SELECTED BY REV. J. H. VINCENT, D.D.

[October 7.]
“TENDENCIES TO ERROR.”

By Rev. WILLIAM FRASER, LL.D.

Many have lost their early faith in the Bible and are following its guidance with faltering footstep. Between them and hitherto accepted truths the sciences have been placing apparently insurmountable obstacles. The trustful simplicity with which they once read the sacred record has almost perished. Inferences by the man of science, conflicting with the interpretations of scripture by the theologian, have rudely shaken their most cherished convictions. They are not infidels, they are not skeptics, for doubt is distasteful to them, they long for more definite expositions and a firmer faith.

Such, possibly, may be some of you. In the midst of such discussions as are at present in progress, perplexity is not unnatural. Your most anxiously sustained investigations have hitherto only multiplied difficulties, and a sense of responsibility alone constrains you to linger over conclusions from which your judgment recoils. This hesitancy of belief may be at the outset disheartening; yet it may be inseparable from that clearness of insight and that force of character which, in the end, commonly create the stablest convictions, and evoke adequate proof to shield them. To shun or to denounce you because you can not acquiesce in what we believe is inconsistent, not only with the lessons of philosophy, but with his example to “bear witness to the truth.”

What is your duty, with the natural sciences on the one hand, appealing so largely to your reason, and the scriptures on the other hand, appealing so constantly to your faith? Obviously, to depreciate neither, but to welcome both the sciences and the scriptures, to ascertain their harmony, to note their differences, and to accept all the treasures of truth which they may bring. Indifference is inexcusable as is excessive zeal, and apathy as antagonism.

The Bible, free to us as are the fields of science, challenges the severest scrutiny. It is the boldest of books, and demands the application of every test. As it is the most comprehensive history in the world, and gives amplest scope for research; as its earliest records are the oldest in existence, and its latest prophecies shed light far into the future; as it touches depths and reaches heights which no other book can approach; as it brings into closest connection the visible and invisible, natural law and supernatural force, the condition of man and the character of God, it is exposed to assaults which no other book can bear.

Systematic and persistent study is required at your hand, that you may estimate aright not only the facts and arguments brought against the Bible, but those also which are adduced in its favor. The task may be arduous, but this price is not too great for the settlement of questions so momentous; and if the solution of some of them may have to be for a season postponed, yours will be the satisfaction which the conscientious improvement of every opportunity invariably fosters.

Different lines of investigation may be profitably followed, but we may suggest the following as exhaustive, or nearly exhaustive, of the most prominent questions which modern research has raised.

As the Bible is confessedly related to the natural sciences, archÆology, history, and modern civilization, let it be placed successively in the midst of their facts, and let us see to what extent its statements can bear their light.

There are many questions which none of us can honestly avoid; and while some may remain unsettled, the unbiased review of those solutions which have been already offered, and which have been generally accepted, will be found to confirm scripture instead of confuting it.

1. As to science. Have astronomy and geology given evidence for or against the eternity of the visible universe? Has biology determined the origin of life? Whence it is? Have comparative anatomy and physiology, psychology and ethics, established more than one origin for the human race? Are the incidental allusions in scripture contradicted or confirmed in natural science?

2. As to archÆology. Can the Bible confront prehistoric revelations? Antiquity is pouring over the oldest records, increasing light. Ruins, monuments, inscriptions, parchments, have been emitting their wondrous testimonies, parallel with scripture histories. Assyria, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, Rome, in their histories, revolutions, and domestic episodes, have all been interwoven with the statements of scripture as with those of no other book. To what purpose has historic criticism dealt with the sacred page? Is the Bible yielding or is it growing brighter in the crucible of archÆology?

3. As to modern history and civilization. By its claim to uplift and bless the human race, the Bible is separated from all other books. It proposes to revolutionize man’s moral history here, and to prepare him for a future whose course it in part delineates. Has it failed, or is it failing? Has it been enfeebled by the lapse of ages? Has it become effete amid changes which have given intellect new instruments and reason new spheres? Has it lost its former hold of the human mind, and is it sinking amid the tumult of bitterly conflicting opinions? Has ever tribe been found which it could not raise and enlighten? Or has ever civilization outshone, in any land, its intellectual and moral splendor?

4. As to the supernatural. If the Bible is the book which it professes to be, and which we hold it is, the ordinary and the extraordinary, the natural and the supernatural, must be associated in its character and history. What is the warrant which men of science adduce for repudiating the supernatural while they accept the natural? And by what reason does the Christian apologist attempt to preserve their connection? Is there no evidence around us in the contrasts of barbarism and civilization, as well as in the histories of nations, in their relation to prophecy? And are there no facts in the strangely revolutionized lives of thousands in the Christian church, which proclaim the singular moral force of the word of God?

[October 14.]

Assuming that you are willing to follow such a course of study as we have sketched, either to remove doubts which may be lingering in your own mind, or to aid some brother in his struggle to win the repose which you have gained, we shall, at the outset, offer some suggestions as to the spirit and the method by which your work should be characterized. It is of much importance to know, what is, and what is not, within our reach.

1. Do not assume the possibility, in the present state of our knowledge, of demonstrating a perfect agreement between science and scripture, or rather between the inferences of the philosopher and the interpretations of the theologian. Much remains to be ascertained before that result can be realized. The natural sciences are confessedly incomplete; some of them are only in their infancy, and can teach us little. Many years may pass before they can be brought into perfect accord with the Bible. As the facts of natural science have not been all ascertained and classified, as its laws have not been all recognized, and as the inferences of to-day may be modified by the discoveries of to-morrow, it is absurd to be demanding immediate evidence of a perfect agreement between science and scripture. Apparent contradictions are, at the present stage unavoidable. There must first be an exact and exhaustive examination of all those points at which the scriptures and the sciences touch each other; for so long as a single fact or a single law remains unknown, some important or essential truth, intimately related to the Bible, may be concealed. While the natural sciences continue incomplete, natural theology must necessarily have an imperfect foundation. As confessedly dependent on what is incomplete, natural theology can have neither the comprehensiveness nor the definiteness which characterizes supernatural theology, as dependent on what is now complete and unvarying. We can not force the legitimate yet somewhat incoherent teachings of the one book—the works of God—of which but a few leaves have been separated, scanned and paged, into perfect harmony with the teachings of the other book, whose revelation of truth has been finished, accredited, and closed.

2. Wait patiently, while you work persistently, for the solution of difficulties which may be continuing to press upon you. The experience of the past is an encouragement for the future. The sciences have again and again become their own interpreter, and rejected erroneous inferences. Many examples might be given, but one or two may in the meantime suffice. Human skeletons were found in what seemed old limestone, on the northeast coast of the mainland of Guadaloupe; and after bold attacks on the Bible, which were met by some very weak and irregular defenses, it was ascertained that the whole was a mistake, that the limestone was of very recent formation, that the skeletons were of well-known Indian tribes, and agitation ceased. A similar commotion was raised when the supposed imprints of human feet on limestone had been figured and described in the American Journal of Science; and Christians met strange infidel hypotheses by feeble assertions, until Dr. Dale Owen proved the imprints to have been sculptured by an Indian tribe. Thereafter, for a season, the scientific inquirer and the theological student prosecuted their respective investigations in peace. There are important lessons for us in these, and in many similar facts. Christian apologists have often egregiously erred, not only in hastily accepting statements as to supposed facts, but in admitting the validity of the reasoning which has been eagerly founded on them, and in making a fruitless attempt to twist scripture into harmony with what science itself has subsequently disowned. Facts ill observed, and afterward misstated, have drawn many of our best and most candid students into unnecessary collision with biblical critics; and, after much heat in controversy, and the waste on both sides of much intellectual energy, the obstacle lying between them has unexpectedly vanished in the fuller light of science. The evil to be deplored is, that after the errors have disappeared their influence remains. The imprint often lingers after the counterfeit die has been broken.

3. There is a constant tendency on the part of discoverers to invest new facts with a fictitious interest, and those who are hostile to the Bible eagerly parade them for the discomfiture of Christians. Every fact is to be welcomed, but it is to be treasured up only that it may be adjusted to other facts, and become in part the foundation of a new truth. Isolated and unexplained facts have been too often unceremoniously dragged in to give testimony against some scripture statement, and have too easily been held sufficient to push aside those accumulated evidences to its truth, which history, or science, or both, had indisputably established. It is not, indeed, surprising that the faith of many young men has failed, when they have observed the too ready acquiescence of prominent Christian writers in theories which necessitate the abandonment of some of the impregnable fortresses which have been raised by exact scholarship around those portions of scripture which had longest been exposed to the fiercest assaults. Were this method common, no permanent foundation could be laid, and progress in any science would be impossible. Is it not absurd to be displacing cornerstones, and disowning, at random, first principles? No system of philosophy, no science, not even mathematical, the exactest, and in one sense the most permanent of all the sciences, could have any weight or make the least progress if subjected to such changes in both its principles and their applications, as have marked the history of Bible assaults, concessions and defenses. When facts, which are utterly inexplicable are presented, we should retain the fact in science and also the relative statement in scripture, assured that in due time the solution will come.

[October 21.]

4. Neither accept nor offer apologies for the Bible. It has, of late, become common on the part of those who are alarmed by the temporary triumphs which scientific investigation has given to those who are avowedly hostile to the Bible, to demand that its propositions be altogether disassociated from both science and philosophy, on the plea that the Bible was not given to teach either the one or the other. The proposal is plausible, but it is really unnecessary, for although not given to teach physical science, the Bible can not contradict either its facts or its legitimate inferences. The word of God can not be regarded as by any possibility contradicting the just lessons of his works. Like every other book, the Bible must bear all the light that can fall on its pages; and it must not only stand the tests of criticism and history, but vindicate all its claims as the “more sure word of prophecy.” Otherwise, appeals for leniency are profitless. True, in its highest connections, the Bible is unapproachable by other books; it is easily distinguishable from them all; yet in its human relations it must submit to all the ordinary appliances of scholarship. No apologies can justify a single error in either its science or its history, and its propositions are obviously inadmissable if they contradict human reason; they may be above, but they can not be opposed to it.

5. Akin to an easy escape from difficulties, through apologies for the Bible, is the tendency to glide into conclusions directly hostile. The prevailing activity of the age is so unfavorable to leisurely investigations as to facilitate the subtle advances of error. While many writers of the present day are as preËminently gifted, and as distinguished in the different departments of learning, as those of any preceding age; and while their reasonings and their conclusions are borne by the daily and the serial press to every man’s door, multitudes think and decide by substitute. They want leisure, and trust to others. Rapidity of locomotion, the chief physical feature of our time, betokens also its intellectual tendencies. Men read cursorily and decide rapidly. The daily newspaper is making book-study rarer than hitherto. It is felt in ten thousand instances to be distasteful or difficult. The subtle influence of the daily newspaper is telling on our thoughtfulness. We really seem to be approaching the fulfillment of Lamartine’s prediction, “Before this century shall have run out, journalism will be the whole press, the whole of human thought. Thought will not have had time to ripen, to accommodate itself into the form of a book. The book will arrive too late; the only book possible soon, will be a newspaper.”

As one result of this process, truth and error are often imperceptibly mingled. So swift is the transition from one fact and inference to another, that truth and error, like different colors blent into one by rapid motion, become so much alike, that few can separate them. Thus with every advance of truth, error is wafted forward. The seeds of future tares and wheat are being profusely scattered. It can not be denied, that while to almost every man’s door are daily wafted accurate records of passing history, of the discoveries of science, of the triumphs of art, and of the generalizations of philosophy, the same messengers no less sedulously exhibit, now faintly and now in the strongest light, every difficulty connected with the Bible, both real and imaginary, the boldest objections of historic criticism, the theories of speculative philosophy, the apparent contradictions of science and scripture, and the saddening conflicts of professing Christians. The constant diffusion of such influences does tell in the long run, not only on less active minds, but on the most energetic, and it renders easier of acceptance every erroneous conclusion.

But this incessant activity is a symptom of health. It augurs good. Rightly directed, it may strengthen character while it develops mental power, and gives a more exquisite appreciation of the just and true. But remember that everything depends on this rightness of direction; and to secure this, unfailing caution is required. The wind and tide which, rightly used, would hasten the voyager to his harbor, may, if unheeded, strand him on an unexpected shore; and those subtle forces, and those under-currents, which should have aided in guiding us to a satisfying intellectual and moral repose, may, through the thoughtlessness or the indolence that at the outset disregarded a slight divergence from the truth, almost but not altogether imperceptible, destroy our happiness through the shipwreck and the ultimate abandonment of our Christian faith.

6. Another common tendency in the wrong direction claims your attention. It manifests itself in repugnance to controversy or discussion in every form. Many shrink from it as unseemly, and seek escape in either solitude or study. While peace is in itself desirable, it is not always attainable. You cannot escape conflict by letting go the Bible; nor can you traverse any fields of science without entanglement in the intellectual struggles of disputants whose reasonings have sometimes but little of the calmness of philosophy. Nor is this to be regretted. The repose of meditation is not so bracing as the discipline of occasional contest for the truth.

[October 28.]

There are other advantages. The attrition of discussion often reveals and beautifies truths which would otherwise have remained unrecognized. Apathy or silence may shelter error without preserving truth. Intellectual indolence, bad for the world, is still worse for the Church. The highest life is demanded by the Bible, and, therefore, also the greatest activity. From intellectual warfare, the sciences and the scriptures have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. On Christian or skeptic, on prophet true or false, the Bible never enforces silence. It seals no thinker’s lip. “The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.” In the field of thought, nothing save the chaff perishes. Lost truths spring up again; and, beneath their spreading branches, vitiated reasoning, unsound criticism, and erroneous conclusions, ultimately decay as briers beneath the spreading oak.

There are those also who deplore discussion only because it raises questions hostile to the scriptures, and alarms the weak. This anxiety, though laudable, is fruitless. Vital questions are already discussed on all hands, and in every variety of aspect. There are disadvantages, but they are generally inseparable from the progress of truth.

It will be admitted on both sides, that while the extension of exact knowledge contracts the sphere of superstition, it enlarges at the same time the sphere of skepticism. Superstition may be displaced without Christianity becoming its substitute; there may be a high and an attractive civilization, based on science and its applications, which, in acknowledging the intellectual and moral supremacy of the Bible, and nothing more, may for a season destroy credulity, only to give fuller scope to no-belief, and to evoke ultimately an opposition to the Bible hitherto repressed or unknown. For such results we must be prepared; they are collateral, not essential or direct. They are, in fact, the price which we pay for our intellectual freedom. We are neither to falter nor hesitate because the increasing light, which is dissipating ignorance and extending the boundaries of truth, is at the same time indirectly opening to error a wider field for the distribution of her forces, revealing new weapons for her armory, and enabling her to seize and for a season to retain, positions hitherto unknown and unassailed. In the history of the physical sciences, and of archÆological discovery, error has often rushed to the battlements of truth, and, seizing some detached or imaginary facts, has wielded them against the Bible, until the sciences have themselves expelled her, and repudiated her reasoning. Such agitation is not to be deplored; it conducts to stability, it evokes more good than evil, and not unfrequently has it happened that the superstition which long benumbed the Church, and the infidelity which aroused her, have yielded to the unexpected sway of some Bible truth, when a more definite meaning has been given to some natural law or Providential dispensation.

Those misunderstand the character of the Bible who suppose its safety lies in keeping it as far as possible from the rigorous investigations and the exact conclusions of science or philosophy. Such a method is indispensable. To pursue truth in one department, implies, or should imply, not only a love of truth in every department, but also a resolute purpose to discover and dislodge every error. Which of the sciences, as preserved from controversy, is entitled to cast the first stone at the others, or their students? “Philosophy and literature,” says Lord Kinloch, in an admirable work, “while professing to pursue truth in the composure of unruffled seclusion, and to be desirous of having it elicited by the healthy excitement of friendly debate, will protest against the dishonor of soiling their hands, or disarranging their robes in the turmoil of heated controversy; and least of all will they consent to be defiled with the mire or exposed to the perils of religious strife. This plea is false in fact, as it is futile in philosophy. It is in fact false; for literary and philosophical controversies have neither been few in number nor wanting in a keen and rancorous spirit. And, admitting that religious contentions have been still more rancorous and embittered, it is only what might be reasonably expected, on account of the higher interests at stake. The plea is, moreover, worthless on philosophical principles; for it eviscerates the distinction between truth and error of all meaning and value. Better not to admit the distinction at all, than, having admitted it in one instance, deny it in another; or, what is worse, depreciate its significance even to thought, and that too in the most important of its applications. All argument and all effort are forever at an end, unless truth,—yea, all truth,—be precious; so precious, that in the legitimate pursuit of it we may and ought to put forth our utmost strength; and in defense of it, when found, incur the utmost hazard.”

Do not be discouraged by apparently insurmountable obstacles. The boldest assertions and the most plausible reasonings need not disturb you. Difficulties seemingly insuperable have, in the past, suddenly evanished in the light of unexpected discoveries; and every science, you may rest assured, will hereafter show strength enough and light enough to purify its own temple and be its own interpreter. The past may be held to be prophetic of future solutions; and the sciences will be found not only correcting the mistakes and the arrogance of many of their students, but rebuking the too hasty concessions of Christian apologists, and either directly or indirectly revealing, at the same time, the impressiveness and the majesty of scripture truth.