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sense, and the gravity and simplicity of a Divine message. Sunrise 
and sunset, and the daily circuit of the stars through the sky, are 
not blunders and falsehoods, to be excused in the common people 
on the ground of their ignorance of science, and fatal to the in- 
spiration and authority of writings that claim to be the words of 
the living God. It is the accusers who are unscientific, and not the 
popular speech which they censure, or the Bible which they would 
deprive, on such grounds, of its claim to be “the true sayings of 
God.” The first main count in the indictment, which would de- 
grade the Word of God to a merely human level, because it is said 
to espouse the Ptolemaic, and not the Copernican theory, is frivo- 
lous and vexatious. Newton rejects and disclaims it, and the 
ground of that rejection is clear and simple. If the meaning of 
words is fixed by usage, the Bible in this case merely conforms to 
the usage of all mankind. But I believe that he is quite mistaken 
when he adds the remark that they “ no less defile the purity of 
philosophical truths, who confound real quantities, that is absolute 
motions, with their vulgar measures, that is, the relative motions.” 
For absolute motions are not measured at all by the relative, but 
are the very same, increased or lessened by some unknown difference. 
All the relative places and motions of the parts or atoms of a real 
universe, however vast, may be known and compared at least in 
thought. But who can fix and anchor that universe in mere empty 
space, or bind and fasten the whole to infinite nothingness and 
negation of all being ? Relative places and motions may be, and 
have been, measured, and one actual distance of two bodies may 
serve as a measure and standard to all the rest. But the so-called 
absolute places and absolute motions have no possible point of 
departure from which the measurement can begin. They are 
merely an unknown, unmeasurable pathway from nothing to real 
being, and from real being to nothing. 
45. These remarks, if true, will clear away a mist of deep pre- 
judice which has gathered in these days around the statements of 
the Bible, and tends to obscure and impair, even among sincere 
Christians, the full sense of their Divine authority. They will 
serve to prepare the way for a further discussion of the errors, in 
detail, which have been laid to its charge, and especially in the 
Mosaic record of creation. Those who believe that Jesus is the 
Christ, the Son of God, the Word by whom all things were made, 
and in whom lie hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, 
will find it impossible to believe further that the words He quoted 
with such deep reverence, and to which he referred the Pharisees 
in order to decide a moral question of high importance, are, after 
all, full of scientific errors, and contain simply the guesses of some 
unripe Hebrew speculator, who had not learned the modesty of 
modern science, and had no scruple in offering his own fancies as 
