No. 1.] NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 47 



NATURE AND THE BIBLE. 



This is the title of a series of lectures delivered, last winter, 

 by Dr. Dawson, the Principal of McG-ill College, before the 

 Union Theological Seminary of New York. These lectures were 

 founded by the late Professor Morse, after the plan of the Bamp- 

 ton and Boyle lectures. The general subject of the lectureship 

 is denned to be " the relation of the Bible to the sciences." 

 Dr. Dawson has selected some of the points of contact which are 

 now most debated, and has treated them in six lectures. These 

 are printed in a handsome volume, and form a handy repertory 

 of replies to many of the current attacks upon the Christian 

 theory of the system of nature. 



At the very outset, there is claimed for the naturalist the 

 fullest freedom in pursuing the methods of his own science, 

 untrammelled by the methods of theology. Otherwise the testi- 

 mony of each to other would be valueless ; but if, in strictly 

 following his own path, the naturalist arrives at results which 

 are in accordance with statements given in Genesis, and if these 

 statements are many thousand years in advance of the knowledge 

 current at the time when the Pentateuch was committed to 

 writing, it will of course follow that Moses had sources of infor- 

 mation not accessible to ordinary historians. As to whether 

 Moses himself committed these books to writing, or as to the 

 manner in which his information was obtained, neither point is 

 necessary to be considered in the argument of these lectures. 



The lecturer points out that a complete revelation of the 

 natural sciences, in advance of the requirements of mankind, 

 could not be expected. All that can be expected is an avoid- 

 ance of those errors which were current at the time, and also, 

 when physical phenomena are recorded as facts, that the record, 

 although scanty, should not teach anything which clashes with 

 any certain results arrived at by other methods. The Mosaic 

 books commence with a cosmogony. All other religions do the 

 same. The Buddhist, the Brahmin, and the Greek all required 

 a theory of the origin of the world. Even the roving Cree of 

 our prairie provinces has a legend of the Kitchi-Manitou who 



