SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 17 



the question, Is it true ? Did all these events fall 

 out as set down in the New Testament ? Are they 

 set in their true light ? And yet who besides Pro- 

 fessor Clifford dare say that Christianity has not 

 been a tremendous power in elevating and civilizing 

 the European nations ? 



Science affirms that every child born of woman 

 since the world began belonged to the human species, 

 and had an earthly father ; theology affirms that this 

 is true of every child but one : one child, born in 

 Judea over eighteen hundred years ago, was an ex- 

 ception, was indeed very God himself. Theology 

 makes a similar claim with regard to the Bible. It 

 affirms that every book in the world was written by 

 a human being, and is therefore more or less fallible 

 and imperfect, with the exception of one — that one 

 is the Bible. This is the great exception : the 

 Bible is not the work of man, but is the word of 

 God himself uttered through man, and is therefore 

 infallible. Science simply sees in the Bible one of 

 the sacred books of the nations, — undoubtedly the 

 greatest of them all, — but still a book or a collection 

 of books embodying the history; the ideas, the re- 

 ligious wants and yearnings of a very peculiar peo- 

 ple — a people without a vestige of science, but with 

 the tie of race and the aspiration after God stronger 

 than in any other people — a people still wander- 

 ing in the wilderness, and rejected by the nations 

 to whom they gave Christianity. Science knows 

 God, too, as law, or as the force and vitality which 

 pervade and uphold all things ; it knows Jesus as a 



