8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"With so living a book, theology has again become living. A whole 

 cloud of problems, perplexities, anomalies, and doubts fall before it. 

 No formal indictment is drawn against older views ; difficulties are 

 not examined and answered in detail. Before the new stand-point they 

 disappear of themselves. Men who are in revolt against many creeds 

 breathe again in this larger atmosphere and believe afresh, satisfying 

 their reason and keeping their self-respect. For scientific theology no 

 more pledges itself to-day to the interpretations of the Bible of a 

 thousand years ago than does science to the interpretations of Nature 

 in the time of Pythagoras. Nature is the same to-day as in the time 

 of Pythagoras, and the Bible is the same to-day as a thousand years 

 ago. But the Pythagorean interpretation of Nature is not more im- 

 possible to the modern mind than are many ancient interpretations — 

 those of Genesis among others — to the scientific theologian. 



This is no forced attempt, observe, to evade a scientific difficulty 

 by concessions so vital as to make the loss or gain of the position of 

 no importance. This change is not the product of any destructive 

 criticism, nor is this transformed book in any sense a mutilated Bible. 

 It is the natural result of the application of ordinary critical methods 

 to documents which, sooner or later, must have submitted to the pro- 

 cess and from which they have never claimed exemption. 



But to return to Genesis. Those modern critics, believing or un- 

 believing, who have studied the Biblical books as literature — studied 

 them, for instance, as Professor Dowden has studied Shakespeare — 

 concur in pronouncing the Bible absolutely free from n.atural science. 

 They find there history, poetry, moral philosophy, theology, lives and 

 letters, mystical, devotional, and didactic pieces ; but science there is 

 none. Natural objects are, of course, repeatedly referred to, and with 

 unsurpassed sympathy and accuracy of observation ; but neither in the 

 intention of any of the innumerable authors nor in the execution of 

 their work is there any direct trace of scientific teaching. Could any 

 one with any historic imagination for a moment expect that there 

 would have been ? There was no science then. Scientific questions 

 were not even asked then. To have given men science would not only 

 have been an anachronism, but a source of mystification and confusion 

 all along the line. The almost painful silence — indeed, the absolute 

 sterility — of the Bible with regard to science is so marked as to have 

 led men to question the very beneficence of God. Why was not the 

 use of the stars explained to navigators, or chloroform to surgeons? 

 Why is a man left to die on the hill-side when the medicinal plant 

 which could save him, did he but know it, lies at his feet ? What is 

 it to early man to know how the moon was made ? What he wants to 

 know is how bread is made. How fish are to be caught, fowls snared, 

 beasts trapped and their skins tanned — these are his problems. Doubt- 

 less there are valid reasons why the Bible does not contain a techno- 

 logical dictionary and a pharmacopoeia, or anticipate the "Encyclo- 



