407 
detected, or that it is in a plane great circle, or that there is any 
deflection on the side towards Alcyone ; least of all that it is round 
a fixed centre, and that centre Alcyone. But there is negative 
evidence the other way. If Alcyone were the physical centre its 
mass and inherent splendour should be immensely great, as com- 
pared with other stars, and of this there is no sign. The natural 
result would be a concentric glomeration of stars, growing denser 
on all sides around it ; and of this also there is no sign. But if it 
were held merely that the resulting centre of gravity of all the stars 
seen by our telescopes lay near Alcyone, of which there is no proof 
whatever, the words of the text could bear no such meaning. The 
influence of attraction would not then belong specially to that star, 
or to the other Pleiades, but must plainly be shared alike by every 
star in the whole firmament. 
14. But in the text two questions are proposed. “ Canst thou 
bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bonds of 
Orion? If central attraction is meant in one case, central repul- 
sion, its opposite, must naturally be signified in the other. But 
this is clearly impossible. The application of the double inquiry 
to the opening of all nature in the early spring, and its binding 
with the frosts of winter, is natural and impressive, and agrees with 
the whole context . It forms a simple and sublime appeal to the 
plain tokens of Divine power and wisdom in the yearly changes of 
the seasons. Any application of the words to the physicaf and 
mechanical relations of the whole stellar universe is quite foreign 
from the manifest design of the whole passage. The alleged agree- 
ment is that of a very improbable guess in science with a perfectly 
untenable interpretation of a Scriptural text. 
] 5. These two fictitious defences once set aside, the concession it- 
self remains to be examined. Is the Bible utterly indifferent to the 
duty of expressing itself with scientific accuracy and truth ? The 
assertion, even if it were true in substance, is plainly inexact in 
phrase. What is really meant is neither that the human writers 
neglected a rule wholly beyond their unaided powers to fulfil, nor 
™at the Spirit of God has been negligent of a duty He might have 
fulfilled. It is that no such duty exists. What is really affirmed is 
that it is lawful, wise, and expedient that God’s own messages of 
moral and spiritual truth should be given to mankind in a vehicle 
of human nairatives, deeply tinged with errors and misstatements, 
and contradictions of genuine science. The Holy Spirit is held 
to have kept the writers from going wrong on all moral questions, 
but not from any amount of mistaken assertion as to physical changes 
and the facts of human history. . This notion is specially applied 
to the record of creation in Genesis, and to all the allusions of the 
Bible to the physical structure of the universe. 
