123 
assign it to the self-assumed authority of reason which proudly 
prejudges the case ; and not, as its advocates suppose, to the 
exercise of a humble and reverential faith. If faith be really 
humble, it will take the Word of God as it finds it, and he ready 
to give up the preconceptions of reason ; it will interpret the 
writing of Scripture, not as it expects the writing to speak, but 
as it does speak ; it will use reason, not to prejudge its teaching, 
hut to interpret it ; and on questions which are non-essential to 
its fundamental purpose, and where its phraseology is incon- 
sistent with the unmistakable facts of science, it will not be 
shocked or shaken, but calmly conclude that God knew best 
what He was doing, and had some good reason for permitting the 
incongruity. 
27. What, then, is the beailng of these remarks upon 
Biblical interpretation? Simply this : That as the Bible was 
not intended to teach science, the inspiration of its language 
upon questions involving science was subordinated to the single 
purpose of making moral and religious truth intelligible. 
Instead of complicating that teaching, by addressing itself to 
its readers in language Avhich could not have been well under- 
stood, it adopted the phraseology which was best suited to the 
times, and whicli served in the most direct and forcible manner 
to enforce its spiritual lessons. Take the Mosaic account of 
the Creation, for example. The great purpose of this narrative 
(which Moses probably wrote as the resume of a grand pano- 
ramic vision) was evidently to lay down a basis for the institu- 
tion of the Sabbath. It pleased God, that is to say, to appoint 
for man the sanctification of one day’s rest in seven, as a means 
by which his physical and moral welfare might be perpetually 
subserved. Hence He gave a sketch of His creative works in 
the form of six separated periods — periods described pheno- 
menally just as they appeared in the vision to Moses as 
natural days, or as intervals between six evenings and 
mornings — periods which, whether they were prolonged ages 
or not, God allowed to be portrayed under the figure of ordinary 
days, in order that the moral significance of the seventh day’s 
rest might be the more simple and obvious. In other words, 
the science of the divine cosmogony was subordinated to its 
great spiritual and religious purposes. Under these circum- 
stances, that Moses should have described what he saw in his 
vision in the ordinary language of days, and that he should 
have restated it more decisively in the fourth commandment, 
constitutes no ai’gument against his having received a true 
revelation. He expressed himself merely as the vision 
appeared to his own self-consciousness ; whereas, in reality, 
it may have pi’operly represented six great eras of ages. As 
