1857.] Science and the Bible. 395
is
true, of Greek and Hebrew, but of another language of wider
significance and deeper wisdom; the depths of nature being the
unfathomable depths of the infinite.
The
earth was thus made the arena from which Man was to rise to celestial
heights. It was his duty to love and obey his Maker ; but this was not
all his duty. He was ordered to subdue and have dominion, and so to
take strength and wisdom from the'infinite source within his reach.
While other species reach maturity, within and without, by simple
growth, being in a sense made by nature, even to the finishing stroke,
Man is required to work out his elevation, and is held responsible for
his ignorance and weakness. He was to love, love with all his heart,
but none the less to search and " find out knowledge " from the world
around him. And thus Science and the Bible were to go hand in hand in
man's education.
In that early age, when the whole Bible consisted
of merely the first commission and first promise given to man, nature
was by his side. The beauty of flower and leaf, were there, to refine
and cultivate ; the grandeur of the hoary mountain and the rushing
torrent, to quicken his soul to great deeds ; and all the earth sent
forth an incense that should bear him upward, in devout contemplation.
And beyond this, there were truths of utilitarian character beneath the
surface, essential to his very existence. He was to learn to strike
the fire from the flint; to change the stony ore into the implement of
toil ; to search out fibre for cord or useful fabrics ; to fertilize
the soil as it became exhausted by cultivation; to find the plastic
clays and mould them into utensils. So in many ways, his life and
subsistence were dependent on help gathered from nature.
Is
it said that knowledge so simple as this, is not science ? It is
nature-knowledge, and of the very same kind that is the basis of
existing science. It is a shallow notion that only more recondite facts
make up science. Nothing happens around us, in the material world that
is not now embraced within its range. The rising and setting of the
sun, the changes in the seasons, the dew and rain, snow and hail,
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