SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY 41 



speaks to a certain order of minds. In each case 

 there is a truth, which is colored by, or rather is the 

 product of, the man's idiosyncrasy. In science we 

 demand a perfectly colorless, transparent medium ; 

 the personality of the man must be kept out of the 

 work, but in poetry and in general literature the 

 personality of the man is the chief factor. The 

 same is true of the great religious teachers ; they 

 give us themselves. They communicate to us, in a 

 measure, their own exalted spirituality. The Paul- 

 ine theology, or the theology which has been de- 

 duced from the teachings of Paul, may not be true 

 as a proposition in Euclid is true, but the sentiment 

 which animated Paul, his religious fervor, his he- 

 roic devotion to a worthy cause, were true, were 

 real, and this is stimulating and helpful. Shall we 

 make meat and drink of sacred things ? Shall we 

 value the Bible only for its literal, outward truth ? 

 Convince me that the historical part of the Bible is 

 not true, that it is a mere tissue of myths and super- 

 S'titions, that none of those things fell out as there 

 recorded ; and yet the vital, essential truth of the 

 Bible is untouched. Its morals, its ethics, its poe- 

 try, are forever true. Its cosmology may be entirely 

 unscientific, probably is so, but its power over the 

 human heart and soul remains. Indeed, the Bible 

 is the great deep of the religious sentiment, the 

 primordial ocean. All other expressions of this 

 sentiment are shallow and tame compared with the 

 briny deep of the Hebrew Scriptures. What storms 

 of conscience sweep over it ; what upreaching, what 



