THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 

 MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1895. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



XX. FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM. 



By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D. (Yale), Ph. D. (Jena), 



FORMERLY PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION. 



AT the base of the vast structure of the older scriptural inter- 

 -a- pretation were certain ideas regarding the first five books 

 of the Old Testament. It was taken for granted that they had 

 been dictated by the Almighty to Moses about fifteen hundred 

 years before our era ; that some parts of them, indeed, had been 

 written by the corporeal finger of Jehovah ; and that all parts 

 gave not merely his thoughts but his exact phraseology. It was 

 also held, virtually by the universal Church, that while every nar- 

 rative or statement in these books is a precise statement of his- 

 torical or scientific fact, yet that the entire text contains vast hid- 

 den meanings. Such was the rule : the exceptions made by a few 

 interpreters here and there only confirmed it. Even the indiffer- 

 ence of St. Jerome to the doctrine of Mosaic authorship did not 

 prevent its ripening into a dogma. 



The book of Genesis was universally held to be an account, not 

 only divinely comprehensive but miraculously exact, of the crea- 

 tion and of the beginnings of life on the earth ; an account to 

 which all discoveries in every branch of science must, under pains 

 and penalties, be made to conform. In English-speaking lands 

 this has lasted until our own time. The most eminent living Eng- 

 lish biologist has recently told us how in every path of natural 

 science he has, at some stage in his career, come across a barrier 

 labeled " No thoroughfare. Moses." 



A favorite subject of theological eloquence was the perfection 



YOL. XLVII. 24 



