The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science. Sir John William Dawson
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the moving life of the elements of nature. This contrast and generalization in the conception of the mutual action of natural phenomena, and the retrospection of an omnipresent invisible Power, which can renew the earth or crumble it to dust, constitute a solemn and exalted rather than a gentle form of poetic creation." [8]
If we admit the source of inspiration claimed by the Hebrew poets, we shall not be surprised that they should thus write of nature. We shall only lament that so many pious and learned interpreters of Scripture have been too little acquainted with nature to appreciate the natural history of the Book of God, or adequately to illustrate it to those who depend on their teaching; and that so many naturalists have contented themselves with wondering at the large general views of the Hebrew poets, without considering that they are based on a revelation of the nature and order of the creative work which supplied to the Hebrew mind the place of those geological wonders which have astonished and enlarged the minds of modern nations. A modern divine, himself well read in nature, truly says: "If men of piety were also men of science, and if men of science were to read the Scriptures, there would be more faith on the earth and also more philosophy." [9] In a similar strain the patient botanist of the marine algæ thus pleads for the joint claims of the Bible and nature: "Unfortunately it happens that in the educational course prescribed to our divines natural history has no place, for which reason many are ignorant of the important bearings which the book of nature has on the book of revelation. They do not consider, apparently, that both are from God—both are his faithful witnesses to mankind. And if this be so, is it reasonable to suppose that either, without the other, can be fully understood? It is only necessary to glance at the absurd commentaries in reference to natural objects which are to be found in too many annotations of the Holy Scriptures to be convinced of the benefit which the clergy would themselves derive from a more extended study of the works of creation. And to missionaries especially, a minute familiarity with natural objects must be a powerful assistance in awakening the attention of the savage, who, after his manner, is a close observer, and likely to detect a fallacy in his teacher, should the latter attempt a practical illustration of his discourse without sufficient knowledge. These are not days in which persons who ought to be our guides in matters of doctrine can afford to be behind the rest of the world in knowledge; nor can they safely sneer at the knowledge which puffeth up, until, like the apostle, they have sounded its depths and proved its shallowness." [10] It is truly much to be desired that divines and commentators, instead of trying to distort the representations of nature in the Bible into the supposed requirements of a barbarous age, or of setting aside modern discoveries as if they could have no connection with Scripture truth, would study natural objects and laws sufficiently to bring themselves in this respect to the level of the Hebrew writers. Such knowledge would be cheaply purchased even by the sacrifice of a part of their verbal and literary training. It is well that this point is now attracting the attention of the Christian world, and it is but just to admit that some of our more eminent religious writers have produced noble examples of accurate illustrations of Scripture derived from nature. In any case, the Bible itself can not be charged with any neglect of the claims of nature or with any narrow tendency to place material and spiritual things in antagonism to one another.
Another reason why a revelation from God must deal with the origins of things, is that such revelation is, like creation, in its own nature progressive. It is given little by little to successive generations of men, and must proceed from the first rudiments of religious truth onward to its higher developments with the growth of humanity from age to age. Hence the teachings in the early chapters of Genesis are of the simplest and most child-like character, and the first of these early teachings is necessarily that of God the Creator, just as our elementary catechisms for children have been wont to begin with the question, "Who made you?" In this way man is led in the most direct and simple way to the feet of the Universal Father, and a foundation is laid whereon further religious teaching adapted to the growth of the individual mind and to the growing complications of human society can be built. But again, alike in the earliest and simplest as in the more advanced states of the human mind, if spiritual things are to be taught, it must be through the medium of material things. We have no language to express in any direct way spiritual truths; they must be given to us in terms of the natural. We have not yet learned the tongue of the immortals, and probably can not learn it in this world. The word "spirit" itself, which we borrow from the Latin, the Greek Pneuma, the Hebrew Ruah, primarily all agree in signifying breath or wind. We have to speak of our own breath when we mean our spiritual nature, of God's breath when we mean his spiritual nature, and so of all other things not obvious to our senses. There is constant danger in this that the material shall be taken for the spiritual of which it is the symbol, the figure for the reality, the creature for the Creator, and this danger is best counteracted by a decided testimony in relation to the origin of all material things in the will of the spiritual and eternal God. Thus the Bible writers are enabled to use a free and bold manner of speech respecting divine things. Their expressions at one time appear pantheistic and at another anthropomorphic; they see God in every thing, and use with the utmost freedom natural emblems to indicate his perfections and procedure, and our relations to him. In this way there is life and action in their teaching, and it is removed as far as possible from a dry, abstract theology, while equally remote from any tinge of idolatry or superstition.
It may, however, be objected that by the introduction of a cosmogony the Bible exposes itself to a conflict with science, and that thereby injury results both to science and to religion. This is a grave charge, and one that has evidently had much weight with many minds, since it has been the subject of entire treatises designed to illustrate the history of the conflict or to explain its nature. The revelation of God's will to man for his moral guidance, if necessary at all, was necessary before the rise of natural science. Men could not do without the knowledge of the unity of nature and of the unity of God, until these great truths could be worked out by scientific induction. Perhaps they might never have been so worked out. Therefore a revealed book of origins has a right to precedence in this matter. Nor need it in any way come into conflict with the science subsequently to grow up. Science does not deal so much with the origin of nature as with its method and laws, and all that is necessary on the part of a revelation, to avoid conflict with it, is to confine itself to statements of phenomena and to avoid hypotheses. This is eminently the course of the Bible. In its cosmogony it shuns all embellishments and details, and contents itself with the fact of creation and a slight sketch of its order; and in their subsequent references to nature the sacred writers are strictly phenomenal in their statements, and refer every thing directly to the will of God, without any theory as to secondary causes and relations. They are thus decided and positive on the points with reference to which it behooves revelation to testify, and absolutely non-committal on the points which belong to the exclusive domain of science.
What, then, are we to say of the imaginary "conflict of science with religion," of which so much has been made? Simply that it results largely from misapprehension and from misuse of terms. True religion, which consists in practical love to God and to our fellow-men, can have no conflict with science. True science is its fast ally. The Bible, considered as a revelation of spiritual truth to man for his salvation and enlightenment, can have no conflict with science. It promotes the study of nature, rendering it honorable by giving it the dignity of an inquiry into the ways of God, and rendering it safe by separating it from all ideas of magic and necromancy. It gives a theological basis to the ideas of the unity of nature and of natural law. The conflict of science, when historically analyzed, is found to have been fourfold—with the Church, with theology, with superstition, and with false or imperfect science and philosophy. Religious men may have identified themselves from time to time with these opponents, but that is all; and much more frequently the opposition has been by bad men more or less professing religious objects. Organizations calling themselves "the Church," and whose warrant from the Bible is often of the slenderest, have denounced and opposed and persecuted new scientific truths; but they have just as often denounced the Bible itself, and religious doctrines founded on it. Theology claims to be itself one of the sciences, and as such it is necessarily imperfect and progressive, and may at any time be more or less in conflict with other sciences; but theology is not religion, and may often have very little in common either with true religion or the Bible. When discussions arise between theology and other sciences, it is only a pity that either side should indulge in what has been called the odium theologicum, but which