read of a firmament dividing the waters above from the waters below, he perhaps conceived a transparent floor in the skies, on which the superior waters rested, which descend in rain; but as his observations and his reasonings satisfied him that such a floor could not exist, he became willing to allow (as St. Augustine allowed) that the waters above the firmament are in a state of vapour. And in like manner in other subjects, men, as their views of nature became more distinct and precise, modified, so far as it was necessary for consistency's sake, their first rude interpretations of the Sacred Narrative; so that, without in any degree losing its import as a view of the providential course of the world, it should be so conceived as not to contradict what they knew of the natural order of things. But this accommodation was not always made without painful struggles and angry controversies. When men had conceived the occurrences of the Sacred Narrative in a particular manner, they could not readily and willingly adopt a new mode of conception; and all attempts to recommend to them such novelties, they resisted as attacks upon the sacredness of the Narrative. They had clothed their belief of the workings of Providence in certain images; and they clung to those images with the persuasion that, without them, their belief could not subsist. Thus they imagined to themselves that the earth was a flat floor, solidly and broadly laid for the convenience of man; and they felt as if the kindness of Providence was disparaged, when it was maintained that the earth was a globe held together only by the mutual attraction of its parts. The most memorable instance of a struggle of this kind is to be found in the circumstances which attended the introduction of the Heliocentric Theory of Copernicus to general acceptance. On this controversy I have already made some remarks in the History of Science*, and have attempted to draw from it some lessons which may be useful to us when any similar conflict of opinions may occur. I will here add a few reflections with a similar view. 6. Such difficulties inevitable.—In the first place, I remark that such modifications of the current interpretation of the words of Scripture appear to be an inevitable consequence of the progressive character of Natural Science. Science is constantly teaching us to describe known facts in new language; but the language of Scripture is always the same. And not only so, but the language of Scripture is necessarily adapted to the common state of man's intellectual developement, in which he is supposed not to be possessed of science. Hence the phrases used by Scripture are precisely those which science soon teaches man to consider as inaccurate. Yet they are not, on that account, the less fitted for their proper purpose: for if any terms had been used, adapted to a more advanced state of knowledge, they must have been unintelligible among those to whom the Scripture was first addressed. If the Jews had been told that water existed in the clouds in small drops, they would have marvelled that it did not constantly descend; and to have explained the reason of this, would have been to teach Atmology in the sacred writings. If they had read in their Scripture that the earth was a sphere, when it appeared to be a plain, they would only have been disturbed in their thoughts or driven to some wild and baseless imaginations, by a declaration to them so strange. If the Divine Speaker, instead of saying that he would set his bow in the clouds, had been made to declare that he would give to water the property of refracting different colours at different angles, how * B. v. c. iii. sect. 4. utterly unmeaning to the hearers would the words have been! And in these cases, the expressions, being unintelligible, startling, and bewildering, would have been such as tended to unfit the Sacred Narrative for its place in the providential dispensation of the world. Accordingly, in the great controversy which took place in Galileo's time between the defenders of the then customary interpretations of Scripture, and the assertors of the Copernican system of the universe, when the innovators were upbraided with maintaining opinions contrary to Scripture, they replied that Scripture was not intended to teach men astronomy, and that it expressed the acts of divine power in images which were suited to the ideas of unscientific men. To speak of the rising and setting and travelling of the sun, of the fixity and of the foundations of the earth, was to use the only language which would have made the Sacred Narrative intelligible. To extract from these and the like expressions doctrines of science, was, they declared, in the highest degree unjustifiable; and such a course could lead, they held, to no result but a weakening of the authority of Scripture in proportion as its credit was identified with that of these modes of applying it. And this judgment has since been generally assented to by those who most reverence and value the study of the designs of Providence as well as that of the works of nature. 7. Science tells us nothing concerning Creation.-— Other apparent difficulties arise from the accounts given in the Scripture of the first origin of the world in which we live for example, Light is represented as created before the Sun. With regard to difficulties of this kind, it appears that we may derive some instruction from the result to which we were led in the last chapter;-namely, that in the sciences which trace the progress of natural occurrences, we can in no case go back to an origin, but in every instance appear to find ourselves separated from it by a state of things, and an order of events, of a kind altogether different from those which come under our experience. The thread of induction respecting the natural course of the world snaps in our fingers, when we try to ascertain where its beginning is. Since, then, science can teach us nothing positive respecting the beginning of things, she can neither contradict nor confirm what is taught by Scripture on that subject; and thus, as it is unworthy timidity in the lover of Scripture to fear contradiction, so is it ungrounded presumption to look for confirmation, in such cases. The providential history of the world has its own beginning, and its own evidence; and we can only render the system insecure, by making it lean on our material sciences. If any one were to suggest that the nebular hypothesis countenances the Scripture history of the formation of this system, by showing how the luminous matter of the sun might exist previous to the sun itself, we should act wisely in rejecting such an attempt to weave together these two heterogeneous threads;-the one a part of a providential scheme, the other a fragment of a physical speculation. We shall best learn those lessons of the true philosophy of science which it is our object to collect, by attending to portions of science which have gone through such crises as we are now considering; nor is it requisite, for this purpose, to bring forwards any subjects which are still under discussion. It may, however, be mentioned that such maxims as we are now endeavouring to esta blish, and the one before us in particular, bear with a peculiar force upon those Palætiological Sciences of which we have been treating in the present Book. 8. Scientific views, when familiar, do not disturb the authority of Scripture.-There is another reflection which may serve to console and encourage us in the painful struggles which thus take place, between those who maintain interpretations of Scripture already prevalent and those who contend for such new ones as the new discoveries of science require. It is this ;—that though the new opinion is resisted by one party as something destructive of the credit of Scripture and the reverence which is its due, yet, in fact, when the new interpretation has been generally established and incorporated with men's current thoughts, it ceases to disturb their views of the authority of the Scripture or of the truth of its teaching. When the language of Scripture, invested with its new meaning, has become familiar to men, it is found that the ideas which it calls up are quite as reconcileable as the former ones were, with the most entire acceptance of the providential dispensation. And when this has been found to be the case, all cultivated persons look back with surprise at the mistake of those who thought that the essence of the revelation was involved in their own arbitrary version of some collateral circumstance in the revealed narrative. At the present day, we can hardly conceive how reasonable men could ever have imagined that religious reflections on the stability of the earth, and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve round it, would be interfered with by an acknowledgment that this rest and motion are apparent only*. And thus the authority of revelation is not shaken by any changes introduced by the progress of science in the mode of interpreting expressions which describe physical objects and occurrences; provided the new interpretation is admitted at a proper season, and in a proper spirit; so as to soften, as much as possible, both the public controversies and the private scruples which almost inevitably accompany such an alteration. * I have here borrowed a sentence or two from my own History. VOL. I. W. P. |