435 
in its application. And yet I believe, in the present stage of the great 
conflict with scientific unbelief, that the step I have desired to take is one 
really of high importance. 
My friend has linked me with his argument in two opposite ways ; and 
these illustrate, I think, what an unsafe quicksand has been mistaken for 
a solid foundation. First, he quotes me by name as his authority for a so- 
called scientific fact, that many of the nebula. 1 are distant from us not less 
than sixty trillions of miles, or ten millions of the years of light. This is 
one main premise, from which he infers that the Bible pays no respect to 
scientific exactness, and is utterly indifferent to the duty of expressing 
itself with exactness on scientific themes. Now the quotation is from a 
sixpenny Avork written more than thirty years ago. The statement Avas 
taken on trust from others, and Avas then a current and usual opinion. Soon 
after I Avas led to examine it closely, in connection Avith an essay of Struve, 
and became convinced of the entire fallacy of the ground on which it Avas 
conceived to rest. I had abandoned the vieAV for thirty years, as one of 
the many mistaken guesses of science, and recent spectroscopic researches 
all tend to confirm the truth of my later vieAV. 
Much later I published a work of five hundred pages, in Avhich I gave my 
most careful and mature convictions on the true nature of the relations 
between the Bible and Modern Science. After quoting me as adequate 
authority for the truth of a scientific guess I had long ceased to believe, hoAv 
does my friend’s paper describe my ripest conclusions and teaching in this 
later Avork ? In these Avords, that it is “ a latent source of mischief, and 
spreads the very evil Ave deplore.” The danger of it is immense, and the 
mischief is already Avorking vvidely. A vieAV the reverse of mine is “ the only 
view by which Ave can be loyal to our Bible, and loyal to Science also.” It 
is “ impossible to doubt,” what I have laboured at some length to disprove, 
and do more thau doubt, and utterly disbelieve. We are bound, in all 
honesty, to admit, as the meaning of the HebreAv text, Avliat Mr. MacCaul says 
HebreAV grammar disproves, and Dr. MacCaul, a first-rate Hebraist, em- 
ployed three pages in refuting at length, namely, that all Genesis i., including 
the first and second verses, is included by the Avriter Avithin the limit of the 
six days. My friend’s inference is, that the language of Scripture “makes no 
pretensions to scientific accuracy” — a very strange euphemism for a narra- 
tive which shuts up within six natural days a series of changes Avhich really 
occupied far more than ten million years. " Again, Ave are bound, as honest 
inquirers, to concede the utter contrast between the only natural sense of the 
Mosaic record and the certain discoveries of modern science. To deny this 
as I have done, and still do Avith all my heart, is to have the mind occupied 
with self-Avilled preconceptions. Its source is a self-assumed authority, Avhich 
> 
* See preface, vol. x. 
