SCIENTIFIC EESEAECH AND BIBLICAL STUDY. 38 



iipecial attention to those sections in the Hebrew Books 

 which specially contain provincialisms. These provin- 

 cialisms in the Bible appear to me to be a mark of age and 

 of originality. They demand a far more careful examination 

 than they have hitherto obtained, and recent discoveries, 

 especially the Tell Amarna tablets, are contributing materials 

 for their comparative study. 



There are other phenomena in the Bible, such as its way of 

 putting things, its selection of topics, and its systematic 

 tracing of everything back to the First Cause, which are 

 replete not only with interest, but with philosophy. Its 

 statements concerning natural phenomena need to be inter- 

 preted with extreme accuracy, both on their positive and on 

 their negative side ; whilst the series of marvels it records 

 are to be read alongside of its theology and its central 

 teaching, and not as a collection of isolated curiosities or fables. 

 They are signs ; and the thing signified by them takes us to 

 the very heart of the Creator.* Inductive principles which 

 -are the keys to nature are applicable mutatis mutandis to the 

 Bible on all the topics now enumerated; and if these are 

 applied, there will not be any need of far-fetched and 

 ingenious " reconciliations " between the Bible and science. 



If nature must be studied as a whole, so must the Bible. 

 It is a collection of books by writers who unwittingly con- 

 tribute to a scheme the key to which is to be found in one 

 historical Personage. To discuss the books without re- 

 ference to the Personage is like anatomising a body without 

 reference to its head. We can hardly expect the scientific 

 man in the ordinary sense of the term to study the Bible 

 scientifically unless the theologian does so. Ordinary 

 versions do not always bring out the technical sense ot 

 Hebrew words and idioms, and even such a man as Professor 

 Huxley sometimes failed in his criticism of the Bible through 

 an ignorance of biblical science which was very pardonable 

 in his case. 



(6) The greatest desideratum of all is that Theism should 

 be approached with steady steps fi-om two sides, the Biblical 

 and the scientific. 



It is manifest to everyone who thinks at all that God 

 must be reached in some other way than by the telescope 

 or the microscope. The forces and processes of the ma- 

 terial universe do not afiect His nature or touch His Being. 



* See De Quincey's Essay on Miracles. 



