treatise on modes of inspiration, but by the careful study of the successive books of Scripture. Occasions will present themselves, as we proceed, for developing, I trust, reasonable and reverential ideas on this subject, especially in connection with the Law of Moses, with the schools of the Jewish Prophets, and most expressly with the miraculous claims of Christ and his Apostles.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RELATION OF THE SCRIPTURES TO NATURAL SCIENCE.

ANOTHER subject, closely connected with the question of the Inspiration of the Scriptures, and of great importance to a correct understanding of their contents and a wise vindication of the claims of Revealed Religion, is, the Relation which the Scriptures bear to Natural Science.

The old notion of verbal inspiration required us to believe that the Scriptures were infallible in every allusion they might happen to make to any matters of human knowledge or science; so that, if they spoke of different countries of the world, their geographical knowledge must be taken as absolutely true; if they alluded to the events of various nations, their historical assertions must be accepted as unimpeachable; that what they say of the heavenly bodies must be in every case regarded as astronomically correct; that if they touch on medicine or anatomy, they have been inspired with knowledge which can never be surpassed; and so of all other sciences. This notion is now, as an intire theory, quite obsolete among thinking Christians. It is abundantly plain that the Scriptures, in revealing religious knowledge, leave all other subjects to the natural progress of human discovery; and that the writers, while expressing religious truths which are manifestly beyond their age, have continually implied the various scientific errors that prevailed in their age. And this is quite natural, and is a most important mark of the antiquity of the various books of

Scripture. The scientific error marks the age, and sometimes the country, of the writers; while the religious truth in advance of the age bears the internal evidence of its supernatural communication.

But certain parts of this old notion, of the Scriptures being scientifically true, still linger in the minds of many who do not admit the intire theory. This is particularly the case with the science of Geology, which in some respects plainly contradicts the literal and obvious meaning of the first chapter of Genesis. For a long time geology was denounced as false and irreligious; and now that its leading principles are established beyond reasonable doubt, it is confessedly, with many devout readers of the Scriptures, difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile religion and science! The subject of our present chapter is therefore of great importance. Let us endeavour to gain clear and large views of the pretensions (or non-pretension) of Scripture in reference to natural philosophy. Is it necessary, in order truly to honour the Scriptures, that we should slight any of the discoveries of science? The alternative would be sad indeed; for science is a truly divine thing, in which we learn the works and ways of God. True science and a real revelation can never therefore be at variance. Let us hope to find harmonious interpretations of them.

The Scriptures, as already said, are the records of certain revelations from God to His creatures. It is surely an obvious thing to distinguish, in reading them, between the substance of the revelation given, and the historical record in which that revelation is contained. It is quite gratuitous to suppose (and a very absurd and mischievous supposition too) that because a man is divinely inspired for a particular purpose, he is therefore infallibly informed on every other subject whatever, and that even the history (written, it may be, by some one else) which gives the record of his divine mission is infallible also in its minutest facts, and even in every opinion which the writer may incidentally imply on indifferent subjects. A man may be commissioned, as we believe Moses was, to declare as a revealed truth that God is One; and yet it need not follow that the same man was inspired to write an unerring history of the world and the human race from the creation down to his own

times; nor that he was taught by inspiration the true theory of the structure of the earth, which geological science is only at this day maturing from the gradual accumulation of facts and observations. If history, cosmogony and geology did not form any part of his divine mission, surely it is natural to expect he would be just as fallible on such subjects as other men, and that he would share the prevailing opinions and current mistakes respecting them. Surely, to ascribe to divine revelation his now perceived mistakes on these subjects of human science, is not to do real honour to the Scriptures, but to render them in effect the worst possible disservice.

If the Scriptures be genuine, and in the main credible, histories of the times to which they professedly refer,-if they really justify the claims to antiquity put forth on their behalf by learned men and critics,-we must expect to find in them the traces not only of ancient customs, but also of ancient opinions. Indeed, if they did not bear this testimony to the mistaken philosophy prevalent in the times when they were written, we should reasonably doubt whether these books possessed the antiquity claimed on their behalf. Suppose that the writings ascribed to Moses, who lived about 1500 years before Christ, contained allusions to geographical or astronomical facts and theories which we know to have had their origin in much later times, should we not immediately doubt the antiquity of these books, for this very reason, that they contained allusions to subjects of natural science with which (as proved by other parts of the world's literature) the age of Moses was unacquainted? We could not avoid this conclusion, unless by supposing that he was inspired to reveal, not religion only, but geography and astronomy. Then if we find that these books, in point of fact, instead of thus anticipating modern science, imply ancient errors when such subjects happen to be alluded to, is it not a simple and reasonable conclusion for us to draw, that the revelation which proclaimed the Unity of God, did not give supernatural knowledge on matters unconnected with this subject? Do we wonder that these Scriptures contain no allusions to America when they speak of the spread of population over the "whole earth"? Plainly, the writer of Genesis did not know of its existence, nor that of half the countries even

of the old continent. Do we wonder that the planet Herschel is not described, in anticipation of its discovery in the eighteenth century; or Neptune, in anticipation of the scientific exploits of yesterday?

The philosophical errors which we find implied in many instances in the Scriptures, on subjects unconnected with the revelations which they record, are truly the best possible vouchers for the antiquity of those Scriptures, which, if really ancient, must of course represent the opinions, as well as the customs, of ancient times. They must wear the mental as well as the bodily costume of their respective periods and places. And those who still persist in confounding these things with the essence of revelation, are at once divesting the books of their strongest general interest to the intelligent reader who can recognize these inward marks of their antiquity, and rashly and gratuitously making divine revelation answerable for the natural ignorance or mistakes of the human mind.

It will be useful more particularly to point out how one philosophical error after another has been thus rashly and needlessly ascribed to revelation by zealous but ignorant advocates of the Scriptures, and how most of such errors have been gradually perceived to be properly separate and distinct from the real contents of revelation, while some are still permitted to encumber its evidences in the minds of many devout persons.

The noble science of Astronomy, which has opened to us the most magnificent ideas that our minds can entertain of the extent and order of the universe, makes it a perfectly familiar piece of knowledge with us that the succession of the day and night, and the changes of the seasons, are produced by the turning of the earth upon its axis every twenty-four hours, and by its revolving round the sun every year in an inclined position. But in the ancient world this was not known; and the earth was, very naturally, supposed by its inhabitants to stand still in the centre of creation, while the sun and stars moved every day round it, and performed other revolutions every year. The writers of the Scriptures, being no better informed on this subject than their neighbours, speak of the sun, as other ancient writers do, as "rising in the East," and "running his course" through the heavens to the West. We ourselves, indeed, retain

this language, which is descriptive of the apparent phenomena, though we have given up the idea at the command of exacter knowledge. The ancients had various other erroneous notions respecting the earth and the heavens, from which the Hebrews were not free. They supposed the earth to be flat, as it was very naturally supposed to be till many centuries afterwards, when it was proved to be globular, and the law of gravitation came to be understood. They imagined their Sheol (like the Greek Hades), or the unseen state of the dead, to be beneath the flat earth. And they supposed the sky to be something solid, which they called a "firmament," supporting the clouds, and so "dividing the waters above from the waters beneath,"the mechanical properties of the atmosphere, and its ability to support the clouds, being wholly unknown to them. Thus, in the history of the Deluge (Gen. vii. 11), we read that "the windows (or flood-gates) of heaven were opened, and the rain was upon the earth." So, again, Job's friend Elihu says to him, "Hast thou with God spread out the sky, which is strong and like a molten mirror?" (Job xxxvii. 18). But who will now maintain, as on the authority of Scripture, that the sky is made of firm and solid material like a mirror of melted metal? Job's friend Elihu says it is, and in saying so he speaks the common opinion of his day; but he does not say that this opinion is a part of the religion revealed by Moses.

Now these evident mistakes as to astronomical knowledge were natural enough,-nay, they were inevitable,—at the time when that science was but little advanced; and occurring as they do in a collection of books which profess to contain certain inspired messages on religious subjects, they prove that those books existed in times when such astronomical mistakes prevailed. Yet these mistakes, which everybody now-a-days sees to be mistakes, were at one time authoritatively pronounced by the Christian hierarchy to be part of God's revealed word, which it was impious to call in question. Because, that is to say,because, at the time when God taught the Jews to worship Him alone and not the idols of other nations, these same Jews at that time knew no more about astronomy than other people; therefore their astronomical mistakes, which are occasionally implied in their sacred writings, must be taken to form part of