SCIENCE AND THE BOOK 28l 



absurd as it would be to reconcile a statement of 

 twentieth century theology with eighteenth century 

 science. Each century must restate its truths in 

 terms of its own time. The truths may be at bottom 

 the same through many centuries but to be clearly in- 

 telligible in any century they must be couched in the 

 terminology of the age. 



It seems to me if we are to understand, in con- 

 formity with the thought of the age, any particular 

 book in the Bible, there are three steps through which 

 we must pass. We must first ask ourselves the kind 

 of people to whom the book was originally written. 

 We must know their habits of life and of thought. 

 Until this is clear in our minds the book can have 

 little significance. Having built up as nearly as may 

 be the life and thought of the time, we must next 

 decide what is the inherent truth taught to the people 

 of that time by the book under consideration. Much 

 that is written must be simply the setting in which 

 alone that truth could reach them. This extraneous 

 detail gives vigor and color to the message but is 

 not the message itself. The last step and the hardest 

 one to take, the one that to some minds seems almost 

 irreverent, is to decide the form that message must 

 take to-day to convey to our minds the same truth 

 which the original message conveyed to the people of 

 its time. In so far as we succeed in taking these 



