144 Evolution of Animal Life. 



basis of the most extreme view as to its infallible authority), 

 the very first step is the inquiry, what the particular Scrip- 

 ture interpreted is : Poetry, Law, Drama, Prophecy, Parable, 

 Fiction, Proverb, Quotation, Philosophy, Doctrine, Prayer, 

 History, Legend, Myth, or Allegory. They are all there ; and 

 though some of them are easily recognized, the nature of 

 others is not so clear, especially when they are mingled to- 

 gether, as is often the case. Hengstenberg, the great ortho- 

 dox interpreter of Messianic texts, declares, in his " Chris- 

 tology of the old Testament," that some of these prophecies 

 were intended to have a literal, others only a spiritual, ful- 

 fillment ; and that the way to tell them apart is very simple. 

 Those which have had a literal fulfillment were intended to 

 have it ; and those which have failed in that respect were spir- 

 itual. This leaves a third class, for the fulfillment of which 

 we must wait, before putting them under one or the other 

 head ! 



I shall not stop to criticize this method of handling 

 Scripture, more than to point out how little it leaves of real 

 authority, even in an infallible text. Applied to the first 

 chapter of Genesis, it has given us, not an inspired and ac- 

 curate scientific guide, revealed through Moses, but Hugh 

 Miller's and Professor Hitchcock's, and Professor Guyot's, 

 and Professor Tayler Lewis's, and Professor John Phin's, 

 and a hundred other explanations of Genesis, modified to 

 suit the successive advances of geology. I complained once 

 to Mr. Beecher that the clergy would not stand still in their 

 interpretations of Moses. Said I, " If you have got an au- 

 thorized revelation, why don't you give it to us ? " " My 

 boy," he replied, in a mysterious whisper, " It is all your 

 fault ! If you geologists will once tell us, finally and ab- 

 solutely, what science proves, we will give you the exact 

 meaning of Moses on the following Sunday ! " 



Now, this attempt to preserve the nominal infallibility 

 of Scripture, while substituting for it in reality the author- 

 ity of variable interpretations — as the fiction of the divine 

 right of a powerless Emperor has often been maintained by 

 Princes who did what they liked in spite of him — may be 

 a great mistake. I think it is. But what I want to say at 

 present is, that physical science is not its chief antagonist. 

 The notions of the inspiration, authority and literal infalli- 

 bility of the Bible are not attacked, as has been popularly 

 supposed, by astronomy, geology, biology and Evolution,. 



