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trudi of chronology ; for He rose the third day, in the procurator- 
ship of 1 Bate, and on the first of the long unbroken series of 
Christian sabbaths. It is a physiological truth ; for the body laid 
m the grave was raised on the third day, before it had seen corrup- 
tion. It is connected with a truth of botany ; for that sacred 
body had been embalmed with myrrh and aloes. It is a truth of 
political history ; for crucifixion was a Roman, not a Jewish punish- 
ment, and a Jewish watch, by permission of a Roman governor 
had been set over the tomb It is connected with jurispru- 
dence and the laws of evidence ; for He 1 appeared to witnesses 
chosen before of God, who did eat and drink with Him after He 
rose from the dead/ And hence the idea of retaining the authority 
of the Bible as in any sense Divine, and making an exception for 
the parts into which there enters some scientific element, is utterly 
impracticable. The doctrines and the facts, the precepts and the 
histories, are joined inseparably by the Spirit of God himself. 
Deny the authority of the facts, and you destroy the whole revela- 
tion/' 
. . 8. The doctrine of the Fifth Essay is plain. The Bible is 
simply the work of several Jewish writers, who had neither the 
knowledge, nor the modesty, nor the strict regard to truth, of modern 
men. of science. They were harassed by no scruples, while boldly 
offering their own crude guesses as if they were certain facts, and 
messages clothed with Divine authority. But the other view is 
much harder to understand. The Bible is personified, and said to 
be indifferent to the duty of expressing itself with scientific 
accuracy and truth. Speaking generally, its language on these sub- 
jects is inaccurate and untrue. Still there are cases, here and there, 
of such consistency with the latest discoveries of science, as to indi- 
cate some higher than mere human authorship. On this ground we 
are to believe that the Spirit of God is their true author. But we are 
to concede that the Divine Spirit is usually indifferent to the duty 
of giving accurate statements on all questions in which natural 
science is involved ; and that He prefers, for some reason or other, 
to mix .moral and spiritual messages of supreme importance to man- 
kind with a series of statements at variance with the whole course 
of modern discovery, erroneous and untrue. 
9. I am surprised that any thoughtful mind can find rest or 
satisfaction in such a theory. 
The doctrine that He who inspired the Bible, while all 
future discoveries lay open to His prescient wisdom, forbore to 
reveal them supernaturally, because they lay outside the proper 
object of His message, is clear and simple. So is the further 
doctrine that whatever He has made known consists of facts and 
not fictions, is true and not false. But it is neither clear nor 
