1856.] Science and the Bible. 93
teach
something, and that thereby a belief, based on truth from such a source
(he has it —"on Buckland, Lyell, or Hugh Miller"), should be
substituted for a belief grounded on the Scriptures, which would be, he
says, " a wretched self-deception ; " — lamentable, indeed, if we
should admit of help from God's works in understanding His writings!
In another place, he says of geology (p. 98) : " Infidel as her spirit
often is," she is " driven, more and more, to acknowledge the mixture
of the natural and supernatural in the production of the earth:" very
much, wTe 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 exegesis so completely into
the same course that some, like Prof. Lewis, as they are hurried on by
the current, exclaim in great glee over their wonderful progress, and,
in remarkable self-complacency, look down frowning upon the current
that they imagine is trying to keep up with them.
As
to infidel geology — the science which, almost alone, put down the
pantheistic " Vestiges of Creation" and its " development theory," was
geology. Not a geologist, in his writings, has supported the work; and
the facts proving successive creations, in past time, instead of
evolutions of species from species, have been uniformly regarded as
conclusive against that theory. Yet our author admits that " a
development theory, in the sense of species from species, may be as
pious as any other," and may, possibly, have been true. He needs the
bit of science to curb his fancy.
The
work is remarkable for the confident air with which it brings forward
principles that cautious science is slow to utter, thus dictating to
nature in the true style of the old philosophy, while, at the same
time, not adopting, or " caring " to recognize, any results established
by geology or the other sciences. But it is useless to enter into
further details.
We
come now to the special subject of the work, "the six days of creation,
or a Scriptural cosmology." We will first give briefly the general
course of doctrine in the volume.
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