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EEV. G. F. WHIUBORNE, M.A.^ F.G.S., ON 



2. y^^s actual, if not apparent, agreement vnth scientific fact. 



We have, then, to accept the earliest chapters of Genesis as 

 definite statements of fact as understandable at the age in which 

 they were written ; and we must, therefore, examine how far 

 they can be interpreted in agreement with the facts of nature. 

 Yet though interesting, it is quite needless that their harmony 

 should be found. Two mathematical results, reached by 

 different processes, may be identical, and yet not be comparable 

 in terms. But any forcing of them into apparent agreement 

 is to be deprecated most strongly ; any confusing of their 

 mutual details is not only unscientific, but misleading. 

 Science must make its own way from its premises to its 

 conclusions. Any attempt to build it up with theses from 

 revelation is fairly certain to result in a congeries of misunder- 

 standings of both, and is likely to produce much the same 

 effect as an equally mixed French and German translation of 

 a Greek author. But yet the fact of their ultimate harmony 

 will rise up behind their respective vistas, as the grand dim 

 shadows of the same eternal hills rise up behind two parallel 

 landscapes. Scripture was certainly never intended to teach 

 science, but yet more science may be contained in it than we 

 know. Its simplest words may reach profounder depths of 

 knowledge, than the most elaborate explorations of philosophers 

 have fathomed. If God indeed inspired the Bible, it most 

 certainly comes from One who knows. It is risky, to say the 

 least, to charge it with ignorance or impute to it inaccuracy. 

 Its accounts may be given in plain unscientific language, 

 suited for the minds of those who knew but the barest surface 

 of nature, and were ignorant of modern philosophy, and still 

 they may be based upon a far more scientific cycle of truth 

 than is ours even yet. A learned father may write to his little 

 child in very simple language ; but the child would be foolish 

 indeed, if it concluded that, because its father's language was 

 simple, therefore he did not know as much as it did itself ; 

 and if, as it grew older, it still judged its father's learning by 

 its first interpretation of its father's old letter, it} would only be 

 more foolish still. Even so it may be with the Bible. Its 

 language may be unscientific to our sense, and yet may mean 

 truths above our research. Most remarkable is the fact that 

 it has fitted in, age after age, with the increasing knowledge of 

 mankind ; and that tlie most recent science does not yet seem 

 sufficient fully to measure the meaning of its description of 

 creation. 



