Yes, that illustration breaks down, but only at the point of human fallibility and imperfection. If that author were omniscient and infallible the illustration would be perfect.
Now apply it to the Word. When a man, through the unfailing laboratory test of honest faith, finds that the statements that can be put to the test of experience are infallible truth, he has not simply the presumption but also the absolute certainty established that all its other statements are true, because the infallible and omniscient Author has given it to us as His Word. It comes to us with a "Thus saith the Lord" ringing in our ears from beginning to end, and not with the multiplied repetitions of "We may well suppose" of the scientific guessers.
The man of scientific mind, therefore, will accept all the non-experiential statements of the Bible as infallible truth, including scientific and historical references and prophetic utterances. He will then accord the place of primacy to all understood scientific references of the Bible over all discoveries in the natural realm. He will do this by interpreting the few and fragmentary discoveries of finite and fallible man in the light of the statements that come to us as the Word of an infallible God, concluding that if there is any apparent inharmony, it lies in the partial discoveries or premature conclusions of scientists, rather than in any error of statement in the Bible. In other words, he will interpret science in the light of the Bible, and not the Bible in the light of science. And if at any time a harmonizing of scientific discoveries with the Bible seems impossible, he will withhold final conclusions until he has further scientific light,
