1856.] Science and the Bible. 107
4.
Those who adopt the liberal interpretation of the last, but with
denunciations of geology, while at the same time accepting its main
conclusions.
The
truthfulness of the Mosaic record is admitted by all the classes here
referred to, excepting the second. These, on the ground that the early
part of Genesis bears evidence of being a collection of two or three
distinct accounts, suppose that Moses adopted that particular ancient
or traditional story which acknowledged God as the Creator; and they do
not insist upon its being correct in details. It would at first seem as
if this liberality of view were a consequence of a firm and
well-defined belief in the deductions of science. This is so with some;
but with many, it is just the other way : there is a vague opinion that
geological facts cannot be set aside ; and as the literal rendering of
the Hebrew, in their view, is also inflexible, they consequently let
the record go, — we can hardly say, as the least of two evils. They
thus obtain a sufficient ground for rejecting all attempts to
reconcile science and the Bible.
The
fact, if it be a fact, that the account was a tradition which Moses
adopted, would not necessarily prove it incorrect in any of its
statements. The acts in creation had no human witness, and therefore
the tradition either was originally from the Being who had before
given man a living soul, or else it was only a human conception of
world-evolution. If the former, it might still be, throughout,
truthful; while at the same time we should naturally infer, in the case
of such a tradition, that the exact literality might yield a little to
research, provided the spirit of the whole were sustained. If the
latter, then the whole is hardly better than a fable, except the grand
pervading truth — God in creation. In this last case, the Divine signet
is stamped on a false or suspicious document, and thus opens the
Sacred Book — false not in mere drapery, for the account is peculiarly
free from adjuncts or symbols, presenting a series of definite
assertions as to the acts of the Deity himself. Admitting the account
as thus untrustworthy, science becomes the only true record of the
history of creation; and its facts should hence
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