[33]
British Association Address.
[34]
October, 1880, p. 587.
[35]
We can of course follow the sort of mental development which is traceable when we consider the origin of our own sagacious and faithful dogs in the wild prairie dog: but this development is always in contact with the mind of man, and is, as it were, the result of man's action, as man's development in mind and soul is the result of God's action.
[36]
July, 1885, p. 211, in the course of the article to which I have already alluded.
[37]
The plural of excellence appears to mark something superior in the spirit of man over that of the animals. Also compare Job xxxiii. 4, "The breath of the Almighty hath given me life," with Isa. xlii. 5 and Zech. xii. 1.
[38]
Though not in the plural of excellence. See Gen. vi 17, vii. 22, &c.
[39]
Gen. i. 20, margin of A.V.
[40]
1 Thess. v. 23.
[41]
Matt. x. 28.
[42]
The well-known argument of St. Paul regarding the resurrection in 1 Cor. xv. (ver. 45, &c.) is well worthy of consideration in this connection. He deals with man asone whole; nothing is said about a man being (or having) a spirit separate from his soul and his body, and that spirit being given a higher body than it had upon earth; but of the whole man, soulandbody, being raised and changed into a man, also one whole, with a more perfect body—a body more highly developed in the ascending scale of perfection. I do not forget the passage where the same Apostle (2 Cor. v. 6) speaks of being in the body, and absent from the Lord; and of being "clothed upon;" but this does not in any way detract from the importance of the treatment of the subject in the First Epistle.
[43]
This remark does not, of course, in any way touch the question whether the spiritual part of a man is conscious in the interval between death and resurrection, or whether it can be made sensible in any way whatever to living persons.
[44]
The poetic sense, the perception of the beautiful, &c.
[45]
See the "Descent of Man," vol. i. p. 68 (original edition). But it is right to state that the subject is not treated in any way whatever so as to argue that the religious belief is a fancy, or development of fancy, with no God and no facts about God behind it.
[46]
It is not necessary to my immediate argument, and therefore I do not press it into the text (though I should be sorry to seem to forget it for a moment), to urge that St. Paul draws a clear distinction between the intellectual faculties and the higher spiritual ones, when he assures us that the clearest intellect alone cannot assimilate the truths of religion. For the spiritual faculties have been in man grievously deadened and distorted (to say the least of it), so that his intellectual faculties, bright and highly developed as they may be, will always prove insufficient for the highest life in the absence of the "grace of God." It is exactly analogous to the case of a man whom we might suppose to have his sense of sight, touch, &c., distorted, and he himself unable to correct them by aid of the senses of others. However acutely he might exercise his reason, he would be continually wrong in his conclusions. See 1 Cor. ii., the whole, but specially vers. 14, 15.
[47]
"Descent of Man," vol. i. p, 70.
[48]
The attempt (already alluded to) to separate moral and spiritual, to imagine something that is ethical, apart from the religious idea, has lent some strength to these ideas of the moral sense; but in fact, the moral sense isinseparablyconnected with the idea of God, and His approval and disapproval. The idea of God may be obscured and lost, but conscience is the surviving trace of it; the circumference that accounts for the broken arc.
FURTHER DIFFICULTIES REGARDING THE HISTORY OF MAN.
There are, however, some other matters connected with the history of man on the globe, unconnected with psychological development, but which demand notice, as making the argument against an undesigned, unaided development of man a cumulative one. It is urged that whatever may be thought of the connection of man with the animal creation, at any rate the received Christian belief regarding the origin of man—especially his late appearance on the scene—is contrary to known facts, and that we have to mount up to a vast geologic antiquity to account for what is known from exhumed remains in caves and lake dwellings, and the like.
Now no one pretends that the history of man is free from doubt and difficulty, but the doubt and difficulty are not confined to the "orthodox." For the inferences to be drawn from the exhumed remains are equally doubtful whatever views be adopted.
I shall not go into great length on this subject, partly because some recent popular tracts of Canon Rawlinson, Mr. R.S. Pattison, and others, have already made the ordinary reader familiar with the main outlines of the subject; and still more because, be the views of archaeologists what they may, it is impossible for any rational person to contend either that they can be reduced to anything like unity among themselves, or that they lead to any conclusion favourable to the belief in the self-caused and undesigned evolution of man.
It may be regarded as known, that at the dawn of history, mankind was passing through what may be called a Bronze age, in which weapons of bronze were used before tools of iron were invented. But this age was preceded by one in which even bronze was unknown. Stone implements, and some of bone and horn, were alone used. It is also well ascertained that there were twowidely dividedstone ages. The latter, distinguished by the polishing of the stones, is described as theneolithic; the former, in which flint and other hard stone fragments were merely chipped or flaked to an edge, is called thepalaeolithic.
It is hardly contended that the neolithic age could have been more than four or five thousand years ago. There is always the greatest difficulty in fixing any dates because from the nature of the case written records are absent, and the stages of growth in the history of peoples overlap so.
We know that sharp flakes of stone were still used for knives in the time of Moses and Joshua. We are not out of the stone age yet, as regards some portions of the globe; and it is quite possible that parts of the earth, not so very remote, may have been still in the midst of a stone age when Assyria, Chaldaea, and Egypt were comparatively highly civilized.
It is also fairly certain that between the neolithic or smooth-stone age, and the palaeolithic, certain important geological changes took place, though those changes were not such as to have demanded any very great length of time for their accomplishment.
The palaeolithic stone implements are found in river gravels and clays, along the higher levels of our own Thames Valley, that of the Somme in France, and in other places. They are also found at the bottom of various natural caverns.
No human bones have been found as yet with the implements, but the bones of large numbers of animals have. And it seems certain that the men who made the implements were contemporaries of the animals, because in the later part of the age, at any rate, they drew or scratched likenesses of the animals on bone. Among these representations are figures of themammothan extinct form well known to the reader by description and museum specimens of remains.
The animals contemporary with these primeval men were the mammoth, species of rhinoceros and hippopotamus, the "sabre-toothed" lion, the cave-bear, the reindeer, besides oxen, horses, and other still surviving forms.
In his address to the British Association in 1881 Sir John Lubbock called attention to the fact that these animals appear to indicate both a hot and a cold climate, and he referred to the fact (known to astronomers) that the earth passes through periods of slow change in the eccentricity of its orbit, and in the obliquity of the ecliptic. The result of the latter condition is, to produce periods of about 21,000 years each, during one-half of which the Northern hemisphere will be hotter, and in the other the Southern. At present we are in the former phase.
But the obliquity of the ecliptic does not act alone; the eccentricity of the orbit produces another effect, namely, that when it is at a minimum the difference between the temperatures of the two hemispheres is small, and as the eccentricity increases, so does the difference. At the present time the eccentricity is represented by the fraction .016. But about 300,000 years ago the eccentricity would have been as great as .26 to .57. The result, it is explained, would have been not a uniform heat or cold, but extremes of both; there would probably have been short but very hot summers, and long and intensely cold winters.
This, Sir John Lubbock thought, might account for the co-existence of both hot and arctic species, like the hippopotamus and rhinoceros on the one hand, and the musk-ox and the reindeer on the other.
But such considerations really help us little. In the first place, it is only an assumption that the fossil hippopotamuswasan animal of a hot climate—it does not in any way follow from the fact that the now existing species is such; nor if we make the assumption, does it explain how, if the hot summer sufficed for the tropical hippopotamus, it managed to survive the long and cold winters which suited the arctic species.
Moreover, no such calculations can really be made with accuracy: we do not know what other astronomical facts may have to be taken into consideration, nor can we say when such "periods" as those which are so graphically described, began or ended.
In this very instance, we know that the mammoth only became extinct in comparatively recent times, since specimens have been found in Siberia, with the hair, skin, and even flesh, entirely preserved. Granted that the intense cold of the Siberian ice effected this, it is impossible to admit more than a limited time for the preservation—not hundreds of thousands of years. Professor Boyd Dawkins is surely right in stating that the calculations of astronomy afford us no certain aid at present in this inquiry.
As regards the geological indications of age, the best authority seems to point to the first appearance of man in the post-glacial times: that is to say, that the gravels in which the palaeolithic implements are found were deposited by the action of fresh water after the great glacial period, when, at any rate, Northern Europe, a great part of Russia, all Scandinavia, and part of North America were covered with icefields, the great glaciers of which left their mark in the numerous scoopings out of ravines and lake beds and in the raising of banks and mounds, the deposit of boulders, and the striation of rocksin situ, which so many districts exhibit.
The few instances in which attempts have been made, in Italy or elsewhere, to argue for a pliocene man (i.e. in the uppermost group of the tertiary) have ended in failure, at least in the minds of most naturalists competent to judge.
One of the most typical instances of the position of the implement age has been discovered by Fraas at Shüssenried in Suabia; here the remains of tools and the bones of animals (probably killed for food) were found in holes made in the glacialdébris.
But here, again, it is impossible to say when this glacial age terminated, and whether man might not have been living in other more favoured parts while it was wholly or partially continuing.
In Scandinavia no palaeolithic stone implements have been found, from which it may be inferred that the glacial period continued there during the ages when palaeolithic man hunted and dwelt in caves in the other countries where his remains occur.
The best authorities do not suppose that the menoriginatedin the localities where the tools are found; and there is so little known about the geology of Central Asia (for example) that it is impossible to say whether tribes may not have wandered from some other places not affected by the glaciation we have spoken of.
Again, the gravels and brick earths containing the tools are just of the kind which defy attempts to say how long it took to deposit and arrange them.
It may be taken as certain, that after the one age ceased and the first men appeared, the beds in which their relics occur have been raised violently, and again depressed and subjected to great flushes and floods of water. The caves have been upheaved, and the gravels are found chiefly along the valleys of our present rivers, but at a much higher level, showing that there was both a higher level of the soil itself and a much greater volume of water.
The Straits of Dover were formed during this period.
But none of these changes required a very long time; and if we can trace back the later stone age, which shows remains of pottery and other proofs of greater civilization, to the dawn of the historic period not more than 4000 or 5000 years ago, there is nothing in the nature of the changes which, as we have stated, intervened between the palaeolithic and neolithic periods, that need have occupied more than a thousand or two of years. Upheavals of strata and disruptions may be the work of but a short time, or they may be more gradual. And as to the effect of water, that depends on its volume and velocity; no certain rule can be given. Our own direct experience shows that very great changes may take place in a few hundred years.
"The estuaries," remarks Mr. Pattison,[49]"around our south-eastern coast, which have been filled up in historical times, some within the last seven hundred years to a height of thirty feet from their sea-level, by the gradual accumulation of soil, now look like solid earth in no way differing from the far older land adjoining. The harbours out of which our Plantagenet kings sailed are now firm, well-timbered land. The sea-channel through which the Romans sailed on their course to the Thames, at Thanet, is now a puny fresh-water ditch, with banks apparently as old as the hills. In Bede's days, in the ninth century, it was a sea-channel three furlongs wide."
Thus we are in complete uncertainty as to the date of the palaeolithic man, or as to the time necessary to effect the changes in the surface of the earth which intervened between it and the later stone ages. But there is nothing which conflicts with the possibility that the whole may have occurred within some 8,000 years.
For the supposition of Mons. Gabriel Mortillet that man has existed for 230,000 years, there is neither evidence nor probability. His theory is derived from an assumption that the geologic changes alluded to occupied an immense time; and the further assumption (if possible still more unwarranted) that the old race which used the chipped stone tools remained stationary for a very long period, and very gradually improved its tools and ultimately passed into the neolithic stage when the art of pottery became known, however rudely.
But, in point of fact, we are not required by our belief in Scripture to find any date for the origin of man, at least not within any moderate limits (not extending to scores of thousands of years). The Bible was not intended to enable us to construct a complete science of geology or anthropology, and the utmost that can be got out of the text is that a date can besuggested(not proved) for one particular family (that of Adam) by counting up the generations alluded to in Holy Writ before the time of Abraham. But these are manifestly recorded in a brief and epitomized form; nor do all the versions agree. We may well believe that a watchful Providence has taken care of the record of inspiration, but we know it has been done by human and ordinary agency. The Bible is God's gift to his Church, and the Church has been made in all ages the keeper of it. Now in the matter of early dates and numbers, an unanimous version has not been kept. According to the construction adopted in the Septuagint, the creation of Adam would go back 7,517 years, while the Vulgate gives 6,067 years. Dr. Hale's computation makes 7,294 years, and the Ussherian 5,967;[50]the Samaritan version is, I believe, further different from either.
As it is, the facts show nothing inconsistent with an approximation to these several periods.
As to any absolute date for the appearance of man as a species, no calculation is possible, because of a certain doubt, which no one can pretend to resolve, as to whether the Scriptures do assert the creation ofallmankind at any one period. If, owing to more positive discoveries in the future compelling us to put further back the date of man's first appearance upon earth, we have to suppose a beginning before the time of Adam, we are reminded that there is an allusion in the sixth chapter of the book called Genesis to "the sons of God" and the "daughters of men." Now this passage cannot conceivably refer to angels; nor can we ignore its existence, however doubtful we may feel as to its meaning.[51]
It can hardly be denied that such a text opens out thepossibilityof an earlier race than that of Adam; in that case the creation of Adam would be detailed as the creation of the direct progenitor of Noah, whose three sons still give names (in ethnological language) to the main great races of the earth, with whom exclusively the Bible history is concerned, and especially as the direct progenitor of that race of whom came the Israelites, and in due time the promised seed—the Messiah. I do not say thisisso, nor even that I accept the view for my own part; I only allude to the possibility, without ignoring any of the difficulties—none of which, however, are insuperable—which gather round it.
It is certainly a very remarkable fact that all about this region in which the Semitic race originated, traditions of Creation somewhat resembling the account in Genesis, the institution of a week of seven days, and a Sabbath or day of rest from labour, existed from very early times; and with these traditions, a belief in distinct races, one of which owned a special connection with, or relation to, the Creator. Here I may appeal to the work of Mr. George Smith and his discoveries of tablets from the ancient libraries of Assyria. Originally, the country to which I have alluded consisted of Assyria in the centre and Babylonia to the south; while to the east of Assyria was a country partly plain and partly hill, which formed the "plain of Shinar" and the hills beyond occupied by Accadian tribes, from whose chief city, Ur, Abraham, the forefather of the Jews, emigrated. The Assyrian documents are copies of Babylonian originals, but the Babylonian kingdom itself was a Semitic one founded on the ruins of an earlier population, the inhabitants of the plain of Shinar and the mountains beyond. Some time between 3000 and 2000 B.C. the Semitic conquerors of Babylonia took possession of the plains, and some time later conquered also the Accadian mountaineers. The Babylonians possessed and translated the old Accadian records: the Assyrian tablets are mostly, but not all, copies, again, of the Babylonian transcripts. The celebrated "Creation tablets," which contain an account closely corresponding to Genesis, are among those which were not copied from Accadian originals; and they do not date further back than the reign of Assur-bani-pal, the Sardanapalus of the Greeks; who reigned in the seventh century B.C. They may therefore be derived from the Bible, not the Bible from them. It would seem from some earlier (Accadian) tablets, that a different account of the Creation existed among them. But though it is doubtful how far the Accadians had preserved this account, or at least had others along with it,they had a seven days weekanda Sabbath. All this points tooneoriginal tradition, which specified days of creation and a Sabbath, though it got altered and distorted, so that the true account was preserved as one among many local variations. This goes to prove the immense antiquity of the story, which is not affected by the fact that the actual inscription of it which we at present have, dates only about 670 B.C. The point here, however, interesting in the legends, is that they contained the idea of a special connection of one particular race with the Creator, and of other races, or of one other race, besides.
As far as the possibility of bringing forward the history of mankind as any aid to the theory of Evolution is concerned, I might have very well let the subject alone, or even noticed it more briefly than I have done. For, in truth, there is noevidencewhatsoever, and all that the denier of creation can resort to is a supposed analogy and a probability that the peculiarities of man could be accounted for in this way or in that. But the main purpose of my brief allusion is to introduce the fact that, as far as any evidence to the contrary goes, we have an absolutely sudden appearance of man on the scene, and no kind of transitional form. Not only so, but there is no trace of any gradual development of man when he did appear. There was the first palaeolithic man; then a considerable geologic perturbation of the earth's surface, resulting in the upheaval of the cliffs in which the caves of remains occur, and in the alteration of the gravel beds in which the human remains are found; and then the neolithic age, with its evidently greater civilization (as evidenced by pottery, &c.) connected with early and traditional, but still with recent, history; but no trace of any development of one race into the other.
The absence of all progressive change is forcibly indicated by the measurements of ancient skulls, which, though not found along with the flint tools, have been found elsewhere. It has been fully shown that they differ in no respect from the skulls of men at the present day; while the skulls of the apes most nearly anthropoid, or allied to the human form, remain as widely separated in brain-capacity as ever.[52]
Thus the fact remains, that no intermediate form between the ape and the lowest man has been discovered, and that there is nothing like any progressive development in the races of man. These facts, taken together with what has been brought forward in the last chapter, show how completely the theory of the descent of man breaks down; how utterly unproved and untenable is the idea that he should have been evolved by natural causes and by slow steps from any lower form of animal life.
[49]
"Age and Origin of Man"—Present-Day Tract Series.
[50]
I take these figures from Mr. R.S. Pattison.
[51]
The text which speaks of God making "of one blood all nations for to dwell on the face of the earth," would naturally apply to the races existing when the speaker uttered the words: it would be as unreasonable to press such a text into the service ofanytheory of the creation of man, as it was absurd for the Inquisition to suppose that the Psalmist, when asserting that God had made the "round world so fast that it could not be moved," was contradicting the fact of the earth's revolution round the sun.
[52]
The gorilla has a brain size of 30.51 cubic inches; the chimpanzee and ourang-outang (in the males) from 25.45 to 27.34 inches. According to Dr. J. Barnard Davis the average of the largest class of European skulls is 111.99, that of the Australian 99.35 cubic inches.
CONCLUDING REMARKS.
It will naturally be asked, "If there is all this objection to some parts of the theory of Evolution, or to that theory in an extreme or absolute form, how is it that it has been so eagerly accepted in the ranks of scientific men?"
The answer is, in the first place, because the theory of Evolution is to a great extent true. When men speak of controversy with the Evolutionist and so forth, they of course mean such as insist on carrying the doctrine to a total and even virulent denial of any Divine control at all. And it must, I think, be admitted that much of the theological opposition offered to the doctrine was aimed atthisaspect of it. At first, men zealous for what they believed to be Divine truth, did not discriminate; they saw that the then new idea of evolution was, in many branches of its application, still very poorly proved, and they conceived that it could not be accepted apart from a total denial of religion. We have grown wiser in the course of time: misconceptions have been swept away; and everybody may be content with the assurance that there is no necessary connection even, far less any antagonism, between evolution and the Christian faith at all. We may admit all that is known of the one without denying the other. Where the controversy has to be maintained is, that some will insist (like Professor Häckel) in carrying evolution beyond what evidence will warrant; and not only so, but will insist on polemically putting down all religion on the strength of their improved theories. If "Evolutionists" complain of the treatment they have received at the hands of "Theologians," they will at least, in fairness, admit that there has been some misconception, some error on both sides. What we maintain is, that evolution (i.e., here, as always, unlimited, uncontrolled evolution) still fails to account for many facts in nature; that we are still far from holding anything like a complete scheme in our hands; there may belimitsto the wide circle of progressive changes, to the results of development, of which we are ignorant; and there is, above all, in that most important of all questions—the descent of man—an absolute want of proof of animaldescent(i.e., in any sense which includes the "soul" or spiritual faculties of man). Hence that evolution in no way clashes with an intelligent Christian belief. In saying this, I would carefully avoid undervaluing the services which the evolution theory has rendered, and is rendering, to science. Even in its first form as a mere hypothesis, it was an eminently suggestive one; there was from the first quite truth enough in it to make it fruitful, and many working hypotheses have been immensely useful in science, which have in the end been very largely modified. Before Darwin's wonderfully accurate mind and marvellous skill in collecting and making use of facts, turned the current of natural science into this new channel, men seemed to be without an aim for their naturalist's work. Thesavant, for example, procured an animal evidently of the cat tribe, and another species like a polecat. He knew as a fact that the feline teeth had a certain structure, and that the dental formula of the viverrine animals is different. Here, then, he could distinguish and perhaps name the species; but what more was to be done? All natural history as a study seemed to end in classifying and giving long names to plants and animals. The Evolution theory at once gave it a new object. Why is the dental formula of theviverrinaedifferent? What purpose has the long spur in the flower ofAngraecum, or the marvellous bucket ofCoryanthes, the flytrap ofDionaea, the pitcher ofNepenthes? What is the cause, what is the purpose, what is the plan in the scheme of nature, of these structures? Under the stimulus of such questions naturalists woke up to new views of classification, to new experiments, inquiries, and to research for facts and the explanation of facts, in all quarters of the globe. No wonder that science rose, under such an impulse, as a butterfly from its chrysalis. But some will not be satisfied with any scheme the parts of which are separated, or which admits of anything unknown or unexplainable. They want to unite all into one grand and simple whole, which glorifies their own intelligence, and does not force them to humble patience and waiting for more light. And then the fatal enmity of the human heart—which is a plain fact, an undeniable tendency—delights to get rid of the idea of God's Sovereignty, the humbling sense that everything is at His absolute disposal, and nothing could be but as He wills it. It seems so satisfactory to eliminate all external mysterious power, to make the whole "totus teres atque rotundus"—having started the great machine of beingsomehow, to see it all expand and unroll of itself and advance to the end.
Imagination leaps the chasms, minimizes the difficulties, passes from the possible to the certain, from the "may have been" to the "must have been" and to "it was so," and, fascinated with thecompletenessof its scheme, commences to denounce and revile as ignorant and unscientific all that would, calmly appeal to evidence, and confess ignorance, or at least a suspended judgment, in any stage where the evidence is negative or incomplete.
It has been well observed that "men are so constituted that completeness gives a special kind of satisfaction of its own, and a habit of specially regarding the general uniformity of nature begets a desire to assume its absolute and universal uniformity."
Thereisa great mystery underlying life and the plan in which the animal form, the organs of sight, hearing, and the rest, run through the whole creation: and, given a mystery, there is always ample room for speculation. Taking firm hold of the facts of development and variation, the extreme evolutionist is carried away with the idea of having the same principle throughout: he is impatient of any line or any check; he is therefore prepared to ignore all difficulties, to hope against hope for the discovery of to him necessary—but, alas, non-existent—intermediate forms, till at last he comes to deny, not only his God, but his own soul, as a spiritual and supra-physical entity.[53]
Such extremes are no part of true science, and have neither helped the progress of knowledge, nor advanced the condition of mankind. But, on the other hand, let us hear no more of a sweeping condemnation of the theory of Evolution as a whole; let us beware of any insistence on, or assumption of, the supposed fact that God created separately—ready-made and complete—all known animal forms, bringing them up from the ground, like the armed men in the Greek legend, from the dragon's teeth.
We have no more right to dogmatize and assume a scheme of creation from a popular and long-accepted interpretation of the Bible, than the evolutionist has to ignore the palpable evidences of Divine guidance and design, and construct a theory or organic being which ignores both.
[53]
Those who want a specimen of the way in which extreme evolutionists willromance(it can be called nothing else) will do well to read Dr. Häckel's "History of Creation," only they must be on their guard at every step. The author constantly states as facts (or, perhaps, with an impatient "must have been") the existence of purely hypothetical forms, of which there isno kindof evidence. To such ends does the love of completeness lead!
THE GENESIS NARRATIVE—ITS IMPORTANCE.
We have now completed the first portion of our inquiry: there remains the second, which, to a large class, at any rate, will appear of not less importance. For the Scriptures, which they have been taught to trust, contain a brief but direct and positive statement regarding Creation, as well as numerous other less direct allusions to the subject, all (as far as I know) in unquestioned harmony with the first.
Is the account in the Book of Genesis true? It is necessary to answer this question, because, even if a general belief in an Almighty Author and Designer of all things is shown to be reasonable, still the Scripture ought surely to support the belief; and it would be strange if, when we came to test it on this subject, we found its professed explanations would not stand being confronted with the facts.
No one will, I think, deny that the question is important. Writers of the "anti-theological" school still continue to insist on the falsity of the Mosaic narrative, as if the error was not yet sufficiently slain, and was important enough to be attacked again and again. And theological writers, down to the most modern, continue to explain the text in one way or another;—besides,theyadmit the importance, under any circumstances. I do not forget that there is a school of thought, which is distinctly Christian in its profession, but does not allow the importance. It would regard the narrative as addressed to Jews only, and therefore as one which does not concern us. If that was all, it would not be needful for me to discuss the position. But it has been held, not only that the narrative does not concern us, butalsothat it is certainly inaccurate.
This view I cannot adopt: it seems not quite fair to ourselves, and not quite fair to the Jews. Let me explain what I mean. If we have nothing to do with the narrative, let us abstainequallyfrom defending itorpronouncing it wrong—that is for ourselves. As to the Jewish Church, a little more must be said. Let us admit, at any rate for argument's sake, that the separation between the Jewish formal and ceremonial religion and Christianity is as wide as can be wished. Nor would I undervalue the importance of insisting on pure Christianity, as distinct from Judaism. And, further, let us (without any question as to ultimate objects) regard the narrative as primarily addressed to Jews, and let us admit that it may have been unimportant, for the purpose of the first steps in Divine knowledge, that any account should be given of Creation beyond the primary fact that all idolatrous cosmogonies were false, and that the Unseen God of Israel alone made the heavens and the earth "in the beginning." Why should the Jews have received that truth through the medium of a story of which the whole framework was false, and nothing but the moral true? The framework, moreover, is one so plainlyprofessing to be fact, that it was certain to be received as such by a simple people. It seems to me that there is something very suspicious, something repugnant to notions of truth and honest dealing, in the possible communication of underlying Divine truth through the medium of stories, which are not stories on the face of them, but profess and pretend to be statements of fact and authoritatively made.
But, further, it cannot be denied that, whatever allowance may have to be made under the early Jewish dispensation for the ideas and weaknesses of a semi-barbarous people, whatever "winking" there may have been "at times of ignorance," the main object was, by a gradual revelation,[54]by a system of typical ordinances and ceremonies, to lead up to the full spiritual light of the Christian dispensation. Everything written, said, or done, was a step—however small an one—always tending in the one direction, according to the usual law of Evolution. The Christian believer may then look back to the early stages as imperfect foreshadowings and dim illustrations of the whole truth; but he would, I should think, on any ordinary principles, be shocked to find truth developed out of positive error. And should the error have been discovered, as it now is[55](in the view of these I am contending against), this discovery might have arrested the further development of Divine truth altogether. If Moses, or whoever wrote the Book of Genesis—we will not cavil at that—was allowed to compose his own fancies or beliefs on the subject of Creation,and to state them as Divine fact(no matter that the reader at the time was not able to find out the error), would not grave suspicion attach to whatever else he put forward? Who could tell that, on any other subject, the plainest and most direct statement of fact was not equally a fancy, only embodying or enshrining (under the guise of its errors) some real Divine facts? If Genesis i. is unreliable, we have a case of a writer going out of his way to add to certain truths, which might easily have been stated by themselves, a number of positive declarations,as of Divine authority, regarding facts, which are not facts.
The great truths that God is really the Maker and Author of all things, and that man has a spiritual being, and so forth, surelygain nothingfrom being conveyed to the world in the folds of a fable. And when it is not in a confessed fable, but a fable put forth as fact—"God said," "God created," "it was so"—not only is there no gain, but our sense of fitness and of truth receive a shock. A parable is always discernible as a parable, a vision as a vision. When our Lord, for example, tells us of the ten virgins, we do not suppose Him to be revealing the actual existence of ten such maidens, wise and foolish. We know that He is reading a lesson of watchfulness. But looking at the Genesis narrative, who could suppose it to be a parable? If sober, unmistakable statement of fact is possible, we surely have it here, in intention, at least.
The plan of teaching truth in an envelope of error isper sedifficult to conceive. But how much worse is it when we consider—what criterion does mankind possess for disinterring and distinguishing the elements of truth? If in religion we had only to do (as some would perhaps contend) with obvious enforcements of common morality and kindness, there might be a possibility of getting over the difficulty, because man would possess some kind of criterion whereby to distinguish what was fictitious, by the simple process of considering whether any given statement bore on morals or not. Such a test would not indeed go very far, because the human race is by no means agreed on all moral questions; nor does it always find it easy to say what is, and what is not, directly or indirectly connected with morals. But, in fact, the scope of religion cannot be so confined: and then the difficulty returns; for a revelation that tells us anything of the nature of God and His method of government, of the nature of our own being and of a future state, must necessarily go beyond our own ethical knowledge and powers of judging, or it would not be a revelation. Supposing that the revelation regarding such vital subjects is occasionally conveyed through the medium of erroneous statements, where in any given case would be the certainty as to what was Divine truth, and what not so?
This argument applies equally to another school of thinkers, who do not care to tell us what the narrative in itself means: who believe that God did not do what He is said to have done in Genesis, and yet who hold that the narrative is in a sense inspired, and that we may learn from it the great facts that God (and none other) originated all things—that man has a spiritual element in his nature, and that woman is equal in nature, but subordinate in position, to man, and so forth. Not only is enlightened judgment, even, inadequate to pronounce with certainty on how much is true; but the strange feeling still remains, if God designed to teach us these truths only, why was it not possible to enable the writer[56]to state them without the (purely gratuitous) error? The sufferance of such a strange and unnecessary mixture of error seems rather like that "putting to confusion" of the human mind, which we feel sure the Great Teacher would never willingly perpetrate.
Nor, again, can the narrative be got over by saying it is a poetic side or aspect of the facts, and not to be taken literally. If any one knows exactly what this means, and can tell us always how to translate the matter into plain language, it is to be wished that he would enlighten the world as to the process. But even if such process exists infallibly and universally, still, one would suppose, the narrative must, to begin with, be unmistakable poetry. And here, again, the narrative bears every mark of an intention to state facts, not poetic aspects of facts. Nor can we take the narrative as belonging to a familiar class in Scripture where a dream is used as a vehicle of communication. In those cases there is really no room for doubt; the visible facts themselves are obviously designed only to typify or represent some other facts.
The events stated in Genesis are not of this class. Those, therefore, who would be content with getting over the narrative without caring for its details, can, I must suspect, have hardly given adequate attention to the form and to the contents of the narrative as it stands. Not only are the statements positive, but, taking any interpretation whatever of them, they are not nearly imaginative enough to suit the purpose.
They have an obvious amount of relation to fact which has never been denied.[57]
If the narrative is purely human even (and that the school we are considering do not aver), how did the writer come to be accurate even to that extent? Take only the order of events. I admit it does not correspond with the geologic record in the way commonly asserted; yet it has a very remarkable relation to that sequence.
Now, in any case, the writer could have had no knowledge of any kindof his ownon the subject: how did he hit on this particular arrangement?[58]It is a mere matter of calculation on the well-known rules of permutation and combination to realize in how many different ways the same set of events could have been arranged; the number is very considerable.
And he could derive no assistance from any similar existing narrative. If we conclude from the Assyrian discoveries that a non-biblical but similar narrative existed, still it is certain that the principal one we as yet have is so late in date, that it is more likely to be derived from the Bible than the Bible from it. And though, on referring to the earlier tablets, we find traces of the same narrative, it is so obscured by idolatrous and false details, that the Bible writer must have had to make a virtually new departure to get his own simple narrative. A re-revelation would be required. As to all other cosmogonies, Egyptian, Indian, and Buddhistic, nothing can be more opposed in principle and in detail than they are to the severe and stately simplicity and directness of the Mosaic.
We cannot, then, account for the narrative on human grounds; nor can we suppose that any inspiring control would have given the author so much truth, and yet allowed so much error.
All this points to only one of two possible conclusions: either the narrative is not inspired at all, and is a mere misleading story, into which the name of God is introduced by the author's piety—and so really teaches us nothing, since it is not revelation;orthe narrative is, as a whole, divinely dictated, and must be truethroughout, if we can only arrive by due study at its true meaning. That part of it is, or may be, true, even on the most cursory study, is not denied; that it isalltrue will appear, I think, in the sequel.
But there is a shorter and simpler reason why the rejection of the narrative in Genesis would be a direct blow to Christian faith. The plain truth is that it can hardly be denied, by any candid student of the New Testament, that our Lord and His apostles certainly received the early chapters of Genesis as of Divine authority. This has always been perceived by the whole school of writers opposed to the Faith. They therefore continue to attack these early revelations, and rejoice to overturn them if they can, because they are aware that hardly any chapters in the Bible are more constantly alluded to and made the foundation of practical arguments by our Lord and His apostles.