SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND BIBLICAL STUDY. 



27 



He no longer measures human history by untold myriads 

 of years, for the physicist steps in and forbids it. The 

 longevity of prima3val man is not now scouted as an utter 

 impossibility, thanks to the investigations of the anthropo- 

 logist. The story of the Flood is to him a matter of serious 

 study, as the debate on Prof. Prestwich's interesting paper 

 read before the Institute has shown. The student of com- 

 parative philology is prepared to detect in the simple story 

 of Babel some strauge intervention which may account for 

 what is otherwise unaccountable — the remarkable diver- 

 gence of human languages viewed in connection with the 

 unity of the race. The crossing of the Red Sea has been 

 recently discussed by this Society, and was regarded as a 

 fact, not as a fiction. I would also call attention to the 

 correspondence now going on in the pages of the Palestine 

 Exploration Quarterly on the stoppage of the Jordan when 

 Israel crossed. 



The ancient biblical law of heredity has emerged as a 

 scientific discovery. 



Parthenogenesis is a familiar topic to the naturalist, and 

 perhaps supplies an illustration of one of the most mysterious 

 facts of Christianit}^ whilst another mystery — that which 

 concerns the Triune God — may at least be symbolised by the 

 presence of several sense centres in one organism in what 

 are usually regarded as among the most primitive kinds of 

 animated life. 



4. The scientific man no longer regards his conclusions as 

 final. So many theories have been advanced and with- 

 drawn, so many that looked like solutions of difficulties 

 have proved unworthy of the task, so many that seemed to 

 account for phenomena have needed themselves to be 

 accounted for, that men of science have ceased to compare 

 their dicta to the laws of the Medes and Persians which 

 altered not. 



Ideas and speculations Avhen sufficiently tested are rightly 

 put forth as discoveries or as working hypotheses leading 

 in the direction of finality though not in themselves final. 

 This might be easily illustrated from Whewell's History of 

 the Inductive Sciences, or by modern speculations concerning 

 ether, or by the discovery of argon. 



A theory which fits all tlie facts, e.g., gravitation, may 

 fairly be propounded as a law or rule, i.e., it is a technical or 

 matliematical formula Avhich expresses the rule and measures 

 the facts, and which contains within itself the suggestion of 



