clear of
any distinct meaning. Not but that Professor DANA can
262 
A PAGE LOST IN THE GEOLOGICAL HEXAPLA. 263
write distinctly enough when he chooses, but the absence
of all meaning was the very thing wanted in this emergency. To seem, therefore, to say something on this
second day, and yet, in reality to say nothing, or next
to nothing, about it, would appear to have been the purpose of the note, and this purpose, it may be said, has
been quite successfully accomplished. It is hinted, that
some help, in this distress, might be got "from astronomy
and general reasoning." We can hardly imagine what
that help could be; but why did not the writer avail himself of it, be it scanty or not.  It was certainly a matter
of importance that this blank in the days should, in some
way, be filled up. As it stands, it is really a deformity
in Professor DANA'S geological hexapla; it is a sad discord in his " harmony."   But if "astronomy and general reasoning" failed as well as geology, why could he
not have paid Moses here the compliment of consulting
him about a matter on which he professes to give very
distinct knowledge, and that, too, as the Professor firmly
believes, coming from the inspiration and revelation of
the Creator himself. But whatever view may be entertained of Moses in his general claim of authority, or of
the Scriptural account as being unnecessary when geology speaks, still, in such a case as this, it ought to have
been treated with at least the respect certain sceptical
ethnologists pay to the Bible when they can fill up a gap
in their profane history in no other way. When the
hieroglyphics and the Sphynxes fail, they come to Genesis.
Now Moses says distinctly that on the second day God
made the rakia or sky, which he named "heavens," as
something built over the earth, in which sky, or firmament, or "heavens," the heavenly bodies afterwards ap 
A BLANK WASTE IN COSMOLOGY.
peared,- the very sky, we think he meant, in which
they appear now,- the same "old rolling heavens" on
which so many generations have gazed, and of which the
most scientific mind can form no grander conception than
to image them just-as they are, and as they ever have
appeared. In Professor DANA'S theory, the sky, or
rakia, if it have any meaning at all, or is anything but a
blank waste in cosmology, is the universal nebulous fluid
throwing off its rings, cosmical, stellar, solar, planetary,
satellital,- thus parting into immense divisions and subdivisions, among which our solar system (for all analogy
is against any attempt to set bounds here) may have
been the millionth, and our earth the millionillionth in the
order, not only of space, but of time descents.
There was something, however, which made this ambitious view of the Mosaic language too much for scientific
consistency. The'dificulty is felt to be pressing. Still,
when once assumed, the theory could not be easily abandoned, or laid aside, although the writer must irL some
way get down to the earth. To do this at once would
be too great a venture. The third day is evidently terrestrial, and can be nothing else. The second day, is
therefore, wholly omitted in the scientific text, and the
bewildered reader, not knowing where he is or how he
got there, is left to cross the gulph, as well as he can,
on the trembling suspension bridge that is so hastily constructed in the note.
We learn something from this. Science, too, when
hard pressed, even "exact science," or "positive science," as it may be called in more senses than one, has
to talk about mysteries, and call in "the aid of general
reasoning," and even then to confess that she knows no
264 
KNOWLEDGE PIIYSIACOUS.
thing of matters she had set out so vauntingly and confi dently to explain.  Is it uncharitable to say that such
science is allied, at least, to the gnosis of which Paul
speaks, 1 Cor. viii, 1? It is a knowledge physiaeous,*
rather than physical, a knowledge that " blows," or'; puf feth up," instead of " edifying," that is, building reve rently on the only safe foundation for human thought.
But it is enough for us to be certain that Moses knew
nothing about nebulous fluids and nebular rings. Of
great times and oihms, and olams of olams, he and the
men of his day were fond of thinking. The xcth Psalm,
which has been so often quoted, shows how familiar was
the conception to his solemn musings. Elsewhere we
have given a reason for this, derived from the very laws
of thinking. Time belonging solely to the inner sense,
as the measure of successive thoughts rather than outward distances, its mental extension is easier and earlier
than that of the corresponding space conception.  Hlence
it required no outward science, either for the birth or
the rapid nurture of the thought.  It has given rise, too,
to a very ancient and wide spread use of language which
other and more modern conceptions never would have
originated. Such an idea, then, of great times lay harmoniously in the mind of Moses, and, in perfect consistency with the genius of his own and the other earliest
Shemitic languages, he called them days with their won —
drous nights and mornings; but this had nothing to do
with any science. Hle knew no more of Professor DANA'S
rings than of Mr. LORD'S "ecliptic axes"; and although
he may be of little account in their scientific or unscien
* Not from qpuo'i, but from, (uof, or qptuoiw, to blow, puff; blow up.
Hence, qp~f a'ro&a blowinggs, bubbles, etc.
nO
265 
ARCH2EOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY.
tific schemes, yet the forcing upon him of so much geological or astronomical knowledge really over-does the
business.  It is too much for the credulity, either of the
sciolist or the religionist.
This extreme nebular view of the Mosaic account may
be met by the same answer that we have given to Mr.
LQRD'S narrow hypothesis. They are both, although in
dTerent ways, opposed to what may be called the archeological and eschatological analogy of Scripture. First,
-to compare it with the narrower view,- the creative
days are no more common solar days than the great
days of prophecy are such. The darkness on the waters,
the Brooding Spirit, the sky appearing, land appearing,
vegetation, animation, man -these are no more confined
within the clock-measured limits of twenty-four hours
each, than the great "Latter Day" of the world, the
" Day of Judgment," the "Day of Christ's Reign," or
the H~'gu A,wvo; of St. Peter.  And so-to run the se cond parallel-these creative epochs of our own planet
have no more connection with universal nebular conden sations, and the origin of galaxies, stellar, and solar sys tems, than the corresponding predicted periods of earth's
eschatology have to do with the destinies of Sirius and
Orion. There is grandeur enough in Moses as he is.
Science can never elevate his thought, or mend his lan guage.  "And darkness was upon the face of the Deep,
and the Spirit of God was brooding o'er the waters," the same waters that afterwards in obedience to this life giving power "brought forth the living thing" each after
its type, idea, or kind. How remarkable the conception!
We have become familiar with it; we have marred it by
our science and our philosophy. But throwing these
266 
GRANDEUR OS MOSES.
aside, and going back to the early day when this was
written, we can never exhaust our wonder in the contemplation. Whence came it to these primitive writers of
Job and Genesis? The difficulty is certainly not met by
saying that they took it from others, even if there were
any proof of such a mere assertion. Whence came it to
the early human thought at all? Viewed even as an
imagination, a picture of the mind, it is hard to account
for it without the aid of the supernatural, or to resist the
belief that it came from a knowledge higher than any to
which science can ever hope to attain. There is grandeur enough in Moses as he is, we say again. It is the
only greatness that can truly and religiously affect us.
The nebular view of the universe may be physically right
in itself.  It strongly challenges our admiration.   But,
after all, it has mainly guesses for our science, whilst it
presents but a cold waste for the imagination. It connects itself but little with any devout feeling, and has
really no basis in any fair interpretation of Scripture.
267 
268  SCIENTIFIC SIX DAYS AT WAR WITII EXEGESIS.
CHAPTER IX.
SCIENTIFIC SIX DAYS AT WAR WITH EXEGESIS.
a'he Word Bara.- The Beginninzg-The Shemitic Mind  Wordsfor Creation.- I'he Hebrew- The New Testament
Terms- The Philosophical Greek- The Arabic Words for
Creation-Emotional Aim of the Bible. -Did Moses think
of an Absolute Princip)ium?-Six Arguments: 1st. From
the First Verse generally-2d.  IThe Words IHeaven and
Earth; Do they denote Universality?-33d. The Earth the
Locus of the First Energizing mentioned by lVfoses-4th.
The Light after the [ffaters-5th. Heavens Built over the
Earth-6th. The F]irst Verse, if severed from the rest,
must be Extra Dies.-Parallelism of the Mfosaic Account
with the First of John,-Patristic View of its 3d and 4th
Verses.
SucH is a fair statement of the scientific difficulties in
the way of this nebular accommodation of the Mosaic
account.  There may be errors in detail.  There may
be some things the sciolist may call blunders, and for
which we should not be much concerned, even should he
prove them to be such. For the general view the author
holds himself responsible, and the foundation that has
bqen laid for it, he thinks, can not be shaken. But now,
turn we to another proof, to the more sure ground of
rational exegesis.  Connected with these  questions is
the meaning of the word em:, rendered create, the mean 
TH1E WORD BARA.
ing of the word etn  or beginning, the meaning of the
expression used to denote the origination of the earthly
light, and the discussion of the order in which the first
creative events-  we mean those recorded by Mosesactually took place. We will touch upon these in the
briefest manner consistent with their importance, avoiding, as much as possible, what has been elesewhere and
previously said.
The author has been asked, "what Hebrew word he
would substitute for the one used, that would convey the
precise idea of creation out of nothing,"-(Bibliotheca
Sacrafor Jan. 1856, p.103). He answers very briefly,
-there is no such Hebrew word; there is none such in
the old Shemitic languages, and the only reason that
can be given for it is that there was no such idea in the
Shemitic mind,- we mean no such idea objectively contemplated, or that had made itself outward in their actual
thinking.   The root ae= is sometimes used to denote
the  "making of a new thing in the earth," as in Jeremiah
xxxi, 22, or a prodigy, something before unknown, or
that had not appeared, as in Numbers xvi, 30; but
how different this is from that most difficult of all metaphysical conceptions, the bringing into substance from
absolute nihility, every candid, intelligent reader must
at once perceive.  In one sense, and a very intelligible
sense, the production of any new thing, or of any new
state of things, is a making of what was not before, and
so a coming forth from not being. In this view the human artist creates what before was not.  The rags are
not the paper that is made from them, nor the paper the
rags. Neither are the paper, the ink, the cloth, in a
true sense, the book, even regarded in its mechanical or
23*
11", 6 9 
GOD OLDER THAN MATTER,
artistic execution, much less the words, and still less the
thoughts contained.   The extraordinary nature of the
act makes no difference in the case. The opening of the
earth, Numbers xvi, 30, was not the elimination of any
new substance, nor of any new force, but only the bringing out of a new effect from causes natural or supernatural.  In other words, trace it as far as we will, it is ever,
in such cases, to be regarded as a new thing, not new
matter. And yet it does not follow, but that if the
question had been distinctly put to an ancient Hebrew
or Arab, Do you believe the world, or even matter (making him understand the distinction) to be as old as God?
he would not have said No as distinctly as the profoundest theologian or metaphysician among  us; as intelligently, too, we might say, since, in respect to this primal
idea, all minds are on a par-it being rather a necessary logical negation we are compelled to utter, than any
thing we can reduce to a conception, or any form of rational thought.   So we believe  that the descendant,
whether of Isaac or of Ishmael, would have promptly
answered, had the query been presented to him; but
it was not a speculation of that Hebrew mind, nor a
form of that Hebrew mode of conceiving, nor, consequently, a phrase of that Hebrew mode of language
which God in his wisdom selected as the human  medium of his oldest revelation. We venture, therefore,
to say, that creation out of nothing is neither affirmed
nor denied in the Old Testament,* although the divine
build'ing (x, )of this present world of ours, and of
the heavens, or sky, immediately around it, and the ap
-We mean, by any use of.this word;  although there are passages
where the idea may seem to be expressed in some other way, as Isaiah,
xlviii, 13.
270 
TIHE PURE SHEMITIC THIEISM.
,e(earances of the heavenly bodies therein, are most sublirely set forth,- far more sublimely and impressively
than could have been done by any metaphysical language that would have been required for the abstract
idea.  Such speculations about the eternity or non-eternity of matter, were on each side of the Children of
Shem-beyond the Indus and beyond the Halys.  They
entered into the early Greek and Hindoo philosophy;
but the Shemitic mind, that lay between, was too simply
practical in its worship to think much about them, and
too pure in its theism to feel much alarm about them.
Paradoxical as it may appear, we may even venture the
opinion, that this pure theism was saved from a philosophical deterioration, by that very thing which some would
object to as the anthropopathism of the Old Testament.
It is pantheism with its philosophical dialect and its irreverent attempts to explain the inexplicable archeology
of the universe, that has bred the wildest theological monsters.  It is the scientific theism that runs into a dry
nature worship, whether disguised in the mythological
forms under which the crude yet ambitious knowledge
of the early times sought to conceal itself from the vulgar,
or the talk of laws, and forces, and principia, which now
serves as the medium of a like spirit, and a cover to a
like false yet vaunting religionism. The anthropopathic
images of the Jewish Scriptures preserved that all-important idea of personality,-an idea of so much more religious value than any abstract notions of causation or
originating power, and which is ever tending to perish
from the minds of those who claim to themselves what
they would call a higher style of thought and language.
We believe that every one must feel this who enters
271 
GREEK PHILOSOPHICAL LANGUAGE.
deeply into the spirit of the Old Scriptures; neither can
such a one fail to have observed the remarkable fact,
how intimately connected, sometimes, is this anthropopathic language with other declarations that startle us
by a spirituality of conception surpassing the highest human utterance.
And thus do these Scriptures speak of creation. We
recognize this combination of the unutterably sublime
with the simplest forms of speech expressive of architectural or constructive ideas. The same mode of thinking
and speaking comes down, too, to the writers of the New
Testament. They, certainly, were not'compelled to employ language merely adapted, as some would say, to the
infancy of the world, and only used in the early days
because nothing better and higher could then be obtained.
Philosophy, in the meantime, had grown to swelling
dimensions. The language in which they wrote abounded in her choicest, most carefully compounded diction.
There was certainly no lack of metaphysical terms in the
Greek, as is shown by the fact, that, in this respect, it
has become the store-house of the modern philosophical
speech. Especially was this the case in regard to the
language of generation or origin. Plato's Parmenides
and Timeus furnished enough of this lingo of the being
and not being, and the ovr,, and the atq ovr,% and the
7,yvo'tisv%, and the ou'J"to-s 7y7v6tivao to have enabled Paul
to express any metaphysical ideas of origin he might have
deemed true or inspired. Even if he had not read them,
he must have heard much of them in the jangling schools
of Tarsus, the third great seat of Greek philosophy, but
he adopts the same Old Testament style, and talks just
like Moses, and uses the same class of simple construe
272 
NEW TESTAMENT WORDS OF OREATION.
tire words. Of the Hebrew bara what better exegesis
can we give than the New Testament x          T;C', x-l,'g? No
Greek philosopher ever used these for creation, and
Evangelists and Apostles need not have employed them
had they not supposed them the best representatives of
the idea expressed by the Hebrew word. The author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews had to express one of the
sublimest acts of faith, and the sublimest of physical
ideas, even the origin of the worlds or ages by the Eternal
Word, and yet, in giving us this ineffable process, he employs one of the most purely artistic, constructive, architectural, words in the Greek language,  zafw   to put
together, to frame, to arrange in order, to refit, to repair,
to restore, etc., all of which imply existing entities.  It
is the same word that is used Mark i, 19, of mending fish
nets, that is applied here, Heb. xi, 3, to the building and
framing of the worlds.  We  have reason to be very
thankful for this style of speech. The man who stumbles at it shows himself as deficient in taste as he is low
in his theology. The other mode is conceptionless, and
therefore false,-false, because it assumes to convey an
idea, and yet presents no images through which that idea
can gain a habitation in the mind. The apparently simpler language is the more sublime, and therefore the
more truthful,-if the higher object of revelation be
really an emotional or living idea, rather than barren
scientific or philosophical knowledge. We have a more
lively thought, and so a higher and truer thought, of
God's power and glory, when he is represented to us as
acting on what is,-dividing waters, sending light into
chaoses, separating lands and seas, fashioning, arranging,
o)rganlizing worlds -than could ever come from any ab
273 
ABSTRACT IDEAS UNEMOTIONAL.
stract language attempting with ill success to set forth a
conceptionless origination from a blank nonentity. And
so in regard to the idea of nature, we have a more vivid,
and therefore a more truthful impression of the Divine
imperial majesty, when we centemplate Deity as ruling
over nature and matter, controlling them, subduing them,
commanding them like strong subjects, or, it may be at
times like rebellious foes, than when we think of him under the bare notion of origination, or as a power diffused
through nature, and thus to the mind's conception hardly
distinguishable from it. The abstract ideas are doubtless
true. We are forced by reason to acknowledge them,
but it is as a necessity of our intellectual or logical thinking, rather than as connected with our true spiritual life.
And on this account, may we reverently suppose, has
Scripture kept the latter in the back ground, or barely
given us the premises from which to infer their truth,
whilst the other ideas are made so prominent both in the
older and the later revelation. Such is the method of
the divine writers. When we have more of the same
spirit, we shall be better prepared to interpret the language in which they convey truths transcending all human philosophy, and leaving infinitely below them all
human science.
As having a direct bearing upon this question, we
have taken pains to examine carefully the Arabic words
for creation, as they occur in the Koran. This is the
more pertinent, as the Koran is not only the oldest style
of Arabic well known to us, but evidently imitates the
thought and speech of an antiquity greater than its own.
Mohammed, it is clear, tries to be more philosophical
than Moses; but these old Arabic verbs carry us back
274 
ARABIC WORDS OF CREATION.
to the same simple yet grand ideas we find in the Hebrew. We give them in Hebrew letters, for the want
of Arabic type. The most common is
Cha-la-qa, ( ), the primary sense of which is that
of smnoothiny, polishing, like the Latin polio, and the
Greek Esc' with its compounds and derivatives so often
found in Homer. There is the same primary image in
the root as it occurs in the Hebrew, although, in that
language, it is never used for creation. The creative
idea, as given by it, is that of finish, or perfection,- the
bringing of a thing from a rude or unwrought to a finished state. In this, as well as in the primary sense of
smoothing, polishing, shaving, it resembles the Hebrew
at=.  Accompanying it we have
Ba-da-a', ( ), the primary sense of which is manifestation, or revealing, bringing from an invisible state;
hence that of beginning, and creation, as though it were
a bringing out of darkness or invisibility.
Ba-ra-a' ( ), the Hebrew word itself with the radical idea of separation, and hence of setting free.
Ja-ba-la (    ), a purely formative word, like the
Hebrew act. It signifies to shape, or fashion. It has
the same plastic sense in the Syriac; of which the reader
may be referred to a proof in Romans ix, 20, where the
Peschito, or old Syriac version, employs it, and its noun
derivative, for the Greek -Xdo'tAo —&avri —" Shall the
thing formed say to him who formed it," etc. Hebrew,
Cabal, Calab; Greek, rene; Latin, Soulpo, Scalpo;
Ang., Seulpture.
Fa-ta-ra ( ), primary sense that of opening, bursting, coming forth-fidit aperuit.  Hence it is a word
of birt/h or generation. It has the same sense in the
275 
ARABIC WORDS OF CREATION.
Hebrew, although, in that language, never used of crea
tion.
A-sa-ra ( ),  (Hebrew,  irm), sense of binding.
Hence it denotes creation from the opposite aspect of
constructing, or putting together, instead of separating
from a previous mass, which is the predominant image
in other words.
_Da-ra-a' (s'n),to send forth-  sparsit.  Connected
with the Hebrew,n*, and Latin Sero.  The creative
idea is involved in that of semination and growth.
Qa-na (t:p), to get -acquire -possess.  We have
elsewhere remarked upon this word as having in Hebrew
the sense of generation, and so of creation, examples of
which may be found Genesis iv, 1, xiv, 19, 22, Psalm
cxxxix, 13, Proverbs viii, 22. Compare the order of
ideas in our Saxon get- be-get-  be-gotten.
Ta-na (Ta-ya-na), (its), the plastic sense - to form,
or fashion (of earth.)
La-ha (La-wa-ha), tt, or rnb, the sense of shining
- shining vapor. A noun from it is used to denote the
mirage, or the appearance of seas or lakes in the desert,
-thus giving us the idea of order and beauty standing
forth from waste and desolation.
Should any one say that such sensible images are all
that could be expected in the early age of the world, or
that language is thus necessarily sensuous, we can admit
the view without the least hesitation. Language traced
to its roots is ever sensuous, and must be so, not because
it is addressed to the early men, but to all men, as men,
who can never do without sensuous images in their
thoughts. It was so, doubtless, in the early speech, but
let it be remembered that when the writers of the Bible
276 
THE NON-APPARENTIA.
came to use a language which philosophy had vastly improved, (if it was an improvement,) and carried as far
as possible out of the sensuous into the abstract, or seemingly abstract, they still adhered to the old style, representing creation as a building, a-putting together, afrarming of worlds or ages, and, in the most supersensual (or
rather least sensuous) conception they ventured to employ, a bringing forth of the phenomenal, not from absolute not being (pr  oevv) but from  the non appearing
(ti, (a-voth.vwv) -the non apparentibus,* as Calvin truly
renders it. We admit the necessity of language, and
we only ask those who make the objection to give it all
its force. We understand, notionally and logically, the
proposition, what is, once was not. We can carry it
thus notionally and logically to the extreme negation of
all sense conception, but what have we left but a blank
in thought, unless the sense reacts, and images a dark
nihility, as, in some way, the material ex quo, out of
which all things in some way came? We may, at any
time, if we please, have this blank thought as a refuge
against that apprehension of matter's eternity which
some would regard as the sum of all heresy, and which
the author himself holds to be atheistical. But when we
* We have already referred to one of Professor DANA'S exegetical criticisms on the word beginning. There is another on which he ventures in
respect to the view taken of Hebrews xi, 3. He calls the reading, and the
version, which would be in accordance with this sense, "a liberty taken
with the sacred text." Mr. LORD does the same thing, but as he puts it
onI the ground of sheer falsifying, and without the least shadow of refutation, we can not regard him or his charge as worthy of any notice.  When
any man of any real weight as a Biblical scholar makes the objection, our
brief defence would be, that a view sanctioned by the two oldest versions,
the Latin and the Syriac, brought out by Calvin, and sustained by the best
modern Germian authorities, is so far from being a "liberty taken with the
sacred text," that it has the best of all critical arguments in its support.
277 
278    LIVING THOUGHT OF THE LIVING GOD.
have reached such an extremely rarefied, or rather nihilified negative, what is it, for strength and vividness, and
power of religious emotion, as compared with the conceptions aroused by the radical images of these Arabic and
Hebrew words? If God has made the revelation in this
manner by way of "accommodation"  to us, why should
we not be accommodated by it? We may seek to get
above them; we may, in so doing, involve ourselves in
any amount of darkness under the name of the profound;
and it will not do us much hurt, perhaps, unless it obscures
the impression of those accommodating images with which
He who made the human soul as well as the physical
worlds has so graciously furnished us. When this is the
case, it may be found that we have gained dimness for
brightness, vacuity for fullness, a dead gnosticism for
living thought,- that living thought of the Living God
which Revelation aims to give us, as something vastly
more glorious than any mere knowledge whether it take
to itself the ancient form of a philosophical pantheism, or
the more modern guise of an arid scientific theism.
Should the question be put in this form-What Hebrew word would Moses have probably employed, had
he actually wished to convey this idea of an absolute creation of matter from previous nonentity, or of force,
activity, and motion' from a previous negation of all these
ideas? We may answer, that it would most likely have
been this word bara. This, however, would not be on
the ground that such is the radical idea of the word, but
because it would come as near to it as any others of the
* We have no words that are strictly the negations of these.  lmqnobility and rest are not the negation but the opposition, or resistance, of activrity and tiotion. 
THE ABSOLUTE BEGINNING.
formative class, and its use for something new and be
unseen (although without any recognition of the m
physical idea) would make it yet more suitable.,
the whole decision of this depends on the context.:
purely a question of interpretation, with which scie
has nothing to do, even had she any means of answer
it.  It is, moreover, altogether distinct from that o
view of the absolute beginning, at some time, of mate
existence, as matter of fact.  To deny that is athcie
But whether Moses meant such absolute beginning o
undivine existence, is a question that has been er
tained by the best men in the Christian church.   I
fects no man's orthodoxy, or reputation for orthodo
It may be that Moses took in all of material being as
as he knew it, or that he meant to teach, and was
spired to teach, the general truth that all things c
from God.  But this may have been in various w
and for various purposes.   The  aim  may have  b
an impression of the Divine power and greatness, ra
than a lesson of curious knowledge.   The accomp
ment of this aim might have been attempted in
use of general terms universal in extent, so as to sat
the philosophical state of mind, but comparatively fe
in respect to strength and vividness of emotion; c
might have been effected, perhaps better effected,
presenting, for such a purpose, a picture partial
temporal, yet most graphic, of the Divine power in
building of the visible heavens and earth, with all tha
visible in them, regarded rather as they appear t
in their essence or essential causality.  It may eve]
conceded that if Moses had been interrogated, as
has supposed, he would have said that he meant all thi
2T9
4     1' I 
280    LUCIFERI, OR SONS OF THIE MORNING.
in space at least; and yet, the question returns, What
is the fair import of his language, and how does it au thorize us to fix any metaphysical notions upon his pic torial words?
We  have elsewhere remarked, that it could not have
been the beginning of all spiritual being below the lDi vine; for angels,' Sons of God," " Sons of the Morn-ng," or Luciferi, are recognized as being in existence
wVhen God laid the foundations of the earth. Angelic
,existence implies some kind of dynamical occupancy of
space, which it is very hard for us to separate from somrne
idea of the material, unless we ascribe to such beings
attributes we have been accustomed to think of as spe cially Divine.  But be that as it may, we come back to
the first verse in Genesis, and we ask,-What does it
fairly mean according to the conceptions it creates in
our minds? "/nI the beginning God created the fea vens and the Earth."   Does it refer to something ante eedent to all that is mentioned in the subsequent verses,
or is it, in fact, a title or caption to the whole account?
so that the Hieavens and Earth there mentioned are the
same Heavens and Earth described immediately after wards in the second and eighth verses.  We would con fess that the main arguments inclining us to the latter
view, arise from the great dificulties (not scientific, but
hermencutical,) connected withl the other.   In the first
place, there is no intrinsic evidence that the first verse
is thus severed from the others, or that it stands by itself
idenloting, a period of distinct and antecedent working, much less a period so remotely antecedent as would be
required for a scientific hypothesis commencing with the
atbsolute elimination of light.  This would be our first
~ r 
FIRST VERSE IN GENESIS.
argument. It is negative, we admit, and not conclusive.
The opposite view has most respectable advocates, and
was held by some of the Fathers. It would not be at
war with any other conclusions we have deduced respecting the indefinite length of the days. That interpretation is entirely independent of it, and may be maintained, with equal force and fairness, without denying that
MAoses meant the absolute principium, or expressing any
opinion about it. He may have meant some ineffable
antecedent act; but if so, then it might be very fairly
argued, that to such act he also meant that the word
bara should be specially, if not exclusively, applied.
That was creation, then; all else was a mere arrangement of what had been created in the beginning.   But
other uses of the word, not only throughout the Bible,
but in this very account, are at war with such a supposition.  There were creations after the primordial act,creations, beyond all doubt, the fashioning or organizing
existing materials both into outward form and internal
constitution. But without dwelling farther on this, we
proceed to our argument  2d. If the First verse means a creating act antecedent to all organization, then its words leaven and Earth
can not be taken in their definite, visible, or local sense,
as they are afterward employed, but must be regarded
as general terms for the first matter as yet undivided and
unformed. Some have supposed that this was actually
expressed by the particle s, which was understood to
denote the matter, the substance, of the Heavens and
the Earth. The best Hebrew sholars, however, reject
any such notion, regarding this little word as simply a
sign of the accusative case, or rather as having very
24*
281 
HEBREW WORD FOR MATTER.
much the same force with the Greek and Latin reflexive
pronouns; so that:=N h  and tet J would be the
Heaven itself, or the very Heavens, and the very Earth.
We would not attach much importance either way to
any argument drawn from the use of this particle, but,
thus regarded, it would favor the interpretation which
makes the Earth and Heavens of the first verse the same
with the Earth of the second, and the Heavens mentioned in the eighth below. But if Moses meant the origination of matter per se, "why could he not have said so"?
We use the language of an objector, which is applied to
another purpose, but is more applicable here. If it be
said that the Hebrew language furnished no such word
as matter in its elementary or philosophical sense, or first
matter distinct from any particular forms it might assume,
this would only show how foreign all such metaphysical
or elementary conceptions were from their clear practical
,modes of thinking.* When something like the idea of
The Hebrew had roots from which such words could be formed, when* ever the progress of speculative thinking might make them necessary for
those who used the language.  We have already referred to the plural of
D, the word for dust as thus employed, Prov. viii, 26, (Six Days of Ci-eation, p. 323,) and we might cite another that would seem to come the
nearest to such an idea of any terms in the Hebrew Bible. It is the word
=:2., much employed by the Rabbinical writers to denote substance,
and having something of the same thought in a few places of the Old Testament, as Genesis ii, 23, where Adam says of Eve, according to the common rendering, "This is bone of my bone," but it may be translated, substance of my substance.  We might suppose this idea ofsubstance to come
from the sense bone, so frequent elsewhere, were it not that such a view
would be out of harmony with the spirit of the remarkable expressions
Exod. xxiv, 10, where it is used to denote the very substance, or supposed
* substance, of the Heavens themselves, (."         ==21,) "the very sstbstance of the Heaven in its purity."  This would rather lead us to refer
, such use of the word to the primary idea of power or strength, which belongs to the root as a verb. It wonld take us directly and naturally to
282 
MOSES UNDOUBTEDLY ORTHODOX.
first existence from nonentity is to be expressed, which
we think is intended, Isaiah xlviii, 13, then we have the
bold personifications of poetry, so much more effective
than any prose statement that would have required the
other kind of language.   " I call to them, they stand up
together."
No doubt Moses was as orthodox here as any of us,
but did he think of primal matter per se?  That is the
question. Did it come within the plan of his sublime description? It is said, with some apparent force, that if
not taught here, this great truth of first origin is wanting
in the Bible. That we think is an error. There are
other places where it would appear to be expressed, such
as the one just referred to in Isaiah, and still more clearly
in John i, 3, which seems to go farther back in time,
and to be more universal both in space and height, than
the account given by Moses.   And  yet if it were not
taught in the Scriptures, it would detract nothing from
the evidence of their inspiration or their dignity. The
being of a God is not taught, as a direct lesson, in the
Bible. It is everywhere assumed, not as something
which might be deduced from any scientific search into
nature, but as a thought which the human soul has no
right to be without, even for a moment. It can not be
innocently destitute of it, that is, innocently atheistical,
that notion of force, resistance, and so, of har dness, which is the ultimate
of all our thinking about matter. The same word seems to be used of the
primal matter, or primal causal energy (whatever that may be) of the human organism, in the passage before quoted from Psalm cxxxix, 14, "My
.substawce was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret and curiously
wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." The thought is, that this primal
matter, or primal force, is "naked and laid bare to Him with whom no
creation is invisible," (x[o'rj aepovr5, Heb. iv, 13,)-thereby implying
how obscure it is, and difficult of conception, to the finite human mind.
288 
284 ALL WORLDS IN TIME-ALL WORLDS IN SPACE.
during the time that would be necessary for drawing a
conclusion from physical facts, or outward testimony of
any kind. The same may be said of the dependence of
the universe on God, whether that universe be great or
small; for the amount of space and time here makes no
difference. It was, therefore, a sufficient design in Genesis to give us that which must ever be to us the most
glorious example of God's working, namely, the ktisis, or
building of our own earth and the near visible heavens
above it. That all things else, known or unknown, came
from the same hand, and this in respect to time as well
as space, would be, not so much an inference, as a thought
inseparably connected with it, and so, we might say, revealed in it.  He who made us, made all things; " and
without him was there nothing made that was made."
But let us look at the objection in another form. It
regards it as a derogation from the dignity of revelation,
if Moses, in his graphic picture, is not supposed to begin
with the absolute principium before which time was not.
But there would seem to be a ready answer to this by
putting a precisely similar question. If all things in
time, why not all things in space? Why not all worlds
as well as all ages,- that is, all aeons or olams in one
sense as well as in the other. If it be said that the one
is to be inferred from the words leaven and Earth, however partial the space knowledge or conception with
which these words were connected in the mind of Moses,
then we also say that by a like inference we mount up
above the particular times presented in his creative picture; although, whether we shall gain anything by so
doing, either in clearness of thought, or vividness of emo tion, may be a very serious question. 
FIRST VERSE IN GENESIS.
It may be said that the world had not then science
enough to have understood the language necessary for
such a space revelation, in the attempt to convey anything
like an adequate conception. That may be. But are
we sure that the world had science enough then, or has
science enough now, or ever will have science enough to
apprehend adequately the ineffable mystery of primordial
formation? The fact may be inferred from an account
necessarily partial so far as we can make it matter of
conception; but did such primordial birth of entities, as
entities, form a designed part of Moses' vivid picture?
This is the question, and this brings us to another view
of the subject. We say, then   8dly. The beginning, of which the writer of Genesis I
speaks in the first verse, must have been a beginning on
this earth, the very earth we now inhabit; and this is
maintained because the earth, or the waters of the earth,
was the place of the first distinct act mentioned in the
account. " The earth was without form and void,' (or
waste and desolate) and darkness was on the face of the
deep." Here we have the opening of this grand drama
with its six sublime acts.  It is the date and the locus
of the first special energy -we mean the first special
energy recorded.   "And the Spirit of God brooded on
the waters."  Now, if by the word create, in the first
verse, Moses had meant an act, or acts, prior to this, we
think he would have used the same language; for we
may regard it as an established Bible truth, that all cre.
ative acts, and creative agency, are through the Spirit
* Thiese oxpressions do Iot refer to the a' earth's oU-ii,e," as Professor
D)A.NA takes it (Bib. Sac. Jan. 1856, p. 115,) Tihe formlessess, or wast:,  wa-s tlhe abseoce of all internal.livision, of all diversity of appea.a-nce.
It was a wild waste of waters.
285 
LIGHT OLDER THAN WATER.
and the Word.   (Vide John i, 2, Coloss. i, 16.)   But
for such antecedent act, if Moses meant to set it forth,
there is no'mention of any such agency of the Spirit;
there is no such going forth of the Word. Would the
formula, so emphatic and constant afterward, have been
omitted in the great primordial scene, if the writer really
meant to make it part of his description? This  "brooding on the waters," then, is the first creative act, if not
of the universal origination, at least among the acts pietured, and meant to be pictured, by Moses. If so, then
this was the begining, not of all things absolutely, but
of the Mosaic account.
4th. In the universal creation, it is not easy for us to
conceive, and still less easy to believe, that the absolute
origination of light was later than the constitution of the
water.   It is not an objection of science, but of our common thinking.   Light, in itself, must have been before
the grosser fluid. But we would not depend upon this
alone.   Scripture confirms the thought that it must have
been the oldest of material manifestations, if it is material
at all.  W-e refer to passages already quoted, which represent it as the raiment and dwelling place of Deity,language which, for reasons already given, we  can not
regard as simply figurative. Again- the Luciferi,' or
light bearing  " Sons of the Morning,"  or " Morning
Stars," must have been light, or must have had light,
' In these Lucferi there is a reference, doubtless, to Angelic or superliuman beings. But the old belief did also connect theim with the stars as
their abode, or as their luminous representatives. We have alluded to
this in the other volume, Six Days of Creation, pp. 349, 350, to which the
reader is referred. Whether this old belief, in the days of Job, be fanciful
or not, it shows the idea that stars really existed before the creation of the
earth, and that is a just argument in the interpretation of the Mosaic account,
286 
IN GENESIS, WATER BEFORE THE LIGHT.   287
when they "shouted for joy and sang together," at the
laying of earth's corner stone. The language may be
poetical, but it is very significant. It is inconsistent
with the idea of a universe shrouded in "primeval darkness," tozuse our critic's language. Such darkness, did,
indeed, rest on the earth when this ancient music of the
spheres was heard, but there must have been morning
somewhere 6v To,s grougocv'oig, "in the Heavenly Places,"
or, rather, as the word means, the Super-cclestial Places.
When we come, however, to consider the particular chronology of the Mosaic creation, and the picture of events
as they took place on our earth, nothing can be more
clear than that, if it observes any order of ideas, the waters, and an earth covered with waters, were before the
light there mentioned. It could not, therefore, have been
the primordial light of the universe, but only its first shining on that dark, and undivided, and therefore formless
waste of waters. We see not how the conclusion can be
avoided. If light is earlier than water, then the argument deduced from it respecting the absolute principium
being intended in the Mosaic account utterly fails; and
this would equally be the case whether light is regarded
as a substance or an effect.*
The primordial light must have been before the waters. Such is the
argument of Professor DANA, p. 114, January number of Andover Bibliotheca Sacra. To be sure, he denies that light is an "independent entity."
"It is a result," he says, "of chemical change," or "produced by molecular disturbance." Here he thinks he has actually seized the mystery.
Light is "molecular action."  Hence, he argues very sagely, light being
molecular action, matter without such molecular action would not be light
that is, it would be dark; and so, also, having no heat, it would be cold
and dead.  "Let it be endowed, then, with intense attraction (moderate
attraction it seems would not do) and it would produce light as the first
effect of the mutual action begun."  "Thus science, in its latest developments, declares as distinctly as the Bible, on the first day light was." 
288    IS LIGHT AN INDEPENDENT ENTITY?
5th. In the Mosaic narrative the Earth is created before
the Heaven. Such, also, is the representation in other
Here we have again the curious parallelism; only science, as usual, holds
the most prominent place.  It is not behind Moses in anything. It talks
" as distinctly" as the Divine revelation which would have been wholly
unnecessary had it been delayeduntil these "latest developments."
Such a scientific display may wonderfully strengthen the faith of certain
religionists who know as little of science as they do of the Bible; but need
the intelligent reader be told that there is really no light in it? The "latest developments" are yet at a vast distance from the real mystery.  They
do not tell us "where light dwelleth;" they can not "show us the path to
its house."  Boast as they may, the challenge in Job is yet unanswered.
The philosophy of a Humboldt frankly admits this; the science of other
men resents the assertion, as though it were an insulting derogation from
the claims of the second "revelation."
Light, then, is an effect-an effect of some condition of material substance. This is all that the Professor's fine words amount to. We would
ask, in the first place, does he mean the sensation to which there is frequenitly given this name, or with which it is so often confounded? Light,
in that sense, is a mixed product, an outward material working in some
kind of combination with an inward sensorium, or sensorial action. But
no one ever expressed that more clearly than Aristotle did two thousand
years ago in his treatise IIsgi'uX;g.  "The latest developments" have
ceatainly done nothing in that direction, unless something should result
from the clairvoyant experiments of Dr. Hare and the Mesmnerisers.  But
light is an ej]ect.  What then? An effect is an out-woiking; and this outworking is all that science can see. It is an out-working conditioned onil a
certain state of matter, and this state of matter is another out-working conditionled on another state, and so on up to the primal material entity.  So,
also, is water an effect. It is conditioned on a certain combination of oxygen and hydrogen.  These, too, may be effects-each of them-and their
conditioning forces may be effects, and so on, effects of effects, as far as
science can trace, should she rub her glasses to the utmost.  She has for
some time been engaged in splitting up matter into any number of "independent entities," though all along suspecting that she is in the wrong direction. She may be near the other leg of the hyperbola of progress, where
it curves round again to the ideas of simplicity and unity.  She may, perhaps, in time, discover the first matter. But as far as we can see-it is ever
an of-fect. It is, all along, a doing, an activity, (for that is all that science
has ever seen and therefore all she' can infer) until we get up to this
first matter, and what that is but a doing, an activity still, we  can not
tell.  Nothing, then, is gained by this.  We  might as well take light for
an entity, as any of the miaterial states in which it is said to be condi 
ANCIENT SCIENTIFIC CONVENTIONS.
parts of the Bible-" Who formed the Earth and stretched out the Heavens over them."  "To the Lord belong
tioned, even if science knew far more than she does know, or ever will
know, about these conditioning causalities.  Instead of knowing "where
li,ght dwelleth," either as an entity, or anl effect, our scientific Professor
can tell us nothing about the material condition even of its secondary modificationrls, or the molecular state on which depend varieties of color.
He may use as much technical language as he pleases, but it all comes out
in this bald, barren proposition,-a certain atomic or molecular condition is
the ground for the reflection of a certain color in distinction from any other.
Very likely. We could almost have told that a priori. The Professor may
be safely defied to tell what that molecular condition is which makes the
paper on which he writes of one color, and the ink he uses, of another. He
can no more tell us how one hair is black or white, than he can make one
hair black or white.
Again, he says, the light is conditioned on the chemical affinities of the
molecules; but who knows if it may not be the other way, the affinities of
the molecules conditioned on the light?  Chemical affliity may be conrditioned on the presence of a substance which is the ground both of the affinity and the ultimate visibility; and this conditioning substance we may call
light, although it is invisible to science, which can only see results, ejfcts,
-out-workings, even of light itself. On such a view, it would be very
much a question of naming.  We may stop at any one manifestation, or
we may call everything an effect, and deny it the name of an entity, until
we mount up, actually or in thought, to the first matter, or the first activity,
the one universal material substance of the universe. Is everything else
a manifestation of this primal matter or primal activity? For we must say
for ourselves, we find it very difficult to conceive of it in any other way.
To such a question no science can say Yes or No. Are there one, or two,
or more lfirst material principles? The discussion of this question commenced in the first Ionic Scientific Convention of which Thales was first
President; and we must say that the meeting of 1856, which lately took
place in the city of Albany, had not yet arrived in sight of a decision. The
modern gathering, had, doubtless, a vastly greater array of facts, and those
facts, too, arranged and classified in a vastly more scientific order.  They,
therefore, had a perfect right, which right they fully exercised, to talk
much more of progress, and blow a louder trumpet; but in regard to these
firstfacts they were pretty much on a par with their brethren of the olden
time. And so it is even now. Our scientific Professor, with all his talk
of molecules, can tell us no more about these primal harmonies of matter
and the universe, than the blind player on the street organ; he knows no
more than the child "where light dwelleth, or what is the way to its
h-ouse"-we mean in the sense of this Bible query.  He is as ignorant here
?)
289 
290    EARTH MADE BEFORE THE HEAVENS.
the foundations (the columns of the earth) and he hath
set the tebel (the visible round mundus or sky,) over
them."-1 Sam. ii, 8.   This might be called poetical
imagery; but there can be no doubt of its having its origin in the prose description of Moses. After the general
title, the first work is the earth, and on the earth. Then
we have the making of the firmament above the waters.
This firmament is called the Heaven.   That is its name,
and this naming is followed throughout the Old Testament. It is conclusive as to what is meant in these
poetical expressions. What is of still more importance,
it determines the manner in which other Hebrew writers,
whether historical, didactic, or poetical, interpreted the
MIosaic language.  The order is most significant and unmistakable, if we will only view it from the right stand
point- The Earth- The Firmament, or  Sky,- The
as on the questions, whether what he calls gravitation is the finality of physical action, or the terms employed in respect to it are the finality of scienitific language any more than vortices and epicycles;-although he was so
absurdly indignant against "the mind"  that would place them in any
sense, and for any purpose, in the same category.
WVe are not derogating at all from the true dignity of science, when we
thus call to account those who would injure her by unmeaning claims.
This swelling talk has too long been addressed to the easy popular thinking, and its correction is demanded, not only in deference to higher ideas,
but as a service to science itself. But to return to our starting point-the
natuare of light has really nothing to do with this discussion. Be it an ef:
fect, an out-working, a conditioned state of matter, an activity, an entity,
an independent substance, or anything else about which a logomachy may
be started, still the real question remains the same.  Was  the light mentioned by Moses the beginning of light, the first manifestation of light, if
you choose, before which light never had been during an endless ante-past
eternity, or was it the first light, making the first morning, on earth's dark
waters? This is the question. Whichever way decided, it is one solely
of interpretation. Science has nothing to do with it. No "revelation"
she can make can herein contradict Moses. No gabble of any of her votaries about "affinities and molecules," can ever confirm him 
ORDER OF TIE MOSAIC PICTURE.
Heavenly bodies appearing therein.  Whatever changes
this disturbs the whole harmony of the narrative. It
makes the picture full of distortions. Now such an order
of events is inconsistent with the supposition that Moses
meant to set forth, in the first verse, an antecedent working in which the Heaven (in that case necessarily the
astronomical heaven with all its hosts) was before the
Earth. It will still less agree with the scientific representation that expands the Mosaic sky into nebular rings.
It is, however, in admirable harmony with the view that
regards the work of the Fourth day, not as the absolute
making (from nonentity) of the then new matter of the
Heavenly luminaries, but the making' them to be luminaries ( a) in that clear firmament, sky, or heaven,
which now, through some causality unknown to us, and
not revealed to us, is prepared for their visibility, or as
the locus in which they appear. How the idea of the
astronomical Heavens afterwards came in, or the Heaven
of Heavens, has been elsewhere shown.
This Jewish idea, or, as we may rather call it, the ancient idea, of the Earth and Heavens, or sky around it,
as forming the Tellurian mundus, is found in various parts
of the Bible, and almost always presented in the same
way. The Earth is the main thing in the picture. It
is the foundation, and the Heaven is built around it.
The latter, is, in fact, a part of the Earth, having its
origin from it, and its existence dependent upon it.
When the Earth departs, the Heavens depart, or are
IIf the name making can be given to any organization short of the first
matter of which they are composed, or its absolute orignation, then it may
be given to such light-producing arrangement, or constitution, as well as
to any other. Every study we can'give the language and the context confirmns this view~
291 
292 THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH.  2 PETER, III, 5.
" rolled together as a scroll." So St. Peter speaks of
the Heavens and Earth of old, which arose from the water
and had their consistence through and from the water,'
and the       Eart h and Heaven that are now reserved for
the judgment of the fire. In that great physical catastrophe " the heavens shall pass away," the atmosphere
b    e      destroyed " by fervent heat," the sky dissolved, the
luminaries   therein put out, and darkness come again
ov er   whatever may be left of the charred and blackened
earth.  W       e  are not prepared to interpret Scripture on
4hese points till we come back to this old conception.
And it was a            true conception.  This sky above our heads,
an      d the  luminous points that appear in it, are truly Tellurian.t   The glorious sight would not exist for a world
wrapped in rings and belts of darkness. It is the stars
as they appear in our firmament, as they are pictured in
our rakia.        They come from  the far off "depths of
space,           " t hese luminous points                     ig al'osgO, Ca6our..
However unequal their respective journies, with equal
radii do they appear through Earth's revealing sky-light
,dome. They fall upon the blue Tellurian eye-ball very
much as the Tellurian images themselves strike upon the
aqueous firmament of the human eye, whence they are
2 Peter iii, 5.  The best rendering of this verse is that which regards
uoktzrog as implied in the first clause, or as belonging as much to the
first clause at to the second; so that it would read "the Heavens of old
and the Earth were of water," or froim water, which was the old doctrine
of Thales, derived probably from Moses.
t We  use this word here fromn necessity.   Teltls, in distinction froin
Terra, denotes the wcorld ea-thl, or the earth as a world, or the centre of a
world. It is, therefo)re, the only word that will take inwhat Moses means
by the "Earth and the Heaven"-the latter being included in the idea of
the same world, 
DAVID'S THOUGHT OF THE HEAVENS.
represented on that still more central retina, in which,
and through which, each secluded soul sees all it ever
sees of outward mundane things. What lies beyond in
the distant regions whence these appearances come, is
another question, which we answer more or less perfectly,
or rather, more or less imperfectly, according to our science. The ancients may have known much or little about
them, but it would not change the reality, the real appearance, or the language. They could speculate as
well as we. Our science has given us no advantage in
this respect. They had theories, some of them, even
about an " infinity of worlds." There was nothing to
prevent the Jewish mind taking the same direction.
David, musing on the Heavens, may have had, and-we
sometimes think he did have, some such thought of immense existences, or immense fields of being, lying behind those luminous points, or that luminous picture which
he describes as the embroidered work of God's fingers.
Something arose in his mind which sunk man'into insignificance, and from which the Seer does not recover himself until he comes back to the earth, and finds relief
in the contemplation of man as lord of all below the skies,
placed in dominion over all terrestrial animation. But
science has changed all that, it may be said.  All our
theological views, says one, must be modified in consequence of the modern discoveries in astronomy. Not at
all- we reply. Our earth is still the same secluded
place in the universe that it was in the time of David.
God meant it should be thus shut out. He has, perhaps,
secluded all other parts of the universe in like manner.
To us, and to every other world, if there are such other
worlds it is the same as if no other than itself existed.
25*
293 
294   EMPTINESS OF MERE SPACE KNOWLEDGE.
He is the God of our world, the same as if this single
planet were the only theatre of his creative and provident
tial power. And science has not, can not, change this
in its essence and reality. It may give rise to a different view of the universe, but it is only in forced conceptions, having their ground in intellectual or mathematical
estimates that can not be retained permanently by that
imaging faculty which, after all, must ever rule our emotions. We comne back again to the old picture,-yes,
we will say it, to us the old reality,- that places us
precisely on a par with the men of the olden, yea, of
the oldest time. We talk much of our scientific views
of the universe, but there is certainly a deception about
it. For the most part, we have simply made definite, to some extent, what the old mind contemplated as
indefinite.  We have obtained something like satisfactory
estimates of nearest distances.  We have increased the
conceptions of space extent. Where the ancients rested
in hundreds and thousands, we have gone on to tens of
thousands; where they had tens of thousands, we talk of
millions.  And yet we are deceived in the real value of
this by making estimates of space magnitude the real
test of greatness.  Our scientific calculations look vast,
-indeed,-when viewed from our stand point; but examine
them carefully, keep out the swelling pride of mere space
discovery, and let reason, pure reason, have fair play.
On such a view, how do these splendid constructions of
mathematical genius wither up into the merest skeletons
:and ghosts of knowledge? It is a knowledge of spaces,
:forces, masses, and that, not in their ideas, but as represented by points, lines, curves, angles, sines, cosines, and
tangents.  That is all.  And  that is much, says the 
HIGHER ORDERS OF BEING UNKNOWN TO SCIENCE. 295
mathematician.  It is so in the scientific aspect;  we
have no wish to underrate it on its own field; and yet
what does it tell us more than the unshaded outline map of
some unknown and unknowable continent? We see in such
map points and distances; we see waving lines of various
lengths crossed by rectilineal parallels; but in all higher
and truer knowledge connected with our human interests
and human sympathies, it is as void as the waste ocean
that surges around its unknown shores, or the blank
space that rises immeasurably above its formless surface.
There are beings of a higher rank than human, many
orders of them probably, whether the inhabitants of stars,
or of worlds of a different kind too atherial to be seen by
our grosser vision; but for this knowledge we are indebted
to the Bible. Science here is as silent as the Pyramids.
She would rather regard the human race as the highest
to which the physical or creative progress has yet arrived. But Scripture has revealed it to us; for the knowledge has a nearer bearing on our spiritual destiny, than
any science we may possess of the visible worlds of astronomy. Nothing there is known which can in any way
affect our Scriptural theology. Whatever of life there
may be in those conceived or estimated spaces, whatever
rank of being, whatever goodness, happiness, beauty, or
their opposites,- whatever political or social condition,
whatever moral state, confirmed or fallen, redeemed or
lost,- all this is no less matter for the imagination, and
no more a knowledge which is to change our theological
belief, than it was in the days of Abraham and Pythagoras. But we are rambling again. To resume the
order of discussion, we have 
296  THE FIRST NIGHT OF TIIE MOSAIC CREATION.
6th. An argument from the Mosaic division of the
creative times. It is clear, on the face of the account,
that the whole creative process there set forth, whether
universal or partial, or whatever it might embrace, was
meant to be included in six days or divisions of time.
" In six days God made the HIeaven, the Earth, the Sea,
and all that in them is." Whatever, therefore, was
extra dies, does not belong to this account. It may have
place in some other or greater chronology, but does not
come into the Geology or Ouranology of Moses. But if
the first verse denotes a separate antecedent work,
whether nearly or remotely antecedent, it would be thus
extra dies; for nothing is more clearly impressed upon
the account, than the fact that the hexameron commences with the night. It is as clear, too, that the light is
the first morning. It is equally evident that this is
the antithesis of the darkness resting on the terrestrial
waters. Put them together, and we have the two limits
of this First day. Can the great primordial act be assigned to the night? If so, it was the beginning of the
night, for the light was its termination. But if the beginning of a night, what was before it? We get into
strange positions here; and the reason is, that every
man's soul must feel that there is neither consistency,
nor harmony, nor rationality in such a view. If we make
the Mosaic light, or the command for its outshining, the
primordial act, then the darkness before it was the darkness of nothingness. This might seem consistent in itself;
but no one can read the account, and reconcile such a
view with the language of Moses. If the darkness was
the darkness of nothingness, the waters were the waters
of nothingness, or, to adopt the scientific term, the 
THE PRIMORDIAL ACT, EXTRA DIES.
"fluid" of nonentity.  Here is chaos certainly; but it
is in the mind of the one who attempts to form such a
conception. All is confusion, waste and void, a mental
tohu and bohu instead of one of the most vivid pictures
language was ever employed to express. The reader
will see, of course, that the remarks do not apply to the
fact of such origination, but to the supposed representation of it by Moses. The primordial act, through which
matter is supposed to have come into being, is no where in
the diorama of this first day; it is therefore not set forth
in the Mosaic Creation, whether Moses thought of it or
not. No rational mind, we say, could think of calling it
in question as a fact; but that does not make it any the
less extra dies. The creation recorded by Moses was all
in six days. To find what lies fairly within these limits,
be it partial or universal, belongs to the truthful interpreter. Whatever lies without, and can by no consistent
effort be brought within, may be left to the vaunting
theories of an ambitious science, and the speculations of
a bigoted unbiblical theology.
We can not close this excursus without adverting to the
obvious parallel to this Mosaic account which is presented
in the beginning of the Gospel by John.  We  have a
beyinning mentioned there.  We have also a light, and
a darkntess in which (not out of which, as in the Mosaic
account, 2 Cor. iv, 6,) the light shone. This Light was
a much older light than the one revealed Genesis i, 3;
even as the beginning here is a far more ancient beginning.  It was the E;x'v, Colos. i, 15, the AT.vy.     ~
64X, Heb. i, 3, or first out beaming of the Divine Glory,
the light which " the darkness apprehendeth not," that
297 
TIIHE FIRST CHAPTER OF JOHN.
is, which no darkness overtakes (xaTi?Xa/3Sv Jo. i, 5,) or
succeeds*, as it does the physical light. Here, too, we
have a parallel mention of an older and more universal
creation. The Apostles' knowledge of the universe was,
perhaps, not much, if any, greater than that of Moses,
but he is directed to the use of language, not only wider
in itself, but exceeding, by its manner of expression, the
very idea of any partial work.  "All things were made
by fifm, and without Hlim was there nothiny made
which was made."  Could not Moses have used similar
language, had he thought of taking into his picture any
thing more ancient than the waters and the darkness
that rested upon them. The contrast, as well as the pa
rallel, would seem unmistakeable. The one begins with
light, the other with darkness; in the one the light is
followed by an evening, in the other the darkness never
overtakes or comprehends it; the one embraces all things,
the other the Earth with the Heaven immediately above
it and that is made after it. To this corresponds the
language of Paul, Colos. i, 16, where he, too, evidently
goes beyond the Mosaic account both in language and
idea-"' Who is the Image of the invisible God, the First
Born before all creation. For in Him were all things
created, all things in the Heavens and all things upon
the Earth, the visible and the invisible, whether they be
Thrones, or Lordships, or Principalities, or Powers, all
The arguments for the common rendering of this passage are strong,
especially as favored by the context in the 11th and 12th verses.  - Still, in
the Greek verb itself there is much to support the other view, which makes
a strongly marked parallel, or rather contrast, with Genesis.  The sense
of understanding, taking by the mind, belongs to the word, but it is quite
unusual; the other sense is almost universal. Where  this light shines,
there is no night or evening there.
298 
THE GREATER CREATION, THE GREATER LIGHT. 299
things by Him, and for Him were created."  Whatever
these invisible things may mean, (a question we have
argued elsewhere,) they are clearly something beyond,
above, and distinct from, the visible or phenomenal (rx
qaov6ova, " the things that are seen,") to which the account of Moses seems wholly confined. Here, too, we
have the Life as well as the Light.  " In Him was life,
and the life was the light of men."   In Genesis, the
going forth of the Word, or Logos, is ever the origin of
physical life, but here is something higher. It is the
identification of the Light and Life-the Life was the
Light of men. The Logos in nature, is certainly a prominent, though much neglected doctrine of the Bible;
but here is something that we must receive as a still
greater mystery. It passeth understanding, and yet it
is not on that account to be denied, or lowered to something clearly within our comprehension. The Zag must
be more than a moral influence, or moral teaching, however high the truths thus taught.  Writers called evangelical have maintained this moral-suasion ground; but
if they take no other, we see not how they are to defend
themselves against the more consistent Socinian argument, or deny the interpretation which would make the
Logos here but another name for the impersonal Reason.
" Without Him  there was nothing made which was
made." There is a different division of this third verse,
adopted by some of the Fathers, and having support in
some of the old versions. If it can be philologically justified, it is entitled to respectful attention for the meaning which it would seem to bring out. They took the
0 7%7;ovsV of the third verse, as the beginning of the next
clause-" That which was made, in Him  was life." 
THE INEFFABLE TRUTH.
The proposition, then, would seem to be, not simply that
life was in the Logos, but that the natural creation had
its life in Him who was also, in a spiritual sense, both
the light and the life of men.
Between the First of Genesis and the First of John
there is not only a parallel but a contrast. One is wholly
pictorial, yet none the less real. It is true as a picture.
Its truthfulness is according to the vividness with which
the ineffable causalities are represented, as they appear,
and in the order in which they appear, on the canvas of
the mind's conception. The other, transcending all conceptions, gives us only the most general names for primary ideas,- the Word, the Life, the Light, the Universal Origination. Its truthfulness is according to its universality. The aim of science, in distinction from both
these, would be to give us the particular and linked
causalities. It has been shown that, however correct in
itself, or for the very short distance it goes, it must ever
fail in respect to primal powers. The falsehood of its
ambitious attempt consists in its unmeasurably short-falling; paradox as it may seem, its inadequacy here is in
the ratio of the accuracy and minuteness of its details.
From such a view one reflection presents itself strongly
to the mind. There is an ineffable truth in creation,
even in the physical creation. At some period of our
existence that ineffable truth may be brought nearer to
our minds. Who will then be found, though far below,
to have had his eye in the right direction? The man who
has taken the simple pictorial Bible account, or he who
has sought for something better in the ambitious path of
science? If infinite wisdom is, indeed, the author of the
Scriptures, there can be but one answer to the question.
300 
ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH.
CHAPTER X.
ANTIQUITY OF THE EARTH.
Geology claims the Sole Credit of the Idea- What may be
fairly Conceded to her- One who is not a Geologist may
Reason about Geology- The Geologist himself may be un  fitted for Cosmical Questions-A little Science wakes up
Thought in Thoughtful Minds- The Idea once aroused is
seen every where-Antiquity of the Earth seen in the most
Common Phenomena-Nature, in general, Honest and
Truthful- Geological Changes referred to in Job xiv   The Ancient Philosophy —The  World-Problem- The
Schoolmen and the Galileos- The "Students of iNature"   The Epicureans the Ancient Scientific Boasters-Natural
Theology.
ASIDE from the supernatural fact, the hexameral division, as has been already remarked, is the principal feature in the Mosaic account. The length of the days is
a subordinate question. A thoughtful mind would, indeed, feel that there was something extraordinary about
them in the manner of their division, in their mysterious
mornings and evenings made without a sun or any astronomical changes, and their strange commencement in
each case by the intervention of a supernatural Word.
Such thoughtful mind would carry this sense of the extraordinary into the duration. As long, however, as
there was nothing outward, that is, no outward knowledge.
26
301 
CREDIT DUE GEOLOGY,
associating itself with the length or shortness of the times,
the idea of such extraordinary duration might remain
undeveloped; especially since in itself it is entirely indefinite,- a long or a short time satisfying the philological
conception, although the general mysteriousness that pervades the whole remarkable history favors the wider notion. Still, the ante-solar day might be of any length';
and there was little to disturb the view that had become
in a great measure constant in modern times, until Geology began to proclaim its discoveries. This is its merit,
and it is willingly conceded to it. It waked up the common mind to a thought, which, although slumbering in
the masses, had been entertained by meditative souls as
perfectly consistent with the language,-a thought that
when fully aroused is found to be in beautiful harmony
with the greater analogies of Scripture, as they direct
our minds to the prophetic destinies of this world and
God's apparently slow working therein.
This credit, then, may be cheerfully conceded to Geology.  It has made common this idea of the antiquity of
the earth. And yet nothing can be more false than the
notion that any great amount of natural science, or geological science, is necessary for the satisfactory apprehension and holding of such an idea. There may be
given to the remark a wider application.  In nothing,
perhaps, do our more boasting class of scientific men
show a more unphilosophical blindness, than in the evident
conceit, they so often manifest, that the man who does
There is something striking in the view of Professor Pierce, thnt this
hexameral division denotes an order rather than any particular times
long or short. It is well worthy of attention, and we should prefer it to
either the twenty-four hour, or the nebular scheme. Still we can not
divest ourselves of the idea of a chronology.
302 
"' STUDENTS OF NATURE." 
not profess to understand conchology, and mineralogy,
or even geology, in their scientific order, is, therefore,
unqualified to reason about them, or any of the great
physical questions connected with creation and origin
Now this is narrow-very narrow. There is, indeed,
required some knowledge of these sciences, as sciences,
that a man may estimate correctly their true position;
but such knowledge need not be extensive nor minute.
He may make blunders occasionally; and he can afford
to do so, without mortification, if the higher result of his
argument is unaffected  by them.   There are beyond
these, and above these, other departments of knowledge,
of higher interest, and demanding  severer thought.
There are students of God's Word who can well afford
to be ignorant of many things esteemed highest by these
" Students of Nature." But even in geology, it requires
no great amount of technical geological science to reason, and reason correctly,- not on the numerous ques.tions of fact and inference disputed among professional
geologists themselves,- but upon the bearing of the science and its discoveries on the great fields, both of iln
ductive and revealed truth.  There is some reason to
think, that the man whlo looks at the universe as represented in his scientific cabinet, is, in fact, thereby less
qualified for such an argument. He is too fond of showing off his science in its partial aspects; there are certain cherished views, or scientific hobbies, we might call
them, certain narrow niches and corners of truth, which
have become special favorites; these are hostile even to
the wider cosmical survey in its physical aspect, and
much more so as such survey connects itself with the
spiritual mundane destiny.
303 
SCIENCE WAKES UP THOUGHT.
Science, as we have said, wakes up thought,- thought
beyond her own discoveries, or the strictly scientific domain. And this is the main use of her. But she does
so only in thoughtful souls; and such is far from being
the character of all scientific men. To many she imparts
only dry knowledge, very scientific it may be, but of
very inferior value. The thinking of men had not been
much turned to the antiquity of the earth,- we say
again, in comparatively modern times, for it has been
showvn that it was an ancient speculation, philosophical
;  well as traditional and poetical,  but in modern times,
for certain reasons, the thought had slumbered, until
Geology again awoke it; just as in other cases, that might
be mentioned, we are sometimes startled by the fact of
modern research calling out an old, sometimes a very old,
idea.  Now give Geology all credit for this, and yet it
requires no great amount of exact geological knowledge
to reach out to the great conclusion. In fact, a man's
common every day observations, if he be at all what we
-have called a thoughtful man, are sufficient for this. Let
the mind be once upon the track, and-he need not, for
-this purpose, study Buckland or Lyell.  The ideas of
great times, great spaces,-those old native ideas that
,had been haunting the soul's dreams -start up  and
carry him through without the aid of diagrams or fossil
drawings.  Let something fairly arouse  the thought
within him, and he sees it represented every where. iHe
can not ride through the Hudson Highlands, even in the
rapid flight of the rail road car, without seeing how the
earth shows growth -that is, the evidence of graduat,'   or
It mluay seem hardly necessary to remind the intelligent reader, that
this woord is here used in its etymological strictness, of a proceeding i,r
304 
NATURE HONEST AND TRUTHFUL.
serial succession. He sees this just as clearly as he sees
a similar though shorter growth in his woods and gardens.
The appearance of time, succession, dependence, of one
step waiting for another, is as significantly and as- sug gestively marked in the one as in the other. He must,
also, regard them as equally truthful-that is, as much
indicating what they appear to indicate'- unless he  is
forbidden thus to think by a clear, positive revelation.
Such a reserve proviso he must ever have; for Scripture
has intimated that there may be, sometimes, a false face
on nature.   She is a dX7ti, a show, or outside figure,
ever passing away; and this may be in fact very rapid
as measured on one scale when it may seem to be slow,
very slow, as graduated on another. She works irregularly, too, in a fallen world, where it is part of her mission to make the physical, in some measure, a picture of
the morMal deformity.   Hence, nature  may  be  more full
of paradoxes here than in other spheres, whether her
irregular workings, her deformities, her catastrophes, her
noxious births, are to be viewed as current retributions,
or ancient adaptations to a world foreordained to be the
birth place, and the long abode of fallible and actually
fallen beings.. But, in general, she is to be regarded as
honest, so that her appearances?, so far as they seem to
g,radurn, which we can not separate from some corresponding duration
having as many distinct times as there are appearances of distinct steps.
Growth, also, is taken in the general sense of successive addition.
'Throughout the two long articles of Professor DANA in the Andover
Bibliotheca, there is nothing more absurd than the misapprehension he
has everywhere manifested in respect to the author's use of this word appearance. In the Six Days of Creation, it is employed uniformly, and
with studied consistency, as representative of a high reality-that real,
substantial, powerful, though in itself unseen, thing that appears in it, or
through it. The author makes just the distinction that the most perfect ot
languages so easily suggests between the thing that appears (that is, makes
26*
305 
306     EFFECTS, CAUSES -  SUCCESSION) TIME.
indicate her modes and steps of working, are not vain
lying shows, but truly represent the unseen powers that
lately, or long ago, have left their marks upon her face.
She does not show apparent effects that had no causes,
nor steps that had no succession, nor succession that had
no corresponding times. Whether God ever makes immediately products apparently organic, having the appearances of succession, and yet-no succession in reality, no
movement  per gradus,   it is hard  for us  to say.    We
can not affirm it or deny it. It is so difficult for us to
know how time and space, succession and motion, enter
into the essence of his working in distinction from its manifestation to finite beings, that, in such cases, our only
safety consists in clinging close to the language of Scripture and its fair exegesis.   In the record of such facts
as the creation of the first human body, and the formation of the female organism therefrom, we have a special
the appearance) in the active or middle sense, and that which appears, or
the appearance, in the passive.  This one remark is a sufficient answer to
all the places in which Professor DANA has used the word as a bugbear, in
his charge of Platonism, or otherwise.  He has ever confounded yda~oa,
.r (&v-r~/a, a subjective apparition, with qptlvo0'tvov, a real appearance of a real thing. No other philosophy, we may remark, makes so real
a world as the Platonic, or is farther removed,from that subjectivism
whose ghosts are the ghosts of nothing, whose (pa~!o&ah   are thefantasies
of nothing, and which is, therefore, a system of nothingness from beginning
to end, as unsubstantial on the one side, as dead materialism on the other.
Mr. LORD makes the same charge, but we would only say of him, as civ illy as we can, that his utter want of knowledge of the philosophy he so
ferociously assails, makes it unworthy of notice. He has something which
he calls mind, or spiritual entity; all other reality, to his thinking, is found
in hard matter.  An immaterial entity which is not mind, he holds to be
nonsense. Of course, whether he sees it or not, there being between this
mind and this hard matter, no intermediate reality of any kind, the latter
is the direct pantheistic image of the former, or it is the veriest ghost of
nothing, or else, however unintelligible and irrational the thought, it is
eternal and self-subsistent. 
B3ODY OF ADAM-DID IT SHOW GROWTI?  307
revelation to which "we do well to take heed," and study
it deeply, without being overwise, either in our literalism,
or our symbolism, or our philosophy. And yet it would
be not a proud, but a reverent thought to be humbly entertained, that the best and most honest interpretation
we can put upon it, may, after all, have much remaining
still of the ineffable and the unknown. In such cases,
however, we are fairly warned of the exception, and
have a caution not to go by appearances, or, at least, not
to draw from them the same conclusions that we derive
from the common or ordinary manifestations. The human
body of Adam, when first made, may have presented the
same appearances in the bone, the flesh, the blood, that
exist in the present adult healthful human organism, and
which indicate growth, and maturity as the result of
growth. It may have presented such an appearance, it
probably did present such an appearance -we can hardly
conceive of it otherwise whilst thinking of it as a human
body at all, or as representative of other human bodies —
and yet in the peculiar circumstances of that extraordinary case, we would have no right to adopt either of the
two conclusions that would present themselves to some
minds as the only ones.  It would be very rash in us to
hold, either that the appearances, in such case, must be
the appearances of nothing, in other words, mere q)6~tara,
or that they necessarily indicate the same outward astronomical time, and the same mode of generative working,
as is now required for such an organic result. If there
were appearances of growth, succession, maturity, then
would there be a reverent warrant for concluding that
even in this extraordinary creation, there were realities
in the working corresponding to them, in other words a 
THE MEDITATIVE SPIRIT.
growth, a succession, a maturity, but in their time, and
their modal causality, ineffable, that is, altogether transcending, and not to be measured on the scale to which
the present appearances are to be brought as their only
intelligible standard.
These remarks apply to what may be called the extraordinary creations among creations, -for such there are
on the very face of Scripture-but in other cases, and
especially where the inspired writer uses the very language of natural causality, the appearances of nature
may fairly enter in our reasoning as determinative of the
great facts of succession, if not of their precise chronology.
We may say, then, that in general, and when we have
no positive revelation to the contrary, nature is to be
trusted, with all allowance for our exceeding ignorance
of her immensely varied laws, and for what, for all we
know to the contrary, may have been their immensely
varied, and frequently varied, rates of energising. In
thus trusting nature, the meditative man who has but the
rudiments of exact science may be on a par with the
most boasting savan. Nay, for reasons to which we have
elsewhere alluded, he may even have the advantage of
him. In his broader thinking, there is less disturbance
arising from any cherished partial views; in the absence
of a blinding scientific interest, there is less in the way
of those great conclusions, which the broad face of nature
suggests as promptly and as strongly as the more minute
discoveries.  Sueh a meditative spirit can not, for example, walk on the lake beach, and see the smooth, round
stones as they are worn into ovals by the long action of the
waters, and then their exact resemblances on the distant
308 
GEOLOGICAL CHANGES MENiTIONED IS JOB XIV. 809
hills, without feeling that the appearance of time in the
one case is just as truthful as that in the other. Nature
renders the same verdict of facts in both, and if there be
no arrest of judgment on the higher written evidence,
superseding such parol testimony, as we may call it, he
takes her verdict as she honestly gives it in. He draws
from it the most natural and obvious inferences.   If it
took ages to form these smooth ovals in one spot, it took
ages to form them in the other.   And yet, on other good
and satisfying evidence, he knows that ages, historical
ages at least, have intervened since the causality that
there once energized has been quiescent. Troy has
been taken, yea, the Pyramids have been built, since any
important geographical change took place in those regions.
The most ancient of known historical events have passed
away since there "the water washed those stones,"- to
use the clear language of Job (xiv) describing the same
phenomenon. To a thinking man how full of thought this
very ancient allusion, together with similar accompanying words in the same remarkable chapter of inspiration!
" The crumbling mountain falleth into ruin; the rock
is removed from its place; the dust of the earth covereth
over the things that grow out of it.'   The sea (the lake)
Jfaileth and drieth up; yet man lies still;t he waketh
not from his sleep until the Heavens grow old." All
the verses we have gathered from this ejaculating, sigh  Its long buried fossil plants, as the Geologist would style them.
t The Hebrew God, here employed, is the word used so frequently for
lying, down to sleep. This is its snain sense, too, in the old Phoenician, as
is ev,dent fromi its frequeut use in the inscriptions that have been discover(d in that earliest forL of the Hebrew. Especially is it the case with the
very remarkable one lately discovered near old Sidon, and which has been
so carefitlly studied by the scholars of Germanry and the Uniated States. 
310     " COME AGAIN, YE SONS OF ADAM."'
ing chapter, express, in their connection, the'same sombre
thought, so mournful, yet so full of interest in respect to
our physical as well as spiritual destiny. Throughout
-the passage the contrast is between the transitoriness of
man, and the long, slow changes of nature, so steadily
yet irresistibly going on while he is sleeping in the bosom
of his mother earth, awaiting his own great supernatural
change that shall surely come in the latter day.'
The Arabians have a formula highly suggestive when considered in
connection with that idea of reviviscence which we think is found in this
chapter-" To God is the retlrn," or to God belongs the return (      -
a-ma-si-ru). It is one of the solemn cadences of the Koran, so often employed at the close of verses, and has every appearance, like others of those
cadences, of being a very ancient form of speech. There are other expressions in the Koran of a similar kind, and used in connection with it as exegetical of its meaning, —such as "God killeth and He makelth alive again,"
"He bringeth to death, and He brinzgeth back from death."  The manner
in which these are employed leave no doubt of their reference to the resurrection, and thus considered, they may greatly aid us in getting a right
stand-point for interpreting very similar language in the Old Testament.
Compare Deut. xxxii, 39, and especially 1 Sam. ii, 8. "The Lord killeth
and He maketh alive; He bri,?geth down to Sheol, and He bringeth tup
again"-Dominus mortifcat et vivifcat, deducit ad iiye ros et reducit.  It
is easy to give this another sense; and yet there is a view which greatly
favors the more impressive thought, and makes it seem not only possible,
but probable and easy as coming in connection with such ejaculatory language, and even along with expressions referring to the present state.
We refer to the undoubted Oriental belief in what may be called the human cycle, or the doctrine that the human life would come over againi on
this earth. Carry this along, and we have a stand-point for the interpretation of some of the most striking passages in Job and the Psalms.  It was
not exactly the Christian idea of the resurrection, but it was the germ (,f
the doctrine as held by the Pharisees, and Jews generally, in our Savior's
tine, as well as by the Arabian tribes before the days of Mohammed.
In connection with this, we may refer to the rendering of Psalmxc, 3, as
given in the Prayer Book Psalter-"Come again, ye Sons of Adam"-and
Luther's touching translation-Kommt wieder Menschen-Kinder,rCome
back, ye children qfsmen-which are also countenanced, to some extent, in
the ancient versions. The common rendering is strongly supported by the
seeming reference to Gen. iii, 19; but it is certain that the word =ti freely
and equally admits both senses, a t(urieg, a retcrning to, or a retur~'ivg 
THE HUMAN CYCLE.
In this true view of the passage, how suggestive is it
of our leading thought -an early credited antiquity of
fi'om. So it is applied to the Children of Israel, both in their backsliding
and their repentance, or conversion. Compare Jeremiah iii, 1, where it is
so affectingly addressed to the adulterous wife-tamen revertere ad me, and
Luther again, doch komm wieder zu mir-yet still come back to me.  The
use of the same word in both clauses of Psalm xc, 3, would also seem to
show that there was intended a special significance in the contrast of its
double, yet equally easy and equally prominent senses. It may be said,
too, that the other view which makes them both refer to the same event,
weakens the parallelism by making the command come after the act.
There is a confirmation of the reviviscent sense in the fact that it seems
to explain the train of thought which otherwise might appear abrupt, or
without clear transition.  The first thought is, that God is "our dwelling
place," or his peoples' dwelling place, "in all generations."  He is yet the
God of the dead, as well as of the living. Then we have the Divine Eternity.
VWrith this connects most naturally the mention of "the thousand years,"
as a "watch in the night," suggestive of the long sleep in the grave,-so
long to our conception, so short to Him.  " Thoz; overwhelmest, or buriest
them; they are as a sleep, or they sleep."  The Syriac here has a paraphrastic rendering in some way suggested by the Hebrew                 q.
"Their generations are asleep," or they sleep through generations. Next
we have mention of the morning, when there shall bloom again that which
in the evening was cutedown and withered. Is the greater morning meant
here, the morning and evening of the cycle? It would not do for us to say
rashly or confidently that this is the most obvious meaning, although we
nay feel strong in the thought that it is suggestive, and may have been
so intended, of the wider sense,-the longer sleep, the, greater reviving,
or springing again, such as is almost ever denoted by the Hebrew Aid.
We would not rashly affirm this, but let the reader compare Psalm xlix,
15,-" The upright shall have dominion in the morning,"-the same word,
and in connections remarkably similar, yet leaving no doubt of the reference being to the great day and the greater mnzorning of the world, when,
as is so clearly expressed in the next verse, God shall "redeem the soul
from the power of Sheol."
"Unto Him shall be the return." Slow, immensely slow, areithe changes
of nature while man is sleeping in the dust; long is she preparing for the
catastrophies that attend or precede the greater cycle, but "the morning cometh as well as the night." Whether primarily intended in this
passage, or only suggested by it, still the doctrine of the great human
change, or, may be supported, even firom the older Scripture, if we
seek to study it in the spirit of the Great Interpreter, rather than that of
the old Sadduceism he so triumphantly refuted.
311 
312  "THE WATERS WEAR SMOOTH THE STONES.'.
the earth as something immensely older than the human
race, who are said to be "but of yesterday" in comparison with its longer duration. Especially is this language
remarkable as we remember its place in that most ancient
Idumean Drama. How old the earth as compared with
man! What marks of age, as shown by slow physical
changes, does it exhibit in contrast with the brief human
cycle, whether regarded as of the individual or of the
race! No other or less thought would have had the force
or interest demanded by the comparison. " The waters
wear smooth the stones."  The Hebrew verb, ph,, as we
have remarked elsewhere, means to attenuate, (Greek
of the LXX, xsavw,) to reduce to fine dust.  Had the
Hebrews or Arabians been scientific geologists, they
would have made from it their scientific word corresponding to the modern term detritus. It is the same phenomenon now so frequently witnessed, and which presented
the same old look in the early age of Job.  " The waters wear smooth the stones." The flood could not have
done this work of shaping and detrition. We know exactly how that fearful event took place. It is presented
to us in a picture which in grandeur and vividness is second only to that of creation. We know from the same
source, how brief the time it occupied. We know the
very days of the month on which it began, in which it
reached its hight, and when it terminated. The changes
it wrought were mighty, doubtless; but very different
they must have been from the appearances we are now
contemplating. Effects must correspond to causes. The
effects as seen in these smooth ovals, so undisturbed in
their regularity and in their exact likeness of each other,
and their exact correspondence to the contiguous, or once 
COMMON THINGS TELL US OF THE REMOTE PAST. 313
contiguous, working power, must have been very slow
and gradual effects, unless nature lies to us, and lies, too,
without a reason, that is, any apparent reason. They
are gradual and regular effects, and, therefore, whether
natural or supernatural, they could not have come, we
venture cautiously to assert, from a sudden, abrupt and
violent cause.
But our unscientific man whose meditations we have
been endeavoring to follow, need not travel to the lake
shore or the mountain top. He need not climb the
Chimborazo with I Humboldt, or trace the wilds of Superior with our equally adventurous American Geologists.
In the evening quiet of his parlor fire-side, he may muse
on the lump of coal with its suggestive layers, or the
marble mantle-piece with each point and shade significant
of effects, as these of causes or activities now resting
but once at work, and these again of times or intervals
of duration, which, however regarded absolutely or in
themselves, must be pronounced long if measured by the
countless stepping places presented to the eye in these
dead yet still speaking tablets of a causation that has
passed away.  Yes- even these common objects commune with us of the mysterious past. They tell the
same story. It is change, if we may not call it growth,
slow change as measured by its visible lines and points.
It is time, succession,- long succession, apparently,just as truthfully indicating what it seems to indicate as
the worn channels of the streams or the century-formed
rings of the oak.
Aside from the nearer or more obvious deductions,,
there is also another class of questions-yes, questions
in nature,-that lie beyond the track of inductive sci —
27 
THE OLD THINKERS.
ence, and yet belong to the common thinking if it be
vigorous, if it be truthful even, though wholly unscientific.
They are beyond science; but the road to them does not
lie through her province. They were discussed by the
ancient mind with a keenness that modern philosophy
fails to equal. No modern school ever entered more
profoundly into the questions of origin, first matter, first
motion, first form, first unity, first diversity, first organism, first laws, ideas, types, and which was first respectively, things, outward things themselves, or the principles
of things,- that without which they could not be things
or have in any sense a self-hood or ipseity -no modern
school, we say, ever entered more profoundly into questions like these than some of the earliest thinkers. Bacon
and Leibnitz may be ransacked for anything on these
subjects more acute, and we may confidently say, more
satisfactory than the reasonings of Aristotle in his Physica
and Metaphysica.  We  might extend  the remark  to
other thinkers of that remarkable period in the world's
intellectual history. We might safely go farther up the
stream of time, or we might come nearer to our own age,
and still find evidence of the position, that what is called
science is not the only, not even the best preparation of
the soul for the examination of the higher cosmological
questions,- if we will discuss them aside from revelation. All the Galileos of later times never went so deeply
into these world-problems, as the Schoolmen who have
been so foolishly contemned in the common comparison.
It requires no great amount of faithful reading for an intelligent mind to be convinced that there are truly wonders in some of those forgotten tomes. It requires no
great erudition to read Anselm, or to study occasionally
814 
THE SCHOOL-MEN AND THE GALILEOS.
a chapter of Aquinas, but no thoughtful man can do so
without feeling that the modern world, the very modern
world, we mean, does not, and perhaps can not, supply
their places. As one contemplates with astonishment
the profound speculations of these men of the cell, the
thought fairly arises whether the exact and exacting
detail of certain forms of modern physical or experimental science, and the piece-meal views they give us of the
universe, may not have actually narrowed the minds of
some of its votaries,- so that, strange as it may seem,
there may have been actually more true freedomn of soul
in the cloister, than among many of these boasting c students of nature" who roam the sea shore in search of
shells, or penetrate the depths of the mine to find, if
possible, the age of the earth. We would not speak
sweepingly, or even generally. The tendency to which
we allude is most evident in certain quarters, and in certain aspects of this " scientific age," but there are those
who unite the character of the scientific man and the
philosopher.  These may be known, however, not more
by the deep value of their studies, than by the entire
absence of that absurd boasting which is becoming so offensive in the lectures and inaugural speeches of the
times.!
History is ever giving us cycles. They may present
a wider spiral, (as they do sometimes a narrower,) but
however magnified in some aspects, and diminished in
others, they hold similarities of feature that the observing
student can hardly fail to recognize. How strikingly is
this truth confirmed when we call to mind that the shallow Epicureans were the. scientific boasters of their day.
There is no trace of such a spirit in the humble and
315 
316  THE EPICUREANS THE ANCIENT BOASTERS.
reverent Socrates; Plato ever lived in a region of
thought too lofty to allow its utterance; Aristotle's
'" stream of flowing gold," as Cicero styles it, was too
gravely solid for such froth to rise and float upon its
majestically moving surface. It is only as we approach
-a somewhat later time, that we begin to hear a sound
reminding us of our own most modern age. It comes from
"the herd of Epicurus," magnifying their master as the
*' Father of the then modern philosophy," and filling the
age with their clamor about physical knowledge, and the
,wonders it was achieving, and the still greater wonders
'it was going to achieve. Styx and Acheron, with all
their ghosts, were paling in its presence, as the myths
,of Christianity flee before some of our modern savans
'who live and write under other influences than those of
our New-Haven and Andover orthodoxy.  There was
'the same proud talk, too, about what mind had done and
what it would do:
Omne immensum peragransUnde refert nobis Victor, quid possit oriri,
Quid nequeat; finita potestas denique quoique
Qua nam sit ratione, atque alte terminus haerens.
It would roam through all space; it would tell us of origin, of all that could be, and of all that could not be; it
would go to the very bottom of nature; it would give
the reason of all things; it would make immovable landmarks, and fix the deep, permanent bound of an unchanging causality. Such wonders had it begun to perform;
such still greater wonders would it yet perform. We
could almost translate it in the deep irony of the Scriptures-" It would put an end to the darkness and search
out all perfection; its'eye would see every precious thing
and that which was hidden would it bring to light; it 
THE SCRIPTURES REVEAL THE TRUE PROFOUND. 317
would enter the gates of Hades," and heal the terrors of
"s the valley of the shadow of death;" it would solve the
problem of life; "it would find the place of WISDOM and
assay the value thereof."
Vitae ipsam rationem, earn qua
Nunc adpellatur SAPIENTIA; quseque per artem
Fluctibus e tantis vitam, tantisque tenebris,
In tam tranquilla, et tam clara luce, locabit.
It would discover the ldng sought means by which the
human race would be at last rescued from "the mighty
billows of darkness," and brought to repose "in clear
and tranquil light." It had much to say, too, of its
utilities, its boasted
Commoda vitee.
But alas for ancient or modern science! What a contrast does all this present to that view the Bible gives
us of the mysteries that surround our existence, and of
the evils, the physically incurable evils, in which it is so
deeply sunk. Even in the merely natural aspect, how
poor a thing it really is! But compare with this empty
prating the true profound of the Scriptures-even the
true physical profound- compare with it those solemn,
searching interrogatories in the xxviiith and xxxviiith
chapters of Job, consider, moreover, the age of the
world, keep in mind all of literature, science, or philosophy, that was outside of this " enclosed garden, this fountain sealed" of Jewish wisdom, and we have an evidence
for the superhuman character of the Scriptures which it
would seem almost impossible for any sane mind to resist.
It is indeed the true profound, revealed to us not in attempted explanations, but in the awful disclosure of its
unfathomable depths.
27* 
ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE.
But what of those ancient pretensions, some one may
say!  What comparison between the science of those
times and the splendid structure that has been reared
since Bacon showed the right way! Be the difference,
in other respects, what it may, the boasting is certainly
very much the same in both cases. What is there -it
is a question that may well be asked-what is there in
this kind of knowledge, be it great or small, that ever
tends to the exhibition of such a spirit? The language,
too, is so very similar. In this respect, at least, the
warp and woof of many a modern lecture, or modern inaugural, might be taken, almost verbatim, from Lucretius and the Fragments of Epicurus. The very cant
was the same.  Atoms, molecules, declinationes-it comes
near enough to ainities- were their favorite words;
ideas were bugbears (-ea. ) as they are even now to
the sciolist. Contemptible, too, as may seem this ancient
science, the positions, we say it boldly, were the same;
we mean the relative positions which render the boasting
,in both cases equally trifling and inane. It was not the
small amount which gave it this aspect-for it looked to
-he future, and drew upon the future, even as we do now
— but it was the vain assumption that it, or any amount
of experimental science, so called, could ever solve the
deep problem of humanity,- we might say, even the deep
physical problem of our world and race.   But in the pre-sence of the still higher questions, how contemptible its
boasting figure! its inane prattling about Styx and Tartarus, and the lux clara, et tranquilla, the " serene and
,tranquil light,"
fluctibus a tantis oriens tantisque tenebris
:and the finita potestas, and the alte terminus haerens,
318 
STYX AND ACHERON, HOMER. AND EPICURUS.  319
and the comnoda vite, and all the other great things it
had begun to do, and would still more perfectly do for
our poor priest-ridden, religion-haunted world!-in all
of which, by the way, we can not help remarking how
the terrors of Hades ever revealed themselves in the so
frequent mention of the victories that science was going
to achieve over them. How much profounder the truth
involved in those fables of Styx and Acheron, than in
all their physical discovery! how much deeper the mine
of thought, even in Homer and the Greek dramatic poetry,
than was laid open in all their science had taught or would
ever teach! and yet how pitiably unconscious do these
old braggarts seem to be of it! Now this is the thought
that renders true and just the parallel we have drawn
between the ancient and the modern science,- we mean,
as we need hardly tell our readers, the boasting aspect
of it, and the schools by which such aspect is mainly represented. It is not a question of quantity, but of a relation. The science of Epicurus was certainly a very
small affair; though of considerable value when compared
with the lack of it. It was not, however, its quantity,
we say again, which gave it this appearance, but the fearful problem with which it stood confronted, and which,
in its empty insolence, it had dared to face. Now, modern science has vastly grown, and therefore, it may be
said, has some right to use this vaunting language that
sounds so preposterous in the mouth of its elder brother.
It has vastly grown, indeed, and yet it may be in fact,
a very small affair in its relation to the darkness that still
rests as dense as ever, even on the great ultimate, or
more interior, truths of nature herself. The physical
deep, or the deeper physical, is no nearer being sounded 
320      THE STILL MORE SERIOUS QUESTION.
than in the days of Job. There are questions, near questions, in relation to the most common states of matter,
and suggesting themselves to our most obvious thinking,
which science can no more answer now than then. Molecules, fluids, affinities, give no more help in the case,
than atoms, declinationes, or homoeomeric parts. Science
is yet upon the surface of things, or, at the utmost, but
a few inches below. The most candid and philosophical
among her votaries have admitted this with humility,
though without humiliation.  The noisier "students of
nature" fancy that they have sailed many a league, when
they are yet upon the banks of the Ebro. Like Don
Quixotte and Sancho Panza in their strange colloquy,
they talk of having " passed the equinoctial,"  when
they have " only dropped a few fathoms below their point
of departure"; they boast of " the parallels they have
crossed, the constellations they are leaving behind," the
immense cosmical progress they are making, when they
are yet upon the earth, and the most common questions
of earth right round them stare them in the face, and
reprove them, or ought to reprove them, for their ignorance as well as their presumption.
But conceding to science all she claims, there is another
view of the matter which becomes still more serious from
the very concession. Modern science has vastly grown.
Let us admit it without limitation or disparagement.
But here comes the thought we are most anxious to press
upon the reader's mind, because we are certain of its
presenting a truth whose importance no comparison can
effect, no admission can in the least diminish. It is the
truth which places our natural knowledge, great as it
may be, in the same scale, and measures it by the same 
PROB3LEM OF LIFE GROWN FASTER THAN SCIENCE. 321
standard we applied to the ancient pretensions. Modern
science has grown, vastly grown; admit it freely; but
so, also, has grown, be it ever remembered, fearfully
grown, the mighty problem with which such science is
yet confronted.  It is this thought that renders itsj,pretentious attitude, its Baconian clamor, above all its claim
to be a second revelation, even still more absurd, still
more irreverent, than the noisy Epicurean boasting. Science has grown in the multitude of its facts; but in a
still higher ratio has grown the problem of human life,
grown in depth and height, in grandeur and intensity, in
awe and mystery. Even the physical has a more tremendous aspect than it ever could have in the days of
Epicurus. The darkness here has increased faster than
the light. History has added her testimony to something in our race and world with which science can not
grapple, and can never hope to grapple.   The disease,
the woe, the natural woe, is deeper than her ken. Even
physical sorrows multiply faster than her remedies. The
cure, or seeming cure, not unfrequently creates a new
disease, or makes the old one start up in still more hideous forms. Her utilities, her much lauded inventions,
of which she sometimes boasts as though she could really
make a rail road to the celestial city, her arts refined
and useful, her commoda vitae, what do they but engender an all-governing secularity, or diseased civilization,
prolific of a new brood of monsters worse than any of
which she had boasted of having delivered the world.
Such is the incapacity of science even to answer the
lower question, Who will show us any true, permanent,
earthly good? But when we consider how this problem
of life has grown upon us in its unearthly aspects as re 
322    " THE WORLD LIETH IN WICKEDNESS."
vealed in the Scriptures, when we think of the still deeper
mysteries that have come out of such revelation, the increased evidence of the inconceivable human wickedness
which no art softens and no science subdues, the immense
disproportion yet existing between earth's scanty wheat
and its wild overspreading tares,- when we take into our
minds all that is expressed in those exhaustless words of
Scripture, " the world lieth in wickedness," "the creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain,"- in view, we say, of a
problem presenting such aspects as these, and which revelation, history, and experience, have brought to such tremendous dimensions, what trifling, like the trifling of some
scientific men! what folly can be greater than the claim
we sometimes hear that physical science is to remedy all
this, or (to take the seemingly more pious asssuption,)
that she is even to assist the cure of our humanity in
the character either of a concurrent or subordinate revelation! The old boasting was rational when compared
with this.  Science then was in its infancy,  we say;
"it spake as a child."  But if the race has grown to
manhood-and surely under the pupilage of revelation
it should have taken some steps toward it- then
"should  we  put away  childish things."   We  know
much more about the cave in which we dwell; we have
studied much more carefully the shadows that come and
go upon its dusky walls; we have discovered some order
of succession among them to which we give the name of
laws; we are even able; in many cases, to vaticinate, or
tell how they will come and come again, or make their
circuits whilst the panorama lasts, or the scene remains
unchanged; as the eye grows keener, too, and the pupil
enlarges in the twilight, we see continually more and 
MODERN MORE ABSURD THAN ANCIENT BOASTING. 323
more that had escaped our previous ken. And we are
very much amused with all this. Some get wonderfully
elated, and talk of "annihilating space," and "subduing
the elements," and "taking all the gloom and terror out
of nature." So we boast. But alas! in presence of
the greater question that ever keeps up with the march
of natural knowledge, and goes before it, and ever confronts it with a yet sterner aspect, the modern is still
more trifling, still more absurd, than the ancient gasconade. In the light of the Scripture, we are compelled to
say, it is not only irrational, but profane; in presence,
too, of the deeper woes of humanity, the remedy it so
boastingly holds out is as heartless, as unfeeling, as it is
wholly inadequate. In its own field, as pure science, it
demands our respect like other things that are honest
and of good report; but when it assumes to be religion,
or theology, or to patronize revelation, it demands rebuke
for its self-ignorance and presumption. This is for the
present age, and especially for our own country, its most
harmful aspect, more harmful,-it is one of our deepest
convictions-  than any direct opposition its avowedly
infidel votaries have made to the Bible, or to any particular portions of the Bible.
When we think how the Church is yielding to it, how
much it is doing to secularize our Christianity and give
false views of its mission, how it is making popular unscriptural ideas of reform having their ground in the
commoda vitte rather than the spiritual health, how it
is ever marring our better philosophy by the rejection of
everything that can not be thrown into the crucible of
experiment and induction, how it produces now, as of
old, and as though it were inseparable from this kind 
NATURAL THEOLOGY.
of knowledge, a vain-glorious spirit so opposed to what
should ever be the humble and healthful position of our
humanity,- how, in short, it is ever putting the earthly
before the spiritual, thus breeding a wordliness which
even its most sincere professions of piety can not counteract-in view of all this, we can not help feeling that
one of the most unbiblical, and we might say, anti-christian, aspects of the present time, is to be found in the
extravagant claims and undue popular estimate of physical science. The age is most one-sided in this respect,
and needs righting. We say this with the more frankness and sincerity, because we are equally sincere in the
admission, the glad and hopeful admission, that some of
our noblest minds and truest Christians are occupied with
this department of human knowledge. May their appreciation of higher truths prevent the evils that might
come from the disproportional popular tendency, especially as that undue tendency is stimulated by the loudtalking in their own ranks, or by timid religionists who
are so easily flattered or awed by their pretensions.
A similar train of thought is applicable to much that
we are so fond of praising in modern times under the
name of natural theology. And here, to prevent misapprehension of our meaning, we would make a distinction
which must come home to the common understanding of
every sound and unsophisticated mind. Nature is ever
praising God. The Scriptures abound in the thought.
She is ever telling of his glory, his kingdom, his providence, his invisible power and Godhead. But it is the
fair, round, honest, open face of nature that does this,
that face that we all perceive and understand at once, that we see by the naked eye and without the aid of sci
324 
THE UPPER AND UNDER SIDE OF NATURE. 325
entific glasses. It is the broad earth, and sounding sea,
the mountains towering high, the heaven serene above,
the sun in his burning strength, the moon walking in
brightness, each knowing its place in the firmament, its
glorious rising and its majestic going down,- the seasons
as they roll, the countless hosts of heaven whom He calleth all by name even as a shepherd knoweth his sheep.
It is the erect up-gazing form of man, his dominion over
all the lower tribes of animation, his wondrous outward
frame in its visible beauty, the still more wondrous soul
that shines through it even as the invisible Spirit of God
makes itself seen in the material creation. It is this
broad fair face of nature, that is ever'" telling the glory
of God."   So, again, on the other hand, could we get
down to the bottom of nature, clean through it, we may
say, where it joins on to the supernatural, or lies open before the supernatural; could we get down to the first
causalities, the deep primal springs where the touch of
the Divine hand vibrates through all her immense machinery, conveying his general or special commands, yet
without any breach of her vast length of serial law, to us so
immeasurably long, to Deity quicker than the lightning's
flash? could we do this; could we ever hope to do this;
then, perhaps, we might hear another voice of nature,mightier than all and more glorious than all that had ever
sounded from her upper surface, or the side that God has.
turned to us. It may be, that we shall some day know
this; at some remote period in our existence we may be.
permitted to hear, and hear directly, without links or inductions, this deep bass in the universal chorus. But wecan not hear it now; we have no organs strong enough
to bear it, or even to receive it; we have no intellectual
28 
THE MID REGION.
strength that can do anything more than take a few feeble
steps in an immeasurable journey towards it; it is hid
from our sight, far away from our thought; we can not
even approach it either by the steady march of the understanding,-or the swiftest flight of the swiftest imagination.
We have presented the two extremes. There is a
middle region which is "neither day nor night," or rather
where there is just light enough to see the terrific darkness. It is the region of natural theology, to use the
name without admitting its propriety; it is the dark labyrinth of physical adaptations, as distinguished from ends,
or true ultimate designs. As we descend into this region the pure upper air grows dim. As we get down
among the wheels of the vast machinery we lose the light
of heaven above, and yet find no sure standing place for
our groping feet below. It is like the insect who has
gone down into the interior of the great Haarlem organ.
Hie is crawling among pipes, and keys, and springs, and
pedals; if an intelligent insect-a supposition that may
be rationally entertained-he may be deep in acoustics,
estimating the times of aerial pulsations, or measuring
with his microscopic eye the chords that subtend vibrating arcs; but the glorious anthem that is rolling abovo
is all unheard, or comes to him only in dull and discordant tones. The comparison is not extravagant. Its justice has been verified in men who have seen nothing but
mathematics in the heavens, and chemical affinities upon
the earth. This interior anatomy of causation, where
there is nought before the eye but passing links, joined
letters of which we can not spell the words, with double
readings, too, and oft times double interpretations, may
be all very curious as matter of inductive science, but it
326 
ASTRONOMERS HAVE BEEN ATHEISTS.
is certainly unnecessary, if not unfavorable, to faith.
Especially is this true of that favorite department of natural theology which is now so much occupied with the
old animel and vegetable remains,  If men will not believe without it, they will certainly not be led to believe
by it.  If they heed not that fair outspeaking face, if
they hear not that mighty voice of the universal living
nature, neither will they be persuaded though one should
lay open the realm of the dead, and bring before themi,
the fossil ghosts of departed ages.  The mathematical
ideas of the heavens are more religious than these, more
nearly allied to faith; but who does not know that the
most acute astronomers have beef not only practical but
avowed atheists? Such has been the melancholy result
where revelation has been unaeknowledgedcl and the
Church despised,- a pretty sure indication of what
may be expected when " the science of theology or the
theology of science," to use a play of language which
lately called down plaudits on the religious hustings, has
become preeminently the light of the ag,e.
In all this, however, there is no detraction from its
real, honest value. When the study of this mid region
of natural adaptations is pursued as science only, it
may have an interest making it worthy of our most earnest effort.  We are looking for links, and we are rewarded and rejoice in finding that for which we are looking.
When thus regarded, as science, we may say of it, too,
that it is safe; it will not cheat the soul with idola. But
make it a part of theology, call it religion, and it is a contiuual breeder of darkness, producing delusions, spectra,
phasmata, cheating appearances of ends that are never
ends but links, of seeming designs that are only endless
'827 
328    NATURAL THEOLOGY IS NOT RELIGION.
adaptations, such as the pantheist, the man who holds to
nothing higher than voug, or intelligence, in the universe,
or even certain forms of self-acknowledged atheism would
be ready to admit.  Miake it a part of religion, we say,
and doubt is its natural product. We are in the deep
waters, and the only safety against overwhelming scepti,cism is in not thinking at all, or at least beyond the pre,sent links, the particular sequences that present them,selves to our observation.   The eye must never be turned from the immediate passing adaptations.   One must
be satisfied with this; like the man in the labyrinth, who
-'is contented with taking angles and feeling the width of
-passag,es or the zoologist who has caught a curious fish
-without any ventral fins, and is in raptures at the dis,covery of the means by which the poor animal contrives
to move itself along, and make the best of its want.  But
our man of science is too ambitious to be thus content.
He has discovered mere adaptation, and he admires it as
-that very wisdom which inspiration declares can not be
" found in the deep," whether it be of the earth or the
-waters. The old philosopher would say it was nature
accommodating itself to circumstances; but neither of
them can answer, or begin to answer, the  higher question involved, not in the structure, but in the end for
-which the animal himself was made, or tell us why ani'mals were made at all,- especially why made to suffer
pain and dying agony. The old follower of Democritus
was called an atheist, but what of the name? As far as
any piety is concerned, or devout religious feeling, or
any true faith in a true divine wisdom, believed though
unseen, both are on a par.  Both have equal need of
revelation here, and without it we have little reason to 
SOCRATES-PALEY- THE BIBLE.
regard the naturalizi,ng theism of the one as any better than the atheistic naturalism of the other.   Such is
one and a true aspect of what is called natural theology.
Even Bacon, the great modern authority, warned his disciples against it. He saw the danger of turning the
mind from the study of the true "final causes," when this
transcending name should be given, as it is now given, to
mere links in nature. And experience is here with the
Father of the modern philosophy. Without great care,
the exclusive search for physical adaptations breeds instead
of curing scepticism. When the argument is confined to
those leading facts that are common to all minds, it has
its highest power; it is conclusive. The moment we
begin to dive into nature, to bring up from the abyss
that truth which is all around and should be ever in us,
that moment the argument begins to lose its strength; its
light begins to fade. Hence the minute pains-taking of
Paley, going into the very arcana of the human system,
is so much less convincing than the unsurpassed argument of Socrates in the Memorabilia, or the admirable
imitation of it by Cicero in his treatise De Natura Deorum. Above all, how does everything of the kind pale
before the short Bible argument of the Ninety-fourth
Psalm-" H/e that formed the eye shall he not see? He
that formed the ear shall he not hear? lHe that teacheth
man knowledge"- shall he not know? as is so distinctly
answered, not in words, but in the expressive aposiopesis,
or silence, of the Hebrew. But'even this inimitable argument, it will be seen from the context, is not for the
existence of a God, but rather as a proof of his sure providential justice. How shall we account for the striking
fact, that the mode of reasoning now so popular under the
28*
329 
THE LATTER CHAPTERS OF JOB.
name of natural theology, is so rare, so almost wholly unknown, we might rather say, in the Holy Scriptures?
How comes it that Christ never employs it, that Apostles
and Prophets, in all they have to say of the divine wisdom,
and in all their calls to the adoration of the divine providence,never resort to proof from this adaptation of natural causalities, although they so frequently appeal to
natural objects as illustrations, or personified witnesses,
of the divine glory?
In Jeremiah viii, 7, there is mention of the instincts
and habits of animals.   But look at the real thought,
and we find in it no attempt at proof of the divine existence, nor any argument for the divine designs in nature.
The lesson taught is the insensibility and rebellion of
man —" Yea, the stork in the heavens knoweth her appointed times, and the turtle, and the crane, and the swallow watch the time of their coming; but my people know
not the judgment of the Lord." A similar remark is
applicable to the striking examples in the latter chapters
of Job. All that is said of Behemoth, and Leviathan,
:and the wild goats of the rock, is grandly descriptive,
/brought forth in illustration of the divine glory - as we
'have before remarked about nature in general-and es?pecially of the absolute divine sovereignty-that sublime
doctrine to which the naturalist or the mere rationalist is
ever so averse.  It is the assertion of God's power and
right to do and make things as it pleases him, which is
there so strongly set forth, even to the stumbling of many
who can see neither moral nor philosophy in it.  It is to
overwhelm us with this thought.  Instead of being a les,son of adaptive design, or of instruction in the mysteries
"of the divine ways in nature, it would seem rather to
330 
A REVELATION IN WHAT IS HIDDEN.
teach the great truth, elsewhere so strikingly conveyed,
that "it is the glory of God to conceal a matter," and
that thus, paradoxical as it may appear, there may be a
most impressive revelation even in what he hides from
our view. The whole passage would seem intended to
silence rather than explain,-to silence those " who
would darken counsel by words without knowledge," and
who will not believe in the divine wisdom unless they can
see it with their eyes.  It is to produce the very effect
it did produce on the mind of Job-" I know that Thou
canst do everything, and that no thought can be withholden from Thee; I have uttered that which I understood
not, things too wonderful for me which I know not:
TVherefore 1 abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes." Does natural science, or zoology, or that which is
called natural theology, thus humble a man, or does all
experience of the world show that it is a kind of knowledge that, as far as it is not counteracted by other influences, has just the contrary effect? What the naturalist
would call evidence of adaptive skill, as proof of the divine
existence, is far remote from all these examples.   In
reading them we hardly think of it, the soul is so occupied with other and more majestic ideas.  Still farther
removed from every feeling which these chapters inspire,
is the modern talk about utilities, or contrivances to prcduce happiness, or greatest quantity of wellfeeling (for
it all comes to that) in the greatest amount of animated
or sensational matter. God is good- God is merciful.
The Bible teaches that abundantly; but how different its
illustrations and proofs of it from those which naturalism
would present as its best evidence, although, to a thinking mind, there is hardly one among these supposed phy
331 
832  " GREAT ARE THE WORKS OF THE LORD.5
sical utilities, or apparatus for enjoyment, that is not in
itself, and aside from higher considerations, suggestive of
a greater doubt and a greater difficulty than it removes?
Alas, for us, if we had to prove the preponderance and
predominance of good from no better evidence than is
furnished by nature and the world- especially our world
- aside from any implanted a priori ideas of the soul, or
any express revelation from the sphere above!
" Great are the works of the Lord, sought out of all
wiho have pleasure therein."  Naturalism has sometimes
usurped the text, although it is entitled to only the smallest part of it. It is taken as the motto of a lecture, occasionally of a scientific book.  This is pardonable, and
perhaps commendable. Another use does not strike us
as being quite so proper.  It is sometimes found at the
head of a sermon, so called, which does the Scriptures
the honor of selecting from them a text, whilst its substance, if substance there be, is made up from geology,
and telegraphs, and the wonderful discoveries and inventions of the age.  But what are these "works of the
Lord"? The context will show us.  They are his works
of empire And of providence, his dealings in history, above
all, his works of grace, to use an old fashioned term which
progress is beginning to render obsolete.  They are his
glorious deeds as recorded in the annals of the chosen
people, his mindfulness of his covenant, the redemption
of his elect, the final triumph of that Church for which
the world was made, and for whose sake alone its physical as well as its social and political order are preserved.
These are the " works of the Lord" which a naturalizing
theology is so inclined to ignore, especially as they appear
in their Scriptural aspect. And hence comes it that 
" BIBLE OF NATURE" —" BOOK OF THIE ROCKS." 833
where this naturalizing spirit prevails, or this naturalizing
faith, as we might call it by way of accommodation, there
the pure Scriptural faith declines.  If the latter does not
go wholly out, it becomes a weak and inefficient power,
a mere light make-weight to something else, which, although not consciously avowed as the controlling influence, is yet predominant in the secular creed and secularizing spirit of the times,-in short, a system of theology so purely and wholly natural, so mixed up with
science, and progress, and everything else, that the old
student of Baxter or Pascal would hardly know its face
as taught in some of our seminaries, and held forth in
not a few of our pulpits. The Baconian is a man of facts,
and we appeal to him to solve the problem, and to answer
the question that so naturally suggests itself. Faith in
the Scriptures as the highest authority for the soul in all
things wherein it speaks, love for the Scriptures, deep
study of the Scriptures,- do these increase with the naturalism of an age, whether it take to itself the name of
science, or of natural theology, or of natural religion?
But we do not need the Baconian with his array of inductive and crucial experiments.   Every intelligently serious man knows that but one answer can be given to such
question, and what that answer is.  What makes it worse,
is the fact, that in proportion as the real revelation falls
into a collateral and even subordinate position of authority, there is growing up this cant about the other, or as
it has been styled, " the Elder Scripture," the Bible of
Nature, the " Book of the Rocks." The lamentably perverted use of the word inspiration, in certain transcendental quarters, is bad enough, but it is more defensible,
and less mischievous, than that corresponding abuse of 
334 INTELLECTUAL POWER OF THE SCRIPTURES.
the term revelation which is such a favorite with a certain kind of naturalizing orthodoxy. We say more defensible, inasmuch as poetry and philosophy are above
science, more divine than science, even as the spiritual
transcends the physical, and emotional, or living ideas,
are higher things than any inductive knowledge.
For " the restoration of belief," the age must return to
the study of the Bible.  Recourse, too, must be had to the
same inexhaustible fountain, not only for the strengthening of faith, but to elevate the general mind and general
thinking. The holiness of the Scriptures even the infidel is compelled to acknowledge. Their heavenly beauty
touches the devout spirit now, even as it affected the
soul of the Psalmist when he said, "Thy word, 0 Lord,
is very pure, therefore thly servant loveth it." But it
has another, we will not say a higher, mission. Even in
the mere intellectual aspect, the Bible is before all other
means of spiritual culture. As a continual suggester of
new ideas, or as shedding a new glory on old and commnon thoughts, there is nothing to be compared with it in
the whole range of outward knowledge. "The entrance
of Thy word giveth light, it giveth understandinyg." It
is that by which we see the light of other things. Let
the head be bowed upon the sacred page, let the mind
be brought into docile yet intense communion with it,
and there will flow forth from the study of one Epistle of
Paul, or even of one Psalm of David, a power of thought,
of ever-widening, ever-rising thought, of thought begetting thought, transcending any intellectual effect that
might be expected from any department of natural science, or any chapter in natural theology. There would
be this growth, this invigoration of mind, in the proper 
RESTORATION OF FAITH.
study, of our noble Anglo Saxon version; still richer and
stronger would it be, could the soul feed directly on those
roots of heavenly marrow that are furnished by the noble
tongues the divine wisdom has chosen as the first media
of its revelation.
Could we make our readers feel that there is some
truth in these views, some valuable truth that ought to
be proclaimed and strongly urged- could we convince
any of them heartily that this Bible study, with such a
feeling in it, is the great want of our age, and that it
would be the most effectual means for the restoration of
faith when outward aids from nature and from science
had all failed,-we should feel that we had rendered
them an important service, however one-sided might appear the writer's own zeal in the substance or manner of
his argument.
335 
WHAT IS NATURE?
CHAPTER XI.
WHAT  IS NATURE?
Can there be a True Nature?-The two Great Questions
How can there be Evil without God?-How can there be
a Nature that is not God?- Can God make a Nature to
go by itself?-Laws of Thinking, higher than Laws of Na
ture-Deteriorations in Nature- Was there Death before
Adam's fall?-Nature as well as Spirit left to itself-In
what Sense?-Motion by Impulse- The Axiom, "A Body
once set in Motion will forever continue in Motion"- The
Mystery of the Rolling Ball-For.e-Is it an Entity?  Science finds Formulas-Philosophy  Wonders-Faith
Adores-Ideas, as well as Laws, in Nature.
CAN there be a true nature? What is a nature? Has
nature, or what we call by that name, in any sense a
propriumn, or self-hood? Is it an entity, a power by itself, made to be by itself, or is it ever, and in all its
parts and manifestations, an effect of an immediate, immanent divine working never leaving, never intermitting,
never varying as to its immanent presence, in space,
time, or degree?  Thus stated-and we can not state it
more precisely -it may be called the second great problem for the world's thinking. For next to the question,
How can there be evil, real and not merely relational
or apparent evil, without God being, in some way, the
author of it'? is this other question, How can there be a
336 
IS NATURE ONLY APPARENT?
nature, a true in distinction from an apparent nature,
in other words, a nature or a world coming from God,
which is yet not God,- or how can it possess any entity
of itself, or be anything distinct from the divine power
regarded as energizing as immanently, and as immediately, in its continuance, as in its birth and primal activity?  Some men, in discussing the first of these two
questions, annihilate  evil.  The  mysterious  problem
dwindles down into an easy formula of optimism. The
profound analytical expression involves simply an identical proposition, as the mathematicians call it. After all
its evolutions and eliminations, it runs out x = x. Evil
is only apparent.   So, too, do some deal with the other
great enquiry.   The result is, nature is only apparent,apparent in the most unreal or pantheistical sense, as
representing nothing between the appearance and God.
They make it simply the common instead of the uncommon divine manifestation. The natural and the supernatural have no real  difference.    God's  immediate
power carries on every part of the process.  All the apparently intermediate steps are as directly his as the
beginning; he is as much, and in the same sense, the
immediate pervading agent, as he is the originating
cause, and sustaining ground.  In other words, there is
no real nature, no real birtl of one thing from another,
no true natural or intermediate causality. It is only an.
appearance, a false appearance, too; for it seems to represent some mediate power, when there is really no
such mediation between the appearance and Deity;- -
all1 the apparent links being as much immediate, and, in
one sense, outward to each other, (that is, without real
connection,) as the one chronologically first; -every
29
337 
IDEA AND IDOLON.
movement of every wheel and cog being direct from the
touching hand of the machine-maker, although, for the
purpose of confounding and deceiving the beholder, he
brings out these immediate tactual effects in an order of
sequence suggestive of real, inward, connective causality.
Reduced to its logical positions, this is the view presented
in the Andover articles entitled " Science and the Bible."
In his attempt to talk piously about God in nature, and
to make others appear atheistical, the writer, without
seeming to be aware of it, runs down into sheer, undiluted
pantheism.
On this view, too, matter would be only an appearance,
-not a q),ivovov representing a real power, but a qv,razoca in other words, a lying appearance, or apparition,
suggesting the thought of an inward energizing entity that
has no real existence. So, also, the world is just such
an appearance, or phantasm. Far from having the rank
or religious dignity of Plato's idea, of which some are so
much afraid, it is only an idolon, an umbra, or shadow
without any object, a lying appearance, we say again,
without anything that appears. What is worse than all,
as far as this argument is concerned, creation disappears.
If there is not a nature made, and then in some way
"left to itself," (the expression which is so much object ed to,) then is there no difference conceivable between
the starting and the on-going. Then, also, of course, cre ation is as much going on now and everywhere, both in
time and space, as it was in the beginning,- whether the
great or any other beginning.
But this annihilation of nature, causality, creation, and
the world, can not stop even here. It must push on until
it takes the position that God can not make a nature, a
338 
A NATURE LEFT TO ITSELF.
causality, a world objective and real. He can not make
them in any sense self-existent, or possessing anything that
may be called a self-hood, or that may in any way be said
to be left to itself, by any withdrawal, in any degree, of
the prime originating power.  We say, in any degree; for
the same difficulty attends a less or a greater withdrawal.
If in any of the passing phenomena of nature, there is,
in any way, less of the divine power and presence than
in the creative start, then something, or some part, or
some degree of the subsequent on-going is " left to itself,"
as truly, though not to the same extent, as though there
had been a greater withdrawal. It comes, then, to this
-God could not make a nature; He could not give a
power and a law that could, in any sense, go by themselves; for we can just as easily conceive and believe,
that God is matter, as that he is an immanent force, or
that the one is any the less a created, on-going, ex-isting
entity, than the other.  In other words, he could not so
make this power and law as to work out an idea without
his own immediate finger touching, like an engraver's
tool, at every point and particle of the picture. We
must come to this, or stop in the position that a pious
science -has called naturalism.
Now should any one turn upon us and ask, Can you
show how this can be done,-,how God can make a real
nature that is not himself? The answer would be
promptly, No. Our thoughts do not reach an infinitesimal distance towards the solution of the mystery. Hlow
it is we can not know, can not even conceive; but the
fact we are compelled to admit,- the fact that God
could make such a nature, or world, or system of forces,
as something in time self-existent, having a temporal
339 
340  LAWS OF THOUGHT HIIGHER THAN NATURE.
self-hood, a spatial being, a life or motion exhibiting succession of e-vent or out-coming, or, in some true way,
4' going by itself," after He had thus made it to go by itself
And why, then, do we believe it? It is in obedience,
we answer, to higher laws than the laws of nature, even
the laws of the soul's thinking, the laws of our rational
thinking, which God also made, but did not make themn
to deceive us. We are compelled to admit it, because
ve can not think God, and think a world, without it.
In no other way can we keep both ideas.   We are compeiled to admit it, or lose something else which we can
not part with without losing that which gives all truth its
only moral, and, we might also say, philosophical value.
Above all this -  above all the laws of sense induction,
above even the higher laws of our thinking —by faith do
we hold to these "unseen" and never to be seen entities
which are neither God nor matter, though coming from
God, and from which " unseen things are made the things
:that do appear."'
- It has been held that these " unseen things," from which the worlds
iib time (Iov, 6ivyg) were made, or generated (7s6 vs'/VocX), are siiply an expression for the divine power generally. But does it look like
it? Would it be an easy and natural phraseology for that idea? Take
the passage in Hebrews either way, it comes to very much the same thing.
Wxhether we read "-Were not mnade of tlhiengs treat do appecr," or "I I~ee
i*ade ofj' thi,gs not-appearing," it would give us the same idea.  When,
too, we bear in mind the miode of employing the negative particles in Eebrew, and its influence on the New  Testalment Greek, we may regard the
old Versions, and especially the Syriac, as having made the right tiansla.
tion, whether they read Ex the, or p,q Ex.  Now this, in either aspect, is
not the natural mode of saying that things scern were made of notlhiiz, for
which the proper words would be,~ 6'vrog, or Ad o'vrcv.  Again-why
the plural form, whether we takle it, " thinkss ujiseen," or read, " not fr-omt
things seen." If it means the divine power generally, which is an uniquelo
or undivided idea, how do we account for this mode of speech, which wouldci 
GOD IN NATURE.
But no finite mind can any more solve the problem
than it can solve the similar problem of evil. It precisely resembles that great question in this, that whoever chooses to take the very easy position, and the very
easy task, of assailant, can drive, or seem  to drive, his
antagonist to the wall by asking questions he can not
answer, or by deducing conclusions which no definitions
drawn from what we see and know by sense, or sense
induction, can fully exclude. This is very easy work
it is also very foolish work. Its folly appears in the fact,
that the assailed party, who would hold the real existence, either of evil or of nature, may turn right round
and drive his antagonist to the wall by a like series of
unanswerable questions, involving logical difficulties precisely similar, until he is compelled to give up the idea
of any nature at all, or of a world as anything different
from the originating, sustaining Deity.
It may be remarked, here, that this fine rhetoric about
"God in nature," which is such a favorite with many of
our sentimentalists, scientific and religious, is not in the
Bible style. God is omnipresent; but there is every
where recognized in the Scriptures a real nature with its
tremendous self-acting forces "fulfilling His Word."   It
is this which imparts their inexpressible sublimity to so
many passages in the Old Testament. These declaraseem to intimate a variety and a multiplicity in the proximate zt,nsecn
source, or media, corresponding, generically if not individually, to the seen
things that come from them. No doubt the exertions, outworkings, of the
Divine power are as various as the things it makes, but the plurality in
the unseen things is contemplated as existing previously, per se, whether
in time, or before time. If we say that the unseen things denote the Divine
mind, as well as Divine power, still the language is far fetched. The con.
trast, (between two classes of things, the seen and unseen,) the multiplicity, the conception of media, or means ex quibus, are all unaccounted for.
29*
341 
NATURE OBEYING GOD.
tions are not all poetry, and if any of them are poetry,
they are the poetry of Heaven and mean something.
" The Lord was not in the wind which rent the mountains and brake the rock in pieces" before the Prophet's
vision; "He was not in the earthquake; he was not in
the fire." And yet most sublime it is, most true it is,
and no figure, that "H e maketh the winds his messenqers, his servant the flaming fire."  God is not electricity, nor immediately energizing in every movement of
electricity, and yet most sublime it is, and truer than
any figure,-" -He calleth for his thunders, and they
comeforth and say-Behold us —Here we are."
The other doctrine of nature is one we are compelled
to admit from the necessary laws of our thinking. It
ceases to be nature when conceived of in any other way.
Though condemned by thie Andover authority, it has been
maintained by the wisest of the ancient and modern thinkers.  Bacon and Cudworth both teach it, although, in
other respects, they represented two such different schools.
We must, in some way, have a self-subsistence in nature,
as something given to nature, and which God could give
to nature, whether we can explain the method and the
rationale of it or not.  There may be this self-hood, and
yet God the supporting ground, as he is the supporting
ground even of spirit.  We may not be able to explain
the difference between this supporting ground and a constant immediate energizing in every act of nature, but
such difference there must be, whether we can see it,
and understand it, or not. The proof is in the higher
'laws of our thinking, we say again. There must be a
,nature, or we fall into a pantheism where the moral and
:the physical both perish.  But a nature, as such, can be
342 
NATURES TEND TO DETERIORATION.
thought in no other way. Therefore, there is a nature
having a life of its own, a subsistence of its own, imparted to it,-a nature in some true sense going of itself,and, therefore, having both growth and deterioration.
In the other volume, such a doctrine of nature was
presented to show, not only the fact, but, in some sense,
the need of periods in the creative work,- that is, if
God chooses to work by the method of natures or growths
as it appears from the Scriptures he has done. Thus
viewed, the constant tendency of nature, or a nature,
general or partial, to degenerate from the primal force,
(or, in other words, when thus left to itself to manifest its
necessary finiteness)- this, taken in connection with
God's from time to time renewing it, and even supernaturally raising it to a higher law than before, may be regarded as constituting those periods of torpor and reviviscence which are so appropriately styled evenings and
,morninys.  This attempt at explanation may be a failure; but certainly the theism of the argument is unimpeachable. If such an interpretation of Scripture is
wrong, it should be shown to be wrong both philosophically and exegetically. That was the true, as well as
the manly way of refuting it, instead of frightening good
Christian people with such an unscientific outcry of " naturalism," and "Platonism," and the " eternity of matter," and other horrid spectres of a similar kind.
From this, too, comes the position that in all natures,
thus left to themselves, the result, if unchecked, is, at
some time or other, death or disorganization. God makes
a nature to go by itself, but not forever by itself. Every
exception by which a natural thing, or a spiritual thing
connected with a nature, is exempted from this law of
343
I 
844   LIFE PROMISED TO ADAM BY COVENANT.
finiteness, and hence of decay, is by special covenant.
And this is applied to show the absurdity, the unscriptural as well as logical absurdity, of views like that of
Mr. LORD, which maintains that there could have been
no death in the animal races before the fall of Adam.
Geology is charged with impiety for pretending to find
evidence of any such thing; but he might just as well
have maintained it of the vegetable world. The Bible
gives no sanction to such a view. Mr. LORD, with all
his determination to be orthodox, has departed from the
doctrine ever maintained in the Church, that the immortality of Adam, if secured, was to be by special sustaining power in pursuance of a special covenant made with
him, and for him and all his posterity. If he obeyed, he
was to be raised out of nature,. and secured in a higher
condition. It was " a covenant of life on condition of
obedience." To say, then, that death could not have
taken place, or would not have taken place, either in the
animal or vegetable kinds, before the fall, or without the
fall, is to deny the very grounds on which was covenanted
to Adam, and is now again covenanted through Christ,
eternal life.
Thus, too, if we carry out the view into which some
would run in their fear of detracting from the divine
power (should a self-hood in any sense be ascribed to
nature) God must not only be in the same nature at
every moment alike, without any variation in presence or
degree, but he must be equally and alike in all natures,
the decaying and the dying, as well as the reviving.
These would be only different signs of one and the same
presence. He is in all natures, and equally in all natures,- not only the good, but the bad; although we are 
MOTION BY IMPULSE.
aware that there are some who deny that there can be
any such thing as a bad nature. They do not believe in
the qgov'w    eago regarded as "the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam." But call it what we
may, it is something in God's universe in some way and
in some sense "left to itself." God can make a syirit
to go by itself,- a will to will what He has not willed,
or which, in a certain sense, and a true sense, can even
will contrary to what He wills. This is indeed a mystery; but how much easier than this, though both are
incomprehensible, to make a nature to do, of itself, just
what it was made to do! The want of a true will makes
the difference between a personality, strictly, and that
lower thing we have called a self-hood, or self-subsistence;
but this want makes no difference as to the other question, whether nature is the exercise of a foreign power ever
immediately energising from without, or a power imparted,
that is, parted in some sense, and in some mode, from
the original starting source?
Some might fancy all difficulties obviated by conceiving of nature as a chain of impulses, each one operating
in a manner outward to the other, -the whole series
being set in motion by the Divine hand, and kept in motion by a continual impact, or a continual transmission of
the original divine power through every successive ictus.
As a mere conception, this need not be objected to, although it is so wholly outward and mechanical. It may
do as a figure, but it lacks the radical idea of a nature.
It has no real inward nexus. As a comparison- the
way in which we have several times employed it -it may
illustrate the scientific ignorance; but nothing is gained
845 
AXIOM OF CONTINUOUS MOTION.
by it towards removing the real mystery. The reason
of this is, that motion by impulse,- especially the continuance of it when parted in time and space from what
would be called the impelling cause or force,- is just as
inexplicable as gravity, or magnetism, or any other unknown causality. We can just as easily conceive of any
other power being given to nature, and exercised by it,
as this which to the unthinking seems to present so little
difficulty. Take the common axiom which is presented,
and then so naively passed over by some of our scientific
men in their books of Natural Philosophy, as though it
involved no mystery-"a A body put in motion will continue in motion indefinitely." It would never stop, they
sometimes venture to affirm, unless outwardly resisted.
HIow they, in their brief existence, have learned this, as
matter of fact, it would be hard to tell; certainly they
do not pretend to hold it by virtue of any a priori ideas.
That would be very unscientific. But the reasons they
sometimes give for this assumed fact of never stopping
has some strange features. Every body, it is said, will
continue in that state in which it is, if there is no cause
or power producing a change. In a state of rest, therefore, it needs a moving power, in a state of motion, a resisting power, to make a change. But what is meant by
a state of motion? Motion is continual change, and that
is the only idea we can have of it;  Tag xs 7          Ta a.>  o
tsafi3iXMov, as it is so well expressed by Aristotle, Physic. Ausc. III, I, 4. It is the only way we can think
the phenomenon. It is continuous causality with con
tinuous effect, the active and passive ever combined,ever   -sraxct)ixov, and ever E   afiCx?xozvov.  We can not
conceive why it should not require the same power to
346 
THE PHYSICAL SECRET OF THE WORLD.
carry it through one space as through another. But
what is that power, and where is it? Is it the divine
hand carrying it directly through every point of space,
the same as though that divine hand took it up at one
point, carried it through every intermediate point, and
had ever precisely the same hold of it as in the first startwhether that start was made by a new fact of divine energizing, or was the universal divine force carried all
along through all the long chain of motions from the beginning of nature and of time?  That would involve all
the consequences before pointed out.  It would utterly
confound God and nature, or rather wholly absorb nature
into God. We select this simple and common example,
because it contains the essence, the condensed quintessence, we may say, of the great question.  Some would
see no difficulty in it, and might, perhaps, wonder what
there could be in so simple an affair to cause difficulty
to others.  What can be more clear than the scientific
fact, and the scientific statement, of impulsive motion?
And yet there is, indeed, a mystery in this rolling ball.
It carries with it, in fact, the great physical secret of the
universe -the separation of God from the world. It is
a force left to itself, as matter is left to itself. Why is it
not as much an entity? Is the existence of matter, or its
subsistence, but the continuation of the creative force?
If it be thought that we are making too much of a marvel of this, let us look steadily at the thing, and see what
we really know about it.  The ball is at rest at A, then
in motion at M, then in motion at N. Take it at the latter point.  It is apparently the same matter, the same
internal arrangement of particles, with the same chemical affinities existing between them.  Something, cer
3,iT 
348 A THIING CAN ONLY ACT WHIIEN AND WHERE IT IS.
taiily, has been added, but it is nothing that appears.
Again; it is parted, both in space and time, from the
visible, starting, motive cause, and that can exercise no
power over it, and produce no effect in it, or upon it, unless it can be supposed that a thing may act when and
where it is not- a supposition that would violate one of
those higher laws of our thinking, of which we have
already spoken, and without which, in fact, we can not
think of physical causation at all. And yet there is certainly something here more than the matter in its state
of rest. There has been imparted a something, yes, an
entity, which is truly present with the ball, and goes along
with it,-as truly present as the particles of matter of
which it is composed,-being in every proper sense of
the word as real as the matter, and having just as much
of a real self-hood, or self-subsistence. There is, in short,
an immaterial, invisible something here that makes the
wondrous difference; and this, with all reverence would
we say it, is not God. Now science-we mean a certain kind of science that is inclined to talk pompously
-says she knows all about it; she knows just what this
thing is. It is force, she declares, neither more nor less;
it is force that carries it on according to that famous law
-" a body once set in motion," etc. This satisfies the man
of positive science eschewing all metaphysical nonsense.
Such a " student of nature" sees no mystery in the thing
whatever; he has got a word, and that contents him.
Now the contemned word-hunters would tell him that
the conception of force (yoga) runs down radically into
that of sustained motion; it is a carrying along. So
that his word, after all, is only the scientific expression
of the outward phenomenal fact. It does not bring him 
MYSTERY OF THE ROLLING BALL.
a particle nearer this unseen entity of which we are in
search.             What is t here in, on, with or about the ball at
N which was not with it at A, or was quiescent at A?
Hi          s   force i s     simply a     mathematical expression for an effect. There is a  certain time; he calls it t; a certain
space has been passed over in that time; he calls it s.
H       e        puts v  for velocity, m   for mass, etc., and makes  a
formula. And now the mystery is revealed. To be
sure, his time is only the expression of a visible motion;
it is a comparison of an earthly with a celestial motion,
one of which is no more absolute than the other; but he
has a formula, and that satisfies him. We may fairly
ask, however, What has he done more than express an
outward appearance? Surely, he will not venture to
sa         y that this outward appearance is the  whole of it.
There is certainly something in the ball at N which was
not with it at A. It is something that goes with it, and
belongs to it, until it (that is the dynamical entity we
call the force) finally stops from any cause,-changes,
we should rather say, for it only seems to stop, when, in
fact, it merely disappears, becomes latent, or goes off,
by action or reaction, into something else, where it is
either carried on in some other isolated wave, or else
empties itself, suddenly or gradually, into the great sea
offorce, with its mighty currents ever swaying, surging,
eddying throughout the universe. It has disappeared,
not perished; when it rises again it is a new birth, not a
new creation. Here steps in philosophy; but what can
she do? She            wonders. To some  that may seem but
little; still it is a great step in advance of science,- at
least the kind of science we have been speaking of.
Such science wonders, too; but it is at her own mar                           30
.49 
LAW-GIVER- LAW — SUBJECT.
velous achievements in having invented these formulas;
and so the real wonder in nature goes unheeded. Philosophy wonders at the mystery. All philosophy, says
Plato, begins and ends in wonder. But Faith adores.
Both have their gaze upon a higher region than science,
though neither Philosophy nor Faith would undertake
to solve the problem,- to tell how it can be, or why it
should be.  But Faith believes that "by the Word of
the Lord," as something more than a sublime figure,by the veritable going forth of the Eternal Logos," were the ages made, so that from things unseen came
forth the things that do appear," and that these unseen
things themselves are not God, but true entities that God
has created. Thus it believes in God, and at the same
time in a real nature, a real world, a real force in nature,
and a real law in distinction from any mere generalization of outward phenomenal sequences having a false appearance of causation, or presenting only the aspect of
signs with nothing after all of which such signs are really
.significant.
And thus, too, the true idea of law becomes complete,
Mboth in its divisions and its rounded outline.   To this
,three things are necessary. The scientific theist charges
,upon the atheist, or sheer naturalist, that he has the absurdity of a law without a law-giver.  It may be retorted upon the former,- when he attempts to talk piously,
in the style of the Andover articles, about "God in nature" immediately energizing in every effect,- that he
has the equal absurdity of a law without a subject. We
must hold, then, one of these three views.  It is either   All God, which is pantheism- or,
All Nature, which is atheism -or it is
350 
IDEAS IN NATURE.
God, Law, and Nature,*-Lawgiver, Law, Subject,
-the two last proceeding from the first, yet each by itself a subsistent reality,- the second, or middle term
being that by which alone we can truly think the others,
without severing the dependence, or confounding the distinctions. We say, think them as fact, for it hath not
entered, and can not enter into any human mind, yea, we
may venture to say, into any angelic mind, to comprehend or even think the deep mystery in which they are
essentially united.
There is' another topic connected with this, and one,
too, of no light interest. There is a force, or, rather,
there are forces, in nature in some way left to themselves
to act out the power which God has put within. But
there is no easy stopping place here, and so we go farther. If we would avoid that annihilation of nature and
the world to which the false fear of naturalism leads us,
then we must hold that there are in nature, created in
nature, given to nature, remaining in nature, belonging
to nature as part of her self-hood and her reality,without which she could not be nature,- not onlyforees,
but ideas; and if forces and ideas, then laws, which are
forces acting according to ideas. The laws of which science sometimes speaks, are a very different thing. They
are but dead classifications, such as might be conceived
of as existing in a universe without intelligence; for in
any supposed state of the world there might be classifications of things in space, and of events in time,- that
is, something which, when discovered, might in this sense
? I These as they stand in the outward or created world. In the antecreative or hyper-creative state, they would be God, Truth, Pouwer,-ever
united, yet distinct.
351 
THE OBSOLETE DOCTRINE.
be called an order and a law. But there is, moreover,
an intelligence; although we do not venture to define
the fact or mode of its passivity or activity.  It is here
that modern physical speculation ignores that old doctrine
of the Logos in Nature, that is made so much of in the
Bible. It has become almost obsolete, very much as
some modern theology almost ignores the mystery of the
incarnation, or gives it little place in the redemptive system, although retaining it in its creeds and symbols.
But the proper treatment of such a subject, with its
Scriptural proofs, demands a treatise by itself. There
is need here of but one remark in relation to it. Until
this doctrine, now hardly recognised even in theology, is
made a fundamental and all-pervading axiom, science
must be atheistical. Without it, it can never be truly
religious in itself, whatever may be its pretensions, or
however sincere and genuine the piety of many most
excellent and most religious scientific men.
352
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