Psalms 119

Psalms 119:98-100

THE BIBLE AND BEST WISDOM Psalms 119:98-100THESE words of David are not the vain boast of an inflated spirit. They do what is sometimes erroneously supposed to be impossible; they combine a conscious sufficiency with a humble spirit. You had as well charge Paul with egotism for saying, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me” (Philippians 4:13), as David for boasting his better wisdom as from the Word of the Lord. Familiarity with that Word is wisdom.We speak often of the place of the Bible in education. The Bible is more than a book with a place in education; it is the bed-rock of all education, literary, historical and scientific. If you ask what book gives charm to the literary productions of a Ruskin, versatility of thought to Shakespeare, power to the eloquence of a Webster or Philipps, or permanence to the science of a Dawson or a Kelvin or a Sayce, you will be compelled to accept this answer: “The Bible”.The man who digs into its treasures is the wisest miner, for he mines not for silver or gold, but for that infinitely more valuable and imperishable treasure—viz. wisdom.Our text suggests three great themes.THE HOLY ARE THE HIGHEST SOURCE OF WISDOM It is the highest, because the only original source.Frederick W. Farrar styles all other literatures “runnels from the unemptiable fountain of God’s Word”.God’s Word is one with God’s mind and thought. Who supposes that any man thinks so far or deep that he is not still thinking God’s thoughts after Him, and that but imperfectly? When men read good poetry, they say, “That verse, or ode, came from a man who has poetical genius!” When men study scientific treatises that are clear and logical, they say, “The author here is a scientist!” When men look into philosophy and find well-balanced wisdom, they say, “Another Socrates!” But when men read the Bible until they understand it, they exclaim with Paul, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16).“God” is the only sufficient answer to this Word. It is reported that when Columbus first saw the Orinoco River, some of his attendants said, “You have discovered an island”. Columbus looked at the broad stream a moment and then replied, “No such river as that flows from an island.

That mighty torrent drains a continent”. And when we study the stream of life flowing through these pages, we say, “That rises from another world; and from beneath the throne of God and the Lamb.”The Scriptures are also the highest, because the inerrant source of wisdom.

Mark you, “The Scriptures”, not “the Bible”. The Bible is one thing. The Scriptures are another, The Bible is what the leather or board backs cover. The Scriptures are God’s expressed thoughts. The Apocrypha used to be in the Bible. It was never in the Scripture. There may be human impositions and interpolations in the Bible yet. The critics may do us a good work by ridding the book of its excrescences.

But the Scriptures will stand, and all afforts to prove their errancy will fail, and the men who make such efforts will find themselves mere destroyers of the faith they themselves professed. There are men today who would fain take the doctrine of infallible inspiration from us, and yet have us expect the Bible to remain the light of the world, humanity’s hope. But such a view destroys the foundations, and faith will fall with it. It is related that long ago Scotland had a chain bridge, famous for its massive strength. A French engineer saw it, and returning to his native land, built a similar one, save that it was lighter, and more artistic. He left out all things of clumsy mien, and among them the middle or King bolt.

At last the bridge was opened for traffic, and the multitudes from Marly thought to cross the Seine upon it. But ere the crowd came to its middle, there was an ominous shudder in all its frame, and a moment later it crashed and carried into the drowning waves, the dead and dying.

The man who takes the inerrancy from God’s Word destroys the King-bolt from faith’s bridge, and souls perish in the waters of doubt that sweep them away. Goethe, the great German, poet and philosopher was an avowed infidel. But his natural wisdom showed him some truths that the supposedly great scholars of our time—professed followers of Christ—fail to see.He said of the Bible, “The whole drama of human life is in this book. Its eclipse would be the return of chaos, its extinction would be the epitaph of history”.Again, it can be affirmed that the Scriptures are the highest, because the inexhaustible source of wisdom. When Mr. Moody first faced a London audience, he said to the 20,000 that greeted him, “If I came here to speak concerning your great dramatist, or of the law of the wonderful Republic from which I came, I should have no hope of holding this vast audience.

Those themes would soon be exhausted and pall upon you. But I come to speak to you from the Word, and on the inexhaustible theme of Jesus1 love.

No man ever yet preached the Bible out—though many, not knowing the Bible, have preached themselves out”.No man ever yet claimed to have exhausted Bible-study, and to have learned the last lesson it had to give. Such a claim would only prove insanity. The more familiar a man is with this Word, the surer he becomes of its deeper recesses, its untouched mines of wisdom! It takes an Ingersoll, with his solitary, superficial and hasty reading of the Word, to imagine that he has compassed it all and is capable of criticising and condemning it. When the Elder Spurgeon had put in nearly eighty summers in studying it, he was found in his 84th year, reading on and on, pausing before sentences to see the flash of truths that had always before, in his hundred readings, escaped him, and to exclaim, “Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful!”“Oh, wonderful, wonderful Word of the Lord! True wisdom its pages unfold; And though we may read them a thousand times o’er They never, no never, grow old. Each line hath a treasure, Each promise a pearl, That all, if they will, may secure; And we know that when time and the world pass away God’s Word shall forever endure.” IN WISDOM COMES FROM STUDY The world denies that! “It is literature, language, science and history that makes us wise”, so the world says! David answers, “Not so.” It is a study of God’s Word! And he tells us how he did it.First, he hid that Word in his heart. That is an argument for a daily reading of Scripture, No man can study the sacred Book for fifteen minutes a day, even, without hiding some of it in his heart. He may scarcely know that he has stored it, but a sentence here will go in, and a verse there will lodge, and one day, in some time of distress, he will find comfort within him, in the abiding words of God.I remember when silver first began to be in general use, it seemed a most clumsy legal tender. I got a dollar one day, and not needing it just then, I tossed it into my cheap college trunk.

At later times, I almost unconsciously cast other pieces into the same place. I was a student and living without luxuries, and often for days without a cent.One day I needed money badly, and was blue because I didn’t have it. Going into my trunk for some garment, I came upon a silver dollar. The find excited me, and I began to dig down, through collars, ties, shirts and socks, and with every upheaval I found another silver piece until I had $8.50, a small fortune in the poor student’s eyes.The man who reads the Bible daily stores up for himself treasure above silver, and in his darkest hour, when life seems poverty-stricken, and the soul is sad, that treasure-chest of the spirit—the heart—will uncover its riches, and with God’s promises in your possession, you will rise in newborn strength to meet every demand of time. How precious is the Book Divine, By inspiration given! Bright as a lamp its doctrines shine, To guide our souls to Heaven.

O’er all the strait and narrow way, Its radiant beams are cast; A light whose never-weary ray Grows brightest at the last.

It sweetly cheers our drooping hearts, In this dark vale of tears; Life, light, and joy it still imparts, And quells our rising fears.

This lamp, through all the tedious night Of life, shall guide our way, Till we behold the clearer light Of an eternal day. David’s second method of study was meditation.“Thy Testimonies are my meditation” (Psalms 119:99). It is a peculiar fact of much of Scripture that it only yields up its sweetest secrets to the man who meditates upon it. There are some preachers who select texts weeks or months ahead of the day of sermon-delivery, so that they may meditate upon them. Excellent method! Such men commonly bring from the treasure-chest things new and old.I meet Christians who complain that they do read the Scriptures, but they don’t get much from them. Well, in all probability your reading is both casual and superficial. The man who dug but a foot beneath the Cripple Creek soil, found no silver.

The Christian who skims Scripture, and lays the Bible aside to think no more of it until reading time next morning, will perish of Spiritual poverty, despite a houseful of heavenly treasures, untouched. The great artist Wenkleman sent one of his students to the Apollo Belvedere to study that wonderful specimen of art. The student shortly returned saying, “I see no beauty in that.” Wenkleman replied, “Go again, and if need be, again and again. The beauty is there. If you study long enough you will both feel and see it.” O how I love Thy holy Law! ’Tis daily my delight; And thence my meditations draw Divine advice by night.

My waking eyes prevent the day To meditate Thy Word; My soul with longing melts away To hear the Gospel, Lord.

Thy heavenly words my heart engage, And well employ my tongue, And in my weary pilgrimage Yield me a heavenly song.

When nature sinks, and spirits droop, Thy promises of grace, Are pillars to support my hope, And there I write Thy praise. To all students of the Word, that counsel applies. The beauty is there. If you meditate upon the words of God, you will both see and feel it. “Its purity will charm you; its power will strengthen you; its tenderness will move you; its truth will enlighten you; its beauty will entrance you.” Its light will save you!But David had yet a better method of Bible study, namely, the practice of its precepts.“I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Thy Precepts” (Psalms 119:100). There is but one best way to study the Bible; that is the method of the Polytechnic School; applied science, practicing the precept, living out the truth taught. Better one precept of Christ learned by practice, than a whole Bible committed to memory only. Jesus meant that when He said, “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine”. St. Gregory reminds us that when His two disciples walked with Jesus to Emmaus, He seemed a stranger to them. But when, in the act of obeying the Word on hospitality to strangers, and Christ’s injunction on breaking bread, He revealed Himself.

It is in doing duty that the truth appears.An evangelist once said, “I know a woman who can neither read nor write. She came out of great tribulation into the Kingdom of God; her father’s door was closed against her; her mother cursed her; her brothers and sisters passed her by in silence or with a look of scorn, on the streets. All she knows of God’s Word is what she has heard in the reading in the Sanctuary. The church which she joined is a cultured one, but I believe that woman knows more about God and the deep things of God than all the rest of the members of that church combined. She has had no will for twenty years save to do God’s will, and I have never yet met a theologian, but might well come and sit at the feet of that humble woman and listen to her words about the work of the Spirit and the teachings of Jesus Christ.”She could say with David, “I understand more than the ancients, because I keep Thy precepts” (Psalms 119:100). When first I read after A.

J. Gordon, I wondered how he got his revelations of truth. They were so scriptural and so clear as compared with teachers of greater reputed learning. I know now. He kept God’s precepts, and God revealed the truth to him. Father of mercies, in Thy Word What endless glory shines! Forever by Thy Name adored For these celestial lines.

’Tis here the tree of knowledge grows, And yields a free repast; Here purer sweets than nature knows, Invite the longing taste.

’Tis here the Saviour’s welcome voice Spreads heavenly peace around, And life and everlasting joys Attend the blissful sound.

O may these heavenly pages be My ever-dear delight; And still new beauties may I see, And still increasing light. David’s last claim for the Bible is one that we make for it still. IS A KIND It is wisdom above the wiles of wicked men. David had a right to “say so. Goliath, and Saul, and a host beside them, had thought they knew enough to overthrow this lad. But he walked in the wisdom of God’s Word, and his enemies went down before his face. The number and character of a man’s enemies do not decide the danger in which he lives. It is not difficult for God to preserve David from beasts and beastly men, so long as David walks by the Word of God. I have never yet seen a man overthrown so long as he proved loyal to the Lord. Hyacinth said, “Do you know why Prussia triumphed in the field of battle with Austria?

It was not because there was lack of bravery on either side! It was not by superiority of numbers or weapons! It was because every Prussian soldier had a Bible with him. I have asserted, and I assert again, that that which constitutes the strength of the Protestant nation is when the people come home from work, they enter the family circle, and sitting by their hearths, read the Bible.”The nation, as well as the individual, is secure in Scripture practice. You can’t overthrow the people who walk by the Word.It transcends the wisdom of science. David said, “I have more understanding than all my teachers: for Thy Testimonies are my meditation” (Psalms 119:99).They can teach you science in Turkey, in India, and in China!

But they can’t tell you much of the Bible, and your science would be a poor exchange for a knowledge of the truth and power of God’s Word. Wendell Philipps said eloquently enough, “The answer to the Shaster is India; the answer to Confucianism is China; the answer to Mohammedanism is Turkey.

The answer to the Bible is Christian civilization of Protestant Europe and America.” My prayer for the youth of the land is that they may know the Scriptures, and see science and literature and all history in their sacred light.David was right again in declaring that Bible knowledge is better than the wisdom of age and experience.“Experience is the best teacher!” Christians can’t afford to believe that! As a rule they don’t believe it. If they did, then young men would quit our pulpits, and the aged would be called to them. One of the things that has made a profound impression upon me, in my ministry, illustrates David’s speech. It is this: Old men, men whose heads have whitened with experience and age, have characterized every congregation to which I have ministered, and all others more than this one. Among those men I have never had an enemy, never heard from a one of them an unkind criticism.

In my first pastorate I used to look at old Brother G_____ seventy-five years he had seen, and ask myself, Why is he willing to listen to the boy? How can he, who knows so much more of life come to me at the close of the sermon and affirm profit from the preaching?

At Lafayette it was always a wonder to me that M. L. P___, Deacon A. H_ and Deacon B___, those old saints of God, grand men of affairs, wonderful students of the Word, were such auditors. At Bloomington half my Deacons were past threescore, and yet how faithful to every word. In this church no auditors have been more to me of inspiration than those grand old men who so long graced its membership and have passed one by one to their graves.

Their confidence in the Bible grew; their love of it waxed; and their devotion to it deepened with the advance of age.Men are not wont to throw away the pillow of Divine promises as they approach the hour when it will be most needed; on the contrary, they treasure it increasingly. During the Civil War, after the battle of Richmond had been over for several weeks, one passing over the field of conflict came upon a dead man.

The flesh had fallen away from the fingers but the tip of the finger lay upon an open passage in the Bible and when the discoverer stooped down to see what might have been the last words upon which the dying eyes had rested, he read, “Yea, though 1 walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me”. An interest in books is an evidence of intellectual life but as old age creeps on the engaging novel and even the accurate history, will wane, while that in the Book of books, the Word of God, grows, for it is through its revelation that one gets the vision of the open gate.

Psalms 119:160

THE OF THE SACRED Psalms 119:160“THY Word is true from the beginning” (Psalms 119:160), is an expression of the Psalmist that must be explained away before one can pit science and the Sacred Scriptures against each other. Arthur Pierson thinks the Psalmist meant to say that from the first word, the Sacred Scriptures are true. The modern method of study objects to any assumption. It insists that every theme and thing shall be subjected to whatever tests are essential in the establishment of its claims. To this, intelligent believers take no exception. If the Bible will not bear investigation; if scrutiny discloses short-comings; if research disproves its assertions; if true Science discredits its clear claims, let it fall! We could forfeit it without a tear; join in digging its grave without regret, and return to the duties of life, smitten by no serious bereavement.True, it is serious business to discredit a book which has accomplished for the world what the Bible has wrought; but it would be more serious to believe a lie, or even to accept an irresponsible chart in making one’s way over the sea of life. True, the Bible “was not written to show how the heavens go”, but rather “how to go to Heaven”; it is not a text-book on “Science”, but a guide-book for “Godly living”.

And yet, when it addresses itself at all to a subject of scientific concern, it should speak the truth, if it makes the claim of inspiration! When we study the words of men, however wise they may be, we expect to come upon mistake.

When we read, and properly understand what “God hath spoken” we anticipate no such results. “Let God be true,—but every man a liar”. “He that believeth not God hath made Him a liar”. “But”, we are told, “God has two books. One we call ‘Nature’, the other ‘Revelation’; He is just as certainly the author of the former as of the latter; one is the work of His hands and the other the fruit of our lips”.What Jesus, when once He stooped down and wrote in the sand, expressed, we do not know. But can any man imagine that His writings in the sand were out of harmony with His spoken addresses? Is it possible that an all-wise God has produced in Nature and in Revelation contradictory volumes?We have no fear whatever that the Scriptures must be maintained at the expense of Science; and we are fully persuaded that true Science will never be established at the cost of Scripture. The thing to be feared is, that the dust of false reasoning (of which the air is full today) will get into the eyes of men, and make it impossible for one to read from the Sacred Page, and for another to see the meaning of the open book of Nature; and so, for either, to discern the perfect agreement between God’s Word and God’s Work.First of all, then, let us giveTHE OF THE TERMS . What is Science? Can we improve upon the Standard Dictionary’s statement—“Knowledge gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking; especially as methodically formulated and arranged in a rational system”?That definition takes you at once out of the realm of speculation. It disposes of such terms as “theory” and “hypothesis”, making them possible servants of Science, but never its synonyms. It is admitted that almost every assertion made in the name of Science a hundred years since, is now out of date; and while this clearly demonstrates our progress, it also suggests that we are still in the hypothetical and theoretical stage. No one would dispute that Sir Isaac Newton was somewhat of a scientist; nor yet that Tyndall was equally worthy the name, and yet when they take exactly opposite positions concerning the refraction of light, both may be wrong, but both cannot be right. Huxley and Darwin are names that somehow sit easily together in the same sentence, and yet these men, working in almost the same realm, are not always in agreement.

The explanation is easy—“the verification of knowledge by exact observation and correct thinking” is the highest accomplishment of which the human mind is capable, and not every man who cries “Eureka” has found it.This is not to inveigh against the sincerity of investigators, nor even to deride their conclusions, but only to call attention to the most patent fact of their experience! “Knowledge, gained and verified by exact observation and correct thinking”, will never be overthrown by mortal men, nor yet by God. God would dethrone Himself by such an endeavor!

True science will stand!What is Scripture? Paul defines “all Scripture” as that which is “God-breathed”, and the process of it is that “holy men of God spake as they were moved (or borne along) by the Holy Ghost”! Knowing himself to be of that company, Paul affirms, “We speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual”.If one runs through the Old Testament he will find God everywhere assuming the Authorship of the Sacred Scriptures. The phrases are like these, “The Lord spake unto Moses, saying”, “These are the words of the covenant, which the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Children of Israel”; “The Lord spake unto Joshua”; “The words of the commandment of the Lord” and so forth—Not scores, but hundreds of times, does God claim to be the Author of both the thought and the language of the Holy Book. David declares, “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and His Word was in my tongue” (2 Samuel 23:2).To me it is the most remarkable evidence of the skepticism of the age that because there are some difficulties in the theory of Verbal Inspiration, men are willing to throw it away, and adopt such notions as are now current, to the effect that God simply stimulated the thought, but did not determine the speech; that some parts of the Bible are literally true, and others are only allegory; that some are fact, others only fiction; that some are to be treated with credence and others with criticism; that all must come to the test of one’s “inner consciousness”, and, at that court, be either accepted or rejected.The same men who so define “Inspiration” or “Illumination” or whatever it is, would go into court tomorrow to insist upon the settlement of an estate, in which they were named as heirs, on a verbal basis. They would call the attention of attorneys and judge to what was “written”, and unless they had some unrighteous end to be conserved, they would permit no departure from the very words in which the testator expressed himself.

It is little wonder, therefore, that the New Testament writers, who may be conceded to have known what the Scriptures were, refer to the Old Testament more than eighty times, as that “which is written”. Never once did they abandon the verbal interpretation of the same.If the words of the Old Testament were “the words of God”, perhaps no believer, at least, will dispute that the New Testament stands upon the same level.

And so the Bible does not “contain the Scriptures”,—the Scriptures are the true Bible,— God’s Word, which can hardly have been given to men with less care than any intelligent, faithful father would show in framing the article that bequeathed his possessions to his children. If, in civil courts, the lightest word of the testator is the weightiest law, who will dare to treat with contempt, thought or phrase found in the Divine Will?Mark you, there is a decided difference between the plain statement of the Sacred Scriptures and some absurd opinion. It may be, that in the centuries of the past an uninstructed Christian conceived the world as having a fiat surface, the sky as a roof, and the stars as holes through the same. Kepler, who was something of a scientist, once expressed the conviction that the world was a living animal. Is that assertion to be confounded with Science? Fanciful interpretations in the one realm are just as common as in the other; and they neither prove nor disprove anything.

I do not have to harmonize the Scriptures with the absurd statements of every man who may speak in the name of Science; and I do not have to harmonize Science with the assertions of every man who may mistakenly appeal to Moses, or even to Christ. Science is God’s voice in Nature; the Scriptures are God’s voice in grace, and it does not fall to the lot of any mortal man to harmonize them; the harmony is in Him.

He cannot contradict Himself!To say the least, it is a strange procedure when a man proclaims as his theme, “The Harmony between Science and Scripture”, and then shows how that comes to pass by just quietly disposing of the latter; by saying for instance, that the first chapter of Genesis is “the best that Moses knew,—the impression of that early age, but a mistake none the less”. Is that harmony? Is is not, rather, annihilation? It may let you out of your difficulty, but you escape at the expense of inspiration; and to the unspeakable loss of the people. There used to be an eccentric preacher in Kentucky well known to the author. He did no great amount of study, and yet he commonly preached with unction.

One day he found himself before an audience with no unction on hand; even thoughts refused to come. He floundered through a few ill-formed sentences, and then, squarely facing his audience, he said, “Brethren and sisters, you think I have got into the brush and can’t get out, don’t you?

Well, I’ll show you ; we’ll just look to the Lord and be dismissed”!But let it be understood that when you dismiss the claims of the Sacred Book and walk out of your difficulties, you have lost the Divine message and left the hungry multitudes unsatisfied.GENESIS IN SCIENCE AND . It will scarcely be disputed that so far as men have seen inharmony between the Sacred Scriptures and Science, the first chapter of Genesis has been made the storm center. On that account I invite your attention to this part of the Word, and dare the assertion that its careful study, instead of demonstrating the inharmony between Science and Scripture, will reveal the most undreamed of agreement in these great books of God.First of all, think of the argument from fifteen facts in order.First fact, in order—God created the heavens; second fact, “and the earth”; third—water; fourth —light; fifth—firmament; sixth—grass; seventh— herb; eighth-—-tree; ninth—appearance of heavenly bodies; tenth—fish; eleventh—moving things; twelfth—fowls; thirteenth—creeping things; fourteenth—cattle; fifteenth—man!Now, the latest science will consent to this order of creation. The heavens were certainly made first; the earth certainly made second; water certainly appeared third; light, fourth; firmament next; grass thereafter; the manifestation of sun and moon, ninth; the appearance of fish—tenth; moving things—eleventh; fowls—twelfth; creeping things —thirteenth; cattle, and so forth, fourteenth, and last—man.Other writers have called attention to the unspeakable significance of this order when considered before the law of permutation. The Standard Dictionary says, “The number of permutations of any given number of things, taken all at a time, is equal to the product of the natural numbers from one up to the number given, inclusive”.Now, if Moses only spake the science of his times, he knew practically nothing of the order of creation. Consequently he must guess at it. He must guess whether the heavens or the earth were first formed.

In his day no man imagined that the heavenly bodies were bigger than the earth, and all men supposed that they moved about it. How then does it happen that Moses, when he came to guess which was first formed, the heavens or the earth, mentioned the heavens in the primary place?

You say, “Well it was an easy accident, since there was only one other alternative”. Did you ever hear the story of the Irishman who, meeting a neighbor, said, “We have a fine baby at our house this marnin”. “What is it?” asked the interested friend. “Guiss”! “A girl”, said the neighbor. “No sir; guiss agin”! “A boy”. “Now, who’s bin tellin’ ye?” To be sure Moses had but one chance out of two on this arrangement. But he got it right!Third fact—the appearance of water. Here Moses’ task was not so easy, for it was not one in three, but one in six, according to the law of permutation. It could have been the heavens, first; water second; earth third—but that was not true. It could have been the earth first, water second and the heavens third—but that was not true.

It could have been water first, the earth second and the heavens last, but that was not true. It could have been the earth first and the heavens second and the water last, but that was not true.

In other words there are six different arrangements of these relations, 1-2-3, 1-3-2, 2-1-3, 2-3-1, 3-2-1, 3-1-2. But Moses somehow struck the right one. A good guesser! Introduce light and you make twenty-four such relations. Moses hit it again. One chance in twenty-four, but he was the lucky man.When you get the fifth, you have 120 possible orders. Strange to say Moses does not miss it!When you get to the sixth, you have 720. In other words there are 719 chances against you.

But Moses got it right!When you get to the seventh, you have 5,040. In other words 5,039 chances against him. But Moses hit it!When you get to the eighth you have 40,320. Not a glorious prospect of striking it straight, but still Moses accomplishes it!When you get to the ninth you only have one chance in 362,880.When you get to the tenth you have only one chance in 3,628,800!When you get to the eleventh, 39,916,800. When you get to the fifteenth, one chance in 1,307,674,-367,900. And yet, strange to say, in the whole arrangement, he never misses!”Go dig up Bob Ingersoll, and give the poor fellow a chance to apologize for ever having spoken of the “mistakes of Moses”.

Bob should not come alone!But this is not the end. We make bold to assert that from the beginning to the end of Genesis , 1st chapter, there is not a blunder from a scientific standpoint.

It is scientific that the heavens were created first, and the earth second. The very latest Science would tell you that the earth was “waste and void” and the “darkness” resulting from the nebulous state, “was upon the face of the deep”. For a long time Science spoke of the third verse of Genesis as certainly involving a mistake, “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light”. This, in advance of the appearance of the sun, supposed to be the only source of light, but finally La Place declared it to be a scientific certainty, that in the condensation of the originally formless chaos, there was such molecular and chemical action as must have emitted, great volumes of light. No wonder Boardman, in his “Creative Week”, says, “Why will the Academy vote Moses a blunderer for declaring that light existed before the sun appeared, and yet vote La Place a scientist for affirming precisely the same thing?”The next point of scientific attack was upon the fifth verse, “And the evening and the morning were the first day”. It was boldly asserted that Moses supposed all this change from chaos to cosmos took place in twenty-four hours.

But mark you, Moses does not refer to twenty-four hours at all! “From evening to morning” is only twelve hours. You will not have finished this chapter before it is made perfectly clear that Moses is not speaking of twenty-four hour days.

He knew the law of herbs, yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit after their kind; that these things are not accomplished in a day; and it took seasons to produce fruit, and even many years, to mature trees and make them reproductive. And yet that whole process he mentions as in the third day. Again Moses names three successive days before the sun and moon appear. Without the sun’s rays to mark off twenty-four hour day—a solar day is impossible. What is God’s Day, according to the Bible?In the second chapter, the entire creation, from start to finish, is mentioned as having occurred in a day. It could not, therefore, according to Moses, mean twenty-four hours. What is a “yom” with God? Peter tells us “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years” (2 Peter 3:8).

Moses, himself, in the ninetieth Psalm, declares that “a thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night”, and that he is speaking of this very period is evident in the context, where he says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting (from Olan to Olam: or, era to era) Thou art God”.But surely Moses was mistaken in the eighth verse, “And God called the firmament Heaven”? Even Mr. Huxley slipped here, by charging Moses with believing that heaven was a solid substance, resting like a canopy over the earth. But Mr. Huxley was not a Hebrew scholar; hence his mistake. The Hebrew word translated “firmament” means “expanse”.

Can you improve it by your latest scientific expression?The ninth verse also reveals the remarkable wisdom vouchsafed to this man, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear”. There was not a man in the earth at that time that knew, or could have known, that all the seas were linked together, whereas the continents are divided.

But exploration has proven it. Dana, in his Manual of Geology, says that while the continents are separated, the seas occupy one bed. As to the order of the appearance of life, Genesis and geology are exactly together, beginning with grass, and ending with man. There is not a geological mistake in Genesis.Equally remarkable is the fact that instead of speaking of the sun and moon as giving their light from the first, Moses holds back their rays until the fourth day; at which time he does not declare they were created, for that belonged in the opening sentence, “In the beginning God created the heaven”—but they were made to “divide the day from the night”, and to “be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years”. Many scientists believe that the earth took on a certain angle of axis at this very period in its development, when it cooled to the point where the vapors condensed and fell upon it as water. And we know that without an axis-angle, determining its relation to the sun and moon, our seasons would fail, and we might experience an ice-age!Now as to whether the law of generation as set forth in Genesis, every “seed after his kind” is true, or whether the origin of species is by “natural selection”, the whole weight of discovery is with Genesis and against Darwin.

The truth of Genesis we know, from the lowest form of grass to soulful man; everything is bringing forth “after its kind”. We have seen that law executed tens of thousands of times and in millions of forms.

The creation of a new species, by natural selection, no man has ever yet seen. Why, therefore, should we imagine that there is any conflict between Scripture and Science? At every point where it is possible to institute a comparison that is reliable, an utter agreement appears. The rocks, from the lowest strata to the last laid down, confirm the facts of God’s creative week. “A glory gilds the Sacred page, Majestic like the sun, It gives a light to every age, It gives but borrows none.

The hand that gave it still supplies The gracious light and heat; His truths upon the nations rise, They rise, but never set”. Permit me to mention some other inexplicable instances of Science in Scripture. Harvey, in modern times, discovered the circulation of the blood, and declared its relation to life. Moses affirmed it three thousand years ago, “The life is in the blood”.You have heard Galileo glorified for having discovered that this part of the universe was heliocentric and not geocentric, as the ancients supposed; and Newton honorably mentioned for his great discovery of the law of gravitation. The Scriptures declared both a few thousand years before these brethren were born. Job declared of the day-spring, that it “takes hold of the ends of the earth, * * it is turned as clay to the seal” (Job 38:13-14), and as for gravitation, while scientists and churchmen alike were adopting theories of the earth’s support akin to the old maps and atlases some of us used to carry to school showing Atlas holding up the world by his huge shoulders, or akin to that which the Hindus now hold, namely, that it was a flat plane, with possible stories above and below, held up by the heads of elephants, with their tails turned out, and their feet resting on the shell of an immense tortoise, and the tortoise in turn on the coil of a snake, Job was remonstrating in these words, He “hangeth the earth upon nothing,” (Job 26:7)—the very deliverance of your latest Science!It is only in very modern times that any man imagined the atmosphere to have any weight, and we still employ the phrase, “light as air”, and yet we know that it has a weight of fifteen pounds to every square inch; and modern science could almost tell you exactly what was the awful pressure upon the face of the globe twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. This, however, was not information to the Old Testament writers!

Job, one of the most ancient of them all, says of God, that He makes a “weight for the winds”; yea, “he weigheth the waters by measure”. Galileo discovered that air has gravity; but thirty centuries before him, Job affirmed the same. It would seem, therefore, that inspiration is as accurate as experimentation.It is only within a few years that weather bureaus have had any occasion; that men imagined storms of cloud and wind, and waves of heat and cold obeyed unchangeable laws, and might, therefore, be tabulated and reported even in advance of their arrival. But Solomon understood it and wrote long since, in Ecclesiastes 1:6, “The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits”.It is only by modern discovery that men imagined that there were other sounds than those which our ears catch; but now we know that when we pass thirty-eight thousand vibrations per second, the ear cannot follow, and every heavenly body, in its motions, is making music, so that Job was not mistaken when he declared “the morning stars sang together”, nor David when he declared of Jehovah, “Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice”.Arthur Pierson, after having called attention to some of these remarkable instances of agreement, says Shakespeare was right when he wrote:“There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest, But in his motion, like an angel sings, Still choiring 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”. But a remarkable instance of Scripture anticipation of Science is the late discovery of nitrogenous enrichment of soil through annual snow and hail, showing what Job meant when he wrote thirty-five hundred years ago, “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war”? (Job 38:22-23).We candidly believe that if the men who are spending much time in seeing what can be said against the Scriptures, should assume a friendly attitude and search with a kindred diligence for its remarkable defenses, they could find them with utter ease, and would be shortly confirmed in the “faith once delivered” and be able to boast with the poet: “I paused one day beside the blacksmith’s door And listened to the anvil ring the evening’s chime. And looking in, I saw upon the floor Old hammers, worn with beating years of time.

‘How many anvils have you had’, said I, ‘To wear and batter out these hammers so?’ ‘Just one’, he answered, with a twinkling eye ‘The anvil wears the hammers out, you know’.

And so, I thought, the Anvil of God’s Word For ages skeptic blows have beat upon; Yet, though the noise of infidel was heard, The anvil is unworn—the hammers, gone! SOME POINTS WHERE IS . Not to all subjects to which Science speaks do the Scriptures address themselves. It is equally true that the Scriptures discuss many subjects with which Science has naught to do. There are points in human experience where the microscope, the scalpel, the telescope tell us nothing. They transcend all scientific investigation! And yet that problem is not more difficult than are the problems of sin, substitution and salvation.A man may easily say that Moses was mistaken when he declared how sin came into the world. But who will attempt to demonstrate it, and how? We know that sin is here. The Bible affirms that it came through an evil spirit; that man accepted his suggestion and continues to accept it, and so suffers the penalty of violated law.

Who has presented a saner explanation of sin?It is the height of folly to speak of “the Scriptures as teaching that the innocent must suffer for the sins of the guilty”, “that children are condemned because of their parents’ blunder”. It never hints such a thing, and it never did!The second commandment does not say that God is visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon their innocent children, but it does affirm that judgment falls upon “the third and fourth generation of them that hate” Him, and why shouldn’t it, unto generations of generations?Shall men hate God and escape judgment? The law, when first declared was, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die”. Is not that law righteous? The Scriptures are very careful to follow that statement with another from the pen of Ezekiel, “The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him; and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him”.It may be easy enough to get up untenable theories of sin, and assign them either to the Sacred Scriptures, or to the conservative defenders of the same, when neither have ever spoken aught to warrant such caricature.I have been in the ministry over thirty years.

My daily associations, of an intrinsic character, have been with the conservative wing of the church, and in that entire time I have never heard Jehovah described as a God who visited the sins of guilty parents upon the heads of innocent children, by any one of them. On the contrary, they have depicted Jehovah as a God of infinite love, punishing no innocent men or women; even pitying the sinner and proffering him grace in Jesus Christ.Will the man who sets himself up as a student of Science, and a preacher of the Sacred Scriptures, object; and if so, has he a better view of God to present?Again, if the God who breathed upon the waste of a darkened world, and converted its chaos into cosmos, and quickened its death into life, is willing to do the same for a man “dead in trespasses and sins”, will men object?

Cannot He of whom Milton sang“Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outstretched, Dove-like, sat’st brooding on the vast abyss, And madest it pregnant”. quicken our dead souls that they shall live again? If we cannot bind the influence of the Pleiades, shall we attempt to set limits to the work of God’s own Spirit, or demand that He bring His endeavors within the limits of natural explanation?Is it not written, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”, and are we not enjoined to “marvel not” about it, since “the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth”, and told, “so is every one that is born of the Spirit”?Just how it happens that the drunken man who staggers into a sanctuary and listens to the Gospel of the Son of God, and goes out, never to drink again, supported, in his new sobriety, by the sense of Divine love, Science may never be able to explain ; but that does not disprove what you and I have seen in the clinic of regeneration.Just how it happens that the woman who has walked in the ways of wickedness, is suddenly roused to repentance by the rehearsal of the Divine goodness, scientists may not even see, but the Son of Man rejoices and the angels are made happy by the sight of His face.You can deny the direct creation of man in the Divine image, if you like, but you will never be able to disprove it. You may deny the unity of the race, but even there the evidences are against you; you may deny the description of the fall, but sin remains unexplained. You may deny that there is any supernaturalism, and yet, as against that, we say that he who starts along the path clearly marked in Sacred Scripture will go from sin to salvation; from salvation to sanctification and from sanctification to the eternal fellowship of the Father.Years ago we went through the Hoosac Tunnel for the first time. Did you ever hear how it was constructed?

There started two companies of men to work on opposite sides of the mountain, but the survey had been so accurately made that when the men met midway, the walls of the excavations were not an inch off the line. But the man who wants to turn home to God and Heaven has more than an accurate line marked by survey; he has a well beaten road lying full before him. Others have gone over it by the thousands; yea, by the millions, and as the prodigal who trudged his way back to the farm-house from which he had been so long separated, by a well-traveled road, found his father coming forth to meet him, so shall the lost man find God if he but turn his feet to the path upon which there falls the light of this book—the Bible!