03.06. CHAPTER VI.THE SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE . . .
CHAPTER VI. THE SCIENTIFIC TRUTH OF THE WORD OF GOD.
"Thy word is true from the beginning." Psalms 119:160. That is, "from the first word." The enthusiasm of the unknown writer of this Psalm knows no ordinary bounds. He sets out to rear a monument to the Word of God, and it is like a solid shaft of marble, sculptured into twenty-two sides, and each side bearing eight inscriptions. After the fashion of ancient acrostics, each side is appropriated to one letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and each of its eight inscriptions begins with that letter, as though all the resources of language would vainly be exhausted in endeavoring to describe the wonders of the Scriptures. He concludes this twentieth section by declaring that, from the first word on, every word is true. Resuming the argument of the last chapter, let us look at:
III. Cosmogony. How grand a fact it is, in favor of the Bible, that not one scientific error, blunder or absurdity has ever been found there! Can the sacred books of other religions endure that test? Apply this touchstone to the Koran, the Shasta, the Zendavesta, or the teachings of the wisest and best of uninspired men. Compare Moses with Zoroaster and Confucius, Seneca and Socrates, Plato and Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and Aristotle when the ancient religions or philosophies touch the Bible-theme of creation, they abound in sheer absurdities! Put the first chapter of Genesis beside the Hindu idea of the universe, which we might write out thus:
"Millions upon millions of cycles ago, this world came to be. It was made a flat triangular plain with high hills and mountains and great waters. It exists in several stories, and the whole mass is held up on the heads of elephants with their tails turned out, and their feet rest on the shell of an immense tortoise, and the tortoise on the coil of a great snake; and when these elephants shake themselves, that makes the earth quake."
Suppose the Bible had made such mistakes as Plato, who held that the earth is an intelligent being, or Kepler, who affirmed it a living animal! Or the old sages, who taught that the Milky Way is a path over which the sun used to journey and showing the marks of his footsteps; or a band of solid substance joining the two parts of the globe, etc. What if the old notions, that brutes are human beings in changed shapes, that there are fish in the sea with horses heads, that the fabled phoenix was a real bird, and that thunderbolts come from three stars, specially Jupiter, were found in God’s own Book! Who guarded this most ancient volume from the superstitions that corrupted astronomy into astrology and chemistry into alchemy? Who taught the writer of the 104th Psalm to compose that grand poem on the wonders of the created world, and yet introduce not one of the scientific errors current in those days; so that even Von Humboldt was compelled to confess that "in a lyrical poem of such limited compass, we find the whole universe, the heavens and the earth, sketched with a few bold touches!"
IV. Natural Philosophy. Modern discoveries as to the nature of light make the description of Moses divinely grand. He does not represent this mystery that vibrates so strangely through space, as being made, but "called forth" commanded to shine. In Job 38:13-14, we read of the day- spring, that it "takes hold of the ends of the earth; it is turned as clay to the seal, and they stand as a garment." In Babylon cylindrical seals were used. As they rolled over the clay, they left an impress of artistic beauty. What was without form, before, now stands out in bold relief like sculpture and so, as the earth revolves, and brings each portion of its surface successively under the sun’s light and heat, what was before dull, dark, dead, discloses and develops beauty; and the clay stands like a garment, curiously wrought in bold relief and brilliant colors. Take that, either as science or poetry, and where, in any other book of equal antiquity, can you find the like? And how exquisite is that phrase "takes hold of the ends of the earth!" The Hebrew word conveys the idea of the rays of light bending like the fingers of the hand, to lay hold, and this is spoken only of the ends of the earth. The direct ray of the sun falling upon its surface, comes, straight as an arrow; but, when the sunlight would touch the extremities of the earth, it is bent by the atmosphere so as to come into contact, and, but for this, vast portions, out of the direct line of the sun’s rays would be dark, cold and dead. Who taught Job, 1500 years or more before Christ, to use terms that Longfellow or Tennyson might covet, to describe refraction!
Job 38:7.”When the morning stars sang together" has been always taken to be a high flight of poetry. And when in Psalms 65:8, we read, "Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice," the Hebrew word means to give forth a tremulous sound, or as the voice in vibrations to sing. Modern science flings a ray of discovery across these poetic expressions, and scientific truth seems hidden or wrapped up in them. Light comes to the eye in undulations or vibrations, as sound comes to the ear. There is a point at which vibrations are too rapid or delicate to be detected by our sense of hearing; then a more delicate organ, the eye, takes note of them; they appeal to the optic, instead of the auditory, nerve and as light and not sound. Must not light then also sing? The lowest tone we can hear is made by 16.5 vibrations of air per second; the highest so shrill and "fine that nothing lives twixt it and silence," is made by 38,000 vibrations per second. Between these extremes lie eleven octaves; C of the G clef having 258 vibrations to the second, and its octave above 517. Not that sound-vibrations cease at 38,000, but our organs are not fitted to hear beyond those limitations. Were our ears delicate enough, we could hear even up to the almost infinite vibrations of light. And so it is literally true that "the morning stars sang together." We misconstrued this other passage in the Psalms, which we could not understand and dared not translate as it stood in the grand old inspired Hebrew, till "science crept up to a perception of the truth that had been standing there for ages uninterrupted, waiting for a mind that could take it in." And now we dare to read it as it stands "Thou makest the outgoings, or radiations of light of the morning and evening, to sing, i.e., to give forth sound by vibration." Were our senses fine enough, we could hear the separate key note of every individual star. Shakespeare wrote unconscious truth, when he sang,
"There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, But in his motion, like an angel sings, Still singing to the young-eyed cherubim. Such harmony is in immortal souls; But whilst this muddy vesture of decay Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."
Stars differ in glory and power; and so in the volume and pitch of their song.* In the future life our senses will doubtless be so delicate and refined that we shall be able to hear not only the separate key notes, but the infinite swelling harmony of these myriad stars of the sky as they pour their mighty tide of harmonious anthems into the ear of God. Then shall we be able to understand the truth of the hymn:
"In reason’s ear they all rejoice, And utter forth a glorious voice; forever singing, as they shine, The hand that made us is divine!"
* Dr. Warren: Recreations in Astronomy, p. 27. The music of the spheres is not monotonous. Stars draw near each other and make a light that is unapproachable by mortals; then the music swells beyond our ability to endure. They recede far away, making a light so dim that the music dies away so near to silence that only spirits can hear it. No wonder God rejoices in His works. He sits in the midst of a universal orchestra that pours into His ear one ceaseless tide of rapturous song. He dwells in the midst of light; to us it is only ineffable glory; to Him it is music!
Job 38:25. "To assign to the wind (atmosphere or breath) its weight, and to the waters their just measure." If there be anything which seems without weight, it is the air the breath that rises as it issues from the mouth. Aristotle and even Bacon knew not that there was weight to the atmosphere! The discovery of the gravity of the air was reserved for the great Florentine astronomer, Galileo. And yet Job, at least thirty centuries before Galileo, declared that God assigned weight even to the atmosphere!
There is danger of pressing the words of the Bible into a positive announcement of scientific facts, so marvelous are some of these correspondences. But it is certainly a curious fact that Solomon should use language entirely consistent with discoveries as to evaporation and storm-circuits.* (*Ecclesiastes 1:6-7). Some have boldly said that Redfield’s theory of storms is here explicitly stated. Without taking such ground, we ask, who taught Solomon to use terms that readily accommodate the facts, that the movements of the winds, which seem to be so lawless and uncertain, are ruled by laws as positive as those which rule the growth of the plant; and that, by evaporation, the waters that fall on the earth are continually rising again, so that the sea never overflows!
V. Entomology. If any department of science may be considered complete in its researches it is that which classifies the insects so completely that it has found 70,000 varieties of beetle alone. Solomon can hardly be considered up to modern level, and some have considered his mistake as quite too bad to be admitted into inspired writings, when he represented the ant as "providing her meat in summer and gathering her food in the harvest." The scientific skeptic affirms that the ant being a carnivorous insect, could not gather her food in the harvest, and that the very nature of that food would prevent it from being laid up in store; and that Solomon committed the blunder of many amateurs, in mistaking the white cocoon of the ant-pupae, properly known as ant-eggs, for grains housed for future use. But what becomes of Solomon’s inspiration? If he blunders in science he may have blundered in theology. Nor can we defend him, on the ground that the word translated, ant, should be otherwise rendered; for the word not only means, ant, but Buxtorf says it means a seed-eating ant.
When, however, we study the ants of Palestine, we find among them some species which not only feed on seeds, but harvest them; and if their stores are wet by the heavy rains, to prevent their sprouting, they bring them to the surface and dry them in the sun. More than this, late discovery shows that the agricultural ant not only stores grain but prepares the soil for the crop, plants the seed, keeps the ground free of weeds, and reaps the harvest; so that all Solomon says of the ants of Palestine, as exemplifying forethought and economy, is more than justified by facts! and so here is another of the "mistakes" which Solomon did not make. What becomes of the inspiration of the scientists, who charged him with blunders! For what has Modern Science more earnestly contended than for the Reign of Law throughout the creation of God! Yet mark the stress laid by the Bible on this fact, that even those things, which seem most capricious and uncertain, are under the control of fixed order. The rain obeys a decree and the thunder and lightning move obedient to law the sea can go but so far, and the wind returns according to his circuits. Sir John Herschel was so much impressed with the harmony between the facts of physical science and the Word of God that he remarked: "all human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more strongly the truths that have come from on high and are contained in the sacred writings."
VI. The Bible proves consistent with modern discoveries in Physiology, Comparative Anatomy and Chemistry. Physiology is a marvelous commentary on the exclamation of David, "I am fearfully and wonderfully made." The science of anatomy can find no error in the narrative of our Lord’s crucifixion; and a living physician was probably saved from infidelity by observing the unconscious truthfulness of the evangelists, in their account of the crucifixion, as to anatomical facts, then entirely unknown to science.* *Phelps on Preaching, 153.
Ecclesiastes 12:6, is a poetic description of death.
How that silver cord describes the spinal marrow, the golden bowl, the basin which holds the brain, the pitcher the lungs, and the wheel, the heart! Without claiming that Solomon was inspired to foretell the circulation of the blood, twenty-six hundred years before Harvey announced it is it not very remarkable that the language he uses exactly suits the fact a wheel, pumping up through one pipe, to discharge through another?
VII. Ethnology. The Bible unquestionably teaches the unity of the human race. Is this reconcilable with the discoveries of ethnology?
It has been urged that there must have been more than one original stock from which the race has sprung; that the varieties of color and form, brain-development, and physical type, cannot be accounted for by climate, food, and habits of life; that the negro, at least, belongs to another species. Some, disposed not to contend for the unity of the race, and yet to defend the Bible, take a middle ground, that the Bible gives the history of only one of the races that, through whom came the redemption forgetting that if the whole race has not sprung from Adam, the unity of the race both in sin and redemption is gone!
It is unfair to say that the Bible and anthropology or ethnology are at war. First, because the scientific facts are not yet settled. The men who have most diligently studied these subjects do not agree among themselves. Blumenbach insists on five varieties Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, Malay, American; Cuvier makes three grand divisions; Prichard affirms seven races, Luke Burke sixty three, Retzius two, and Dr. Pickering eleven, which he thinks may be reduced to one! Camper insists on the facial angle as the basis of division. Cuvier adopts as the basis, the comparative areas of the cranium and face sawed vertically on the median line. While scientific men are not agreed as to the facts, why need we seek to make their theories fit its doctrine? When one well-ascertained fact is found to be irreconcilable with the Bible, then, and not till then, may there be ground for alarm.
Almost all this outcry of hostility between science and God’s Word is based upon speculation. Some infidel thinks he has found out some new fact, and makes haste to announce it. He crams it into his gun and then fires, and expects to see the defenses of the Christian faith totter and tumble under the tremendous shock of his artillery. But, lo, the fortress stands, and there is not even a hole or breach in the wall. And when we come to examine, what was it that the great scientist hurled against the walls? Some huge, solid shot of fact? No; a mere paper-wad of his own fanciful theory, that took fire from his own powder!
Again we say, show us one undoubted fact, revealed by scientific studies for two thousand years, that cannot be harmonized with the word of God! Not only can there be shown no conflict between the facts and the Bible doctrine of the unity of the race, but the whole drift of discovery, so far as it becomes clear and positive, is toward the confirmation of that unity. In man, the world over, we find the same grand physical characteristics: the same number of teeth and bones and muscles; the same system of respiration and circulation, digestion, secretion; nerves, veins and arteries are arranged on the same type. Man is everywhere capable of living on all kinds of food, in any climate; liable to the same diseases; grows to maturity slowly, and lives to the same average age. Dr. Prichard contends for the unity of the original stock from the fertility of the race in off spring. "Nature abhors hybrids," and varieties produced in the vegetable or animal world, by the crossing of species, speedily run out; and hence the fact that, after six thousand years, intermarriage between individuals of different varieties is still fertile in offspring, proves one original species. Dr. Prichard traces all existing varieties of the human family to secondary causes, and finds among different tribes or nations no permanent lines of division.
Man, and even animals, when subjected to a change of climate or manner of life, change color, hair and form. Dr. Carpenter instances the Magyar race in Hungary, known to have belonged to the Asiatic stock. About a thousand years since, they came from the cold north of Asia to the sunny south of Europe, and not only have their habits of life all changed, but even the type of cranial formation from the pyramidal or Mongolian to the elliptical or Caucasian; and, with their improved physical stature and feature, there is just enough of the Tartar cast to give a hint of their origin. And so as to the Lapps and Finns; Dr. Carpenter says that, though from one common stock with the Magyars, the most marked differences have developed even in cranial characters, and general conformation, stature and proportion. In India, Persians, Greeks, Tartars, Turks and Arabs, all white men, and without intermarriage with the Hindus, in a few generations become marked with the deep olive color natural to the climate, almost as dark as the negro; and the Portuguese, in three hundred years residence there, have been dyed black as Kaffirs. Rev. John Campbell, years ago, observed that, as he moved from the southern cape toward equatorial Africa, the people uniformly grew darker; and the colony of Jews on the coast of Malabar are now as black as the natives of the coast. If climate may produce such marked changes in one direction, who is competent to say what changes all combined causes may produce during thousands of years? Von Humboldt, after stating the arguments for diversity of origin, gives his opinion that more weighty reasons favor unity; and certainly he will not be accused of superficial science or of undue bias toward the Bible.
Even the diversity of language, once thought to favor diversity of stock, is no longer an argument against the Word of God. The new science of comparative philology is grouping these tongues into families, and tracing them back by affinities and resemblances to one great root; and Klaproth illustrates the universal kinship of languages by the bricks with which Bagdad is built, and which bear the cuneiform legend of Nebuchadnezzar stamped upon them showing that they are fragments of old Assyrian cities. Even so, modern tongues exhibit the fragments of an earlier primitive language. And so physiology and philology, and psychology and ethnology, all witness to that grand old conception of the Bible, that all men sprang from one original pair. As to the antiquity of man, science has not presented one clearly established fact to show that the human race existed on earth earlier than the accepted chronology of the Bible places man’s creation. Most so-called proof is simply wild conjecture, jumping at conclusions; and sometimes the jump is such a big one that such science has been called "grasshopper science," or "kangaroo science." It claims to present the results of original investigation, though, as Park Godwin says, "the originality is apt to surpass the investigation.” The facts which seem to argue a greater antiquity for the human race are simply mysteries that await interpretation. For example, bones have been found, cut and polished, in deposits which seem to have been immersed in water since man dwelt on earth, yet so finely cut and polished as, in the opinion of many, to prove human skill, aided, too, by instruments of rare perfection. Sir Charles Lyell, however, ventured to put among the beavers in the zoological gardens in London some bones similar to those discovered, and, after leaving them for some time, recovered them, cut and polished by the beavers, so nearly like the others as to leave no doubt that in both cases the same agency had been employed. So, in this case, the pre-Adamite man proved to be a beaver, and the perfect tools, which argued such high civilization, the beaver’s teeth!
VIII. As yet we have not touched that broad field of Archeology where some of the richest, ripest harvests have been reaped for the confirmation of the Word of God. We present two or three, out of the immense mass of constantly accumulating facts, which show that God is taking the wise in their own craftiness. Skeptics have been confident that, from the discoveries brought to light by the archaeologist and paleontologist, the Word of God would be proved at best a harmless fable; but lo, while we hold our peace, the very stones cry out in confirmation of the Word.
We read in ancient history that the King of Babylon at the time of its destruction was not Belshazzar, but Nabonadius, or Labynetus, and that he was neither captured nor killed, but escaped, and that after the taking of the city he fought a battle outside the capital, was beaten, made prisoner, and subsequently a satrap under the conqueror, living in luxury and dying in peace. And so the scientific skeptics laughed at the credulity of the simple souls who take the Bible as their guide, though it asserts that Belshazzar was king when Babylon fell, and on the night of its capture was slain. But over twenty years ago, from the mounds that mark the almost forgotten site of the great city, there was dug up a great cylinder, inscribed with curious records, and from these we learn that Belshazzar was the son of Nabonadius and a regent under him; and now the inconsistency is explained. Belshazzar, sharing the throne of his father, was slain at Babylon. His father, Nabonadius, escaped and survived the fall of his capital. Out of the ruins of buried cities rises a new witness to the Word. Again, as to the Deluge. Assyrian tablets now in the British Egyptian museum, dating 660 B. C., copying and preserving an older record 1700 B. C., contain a pagan description of the flood, declare it to have been decreed by God on account of man’s wickedness, and record the fact of a great ship being built, birds being sent out, an altar being built, etc.
St. Luke calls Sergius Paulus the proconsul of Cyprus. Historians insisted that his proper title must have been procurator; yet even an inaccuracy could not be tolerated in the evangelist’s record. But lately ancient coins have come to light bearing the image of Claudius, and applying to the representative of Rome who governed Cyprus the very name, proconsul, which Luke applies to Sergius Paulus! The further modern investigation goes, the more is Holy Scripture established; every new discovery among the monumental records of antiquity adds a new witness to God’s blessed book. Wonderful, indeed, that the Bible should be so framed and worded that, though never clearly announcing scientific facts, "in advance of the science of the age," it proves, when correctly interpreted, to be always "abreast of the science" of any age. With a lofty air of papal infallibility, a skeptical writer declares that "every step that science takes leads mankind farther away from the idle hopes and fears of Christianity toward the calm of eternal truth." Whereupon Dr. Stebbins, himself a Unitarian, and an advocate of "liberal" views, dares a flat denial: "I affirm most deliberately, after nearly fifty years study of science as well as theology, with the ardor of a lover, that there is not a single discovery or accepted fact of science which, in the slightest degree, militates against the teachings of Christianity as revealed in the gospels." The Word of God cannot be demolished by the ridicule of its foes. Voltaire may have many disciples who follow his method, and seek to cover God’s Word with caricature as a modern "smart" boy disfigures with charcoal the face and form of some antique Apollo. But as the statue remains in its ideal perfection when the mischievous markings are washed away, so the pure celestial beauty of the Word survives all attempts to invest it with blasphemous absurdity. Nor can scientific assumption and presumption upset the certainties of a divine revelation. A falsehood is no more true because loudly spoken, and with gesticulation that attempts to pound conviction into the hearer. As Mr. Lincoln assured Mr. Bates that "calling a sheep’s tail a leg does not make it so," we insist that even the sanction of a great name does not necessarily establish the verity and accuracy of a statement. Many a man who is very safe in the department of investigation, and perfectly trust worthy so long as he confines himself to the simple results of observation and experiment, is as unsafe whenever he ventures into the department of philosophy or logic, and attempts to draw inferences from his investigations; his conclusions may be as inaccurate and unsound as his experiments are careful and exact. The fact is, investigation and induction belong to different departments; and we are not always to adopt the inferences even of the most accurate investigator.
Scientific men are not always intellectually honest and candid. Biased in favor of a certain scientific creed, or religious system, they become intellectual squinters; they see only what they want to see, and array facts and figures adroitly on the side of preconceived opinion or notion.
What, then, shall we do with the Bible? It comes before the tribunal of reason, and asks for an impartial judgment. It may be the best of books, yet by no means be the book of God. Yet how can it be simply the book of man? Even its apparent contradictions, when closely examined, reveal a deeper law of harmony, like the lines of the Doric column once thought to be vertical and parallel, but now found to incline and converge, so as to meet if carried upward to a point above the column. The witness which the Word contains within itself is what Chalmers called the "portable evidence" of Christianity. And it has this grand advantage: if within the Word, it may be found there by the diligent seeker. They say the shell sings of the sea; you may easily test it put it to your ear and listen. Does the Bible speak of its own divine origin? Then you have only to put it to your ear and hear; shut out other voices the clamors of prejudice and pride, willful unbelief and waywardness of heart and you shall hear the music of the celestials. And so we ought to "search the Scriptures," as did the noble people of Berea, with readiness of mind to find their hidden testimony; and therefore many of them believed! But it must be search, and not the careless, cursory glance which unveils and reveals nothing. Remember the famous jewel in the green vaults at Dresden; the egg with its silver white, its golden yolk, within the yolk a precious gem. The best is farthest within, always, and he whose hand touches only the shell finds not the treasures that lay hidden from the common, careless eye, as in "drusic" cavities.
Let us learn of the bee. See him alight on the flower and linger there, thrusting his trunk down into the heart of the bloom, where the sweet juices lie in a flask fairer than alabaster. Honest, earnest, studious searching of the Scriptures, lingering on the heavenly blossoms, the patient and prayerful penetration which touches the heart of the Word of God, is our great need. He who sucks the honey needs no other proof that the flower-cup holds the nectar! He who has stored the symmetrical cells of memory and heart with the treasures of God’s truth, and has found full satisfaction and delight in it, needs no other proof. He exclaims:
"How sweet is thy Word unto my taste! Yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!"