of his statements. Besides, the character of the books is such that a very high place is not to be assigned them among human compositions, measured by the standard of the present day. The first chapter of Genesis, if taken as a history, in the unavoidable sense of its terms, is at variance with facts. It relates that God created the sun, moon, stars, and earth, and gave the latter its plants, animals, and men, in six days; while science proves that many thousands, if not millions of years must have passed between the creation of the first plants, and man, the crown of creation; that the surface of the earth gradually received its present form, one race of plants after the other sprang up, animals succeeded animals, the simpler first, then the more complex, and at last came man. This chapter tells of an ocean of water above our heads, separated from us by a solid expanse, in which the greater and lesser lights are fixed; that there was evening and morning before there was a sun to cause the difference between day and night; that the sun and stars were created after the earth, for the earth’s convenience; and that God ceased his action, and rested on the seventh day and refreshed himself. Here the Bible is at variance with science, which is Nature stated in exact language. Few men will say directly what the schoolmen said to Galileo, “If Nature is opposed to the Bible then Nature is mistaken, for the Bible is certainly right;” but the popular view of the Bible logically makes that assertion. Truth and the book of Genesis cannot be reconciled, except on the hypothesis that the Bible means anything it can be made to mean,[1] but then it means nothing.
A similar decision must be pronounced upon many accounts in the Law,—on the creation of woman; the
- ↑ See Augustine, Confessiones, Lib. XII. C. 18, et al. See in Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Lond. 1840, Vol. II. p. 137, et seq., the remarkable chapter on “the Relation of Tradition to Palæontology.” He thinks the interpretation of the Scriptures ought to change to suit the advance of physical science; and quotes, approvingly, the celebrated expression of Bellarmine: "When a demonstration shall be found to establish the Earth's motion, it will be proper to interpret the Sacred Scriptures otherwise than they have hitherto been interpreted in those passages where mention is made of the stability of the Earth and movement of the Heavens.” Thus he makes the interpretation of the Bible purely arbitrary: you can interpret into it, or out of it, what you will. If you may so deal with the Bible why not with Homer, Plato, Milton, and Hobbes? In fact, the sound interpretation of the Bible is no more arbitrary than that of Lyttleton's Tenures, and that of Nature itself.
