DANVILLE REVIEW.

No. III.

SEPTEMBER, 1864.

ART. I.-Conflicts of Revelation and Science-The Science of the Bible Phenomenal.

WHETHER the last battle, which the friends of Revelation will wage in its defense, will be fought mainly on the fields of Science, can not now be certainly known. Error, in order to deceive, always associates with truth. It hopes to escape detection by being found in good company. Science and the Word must necessarily be the principal theaters of conflict. They are the chief sources of truth, moral and physical; and while the intense anxieties of the human heart in reference to the remote future find relief in one, any advance in material interests is sought in the other. Those who cultivate exclusively either department, obtain imperfect views of the other; false deductions are made from scanty premises; discrepancies and contradictions arise; and great truths, which are really harmonious, are set sharply at variance. Any sneering by scientific men against the Bible, or by theologians against Science, is unseemly, and can alarm only the thoughtless. The more important and extended the relations of any truth may be, the more likely is the human mind to mingle error with it. It is the vast fathomless ocean that rocks under the rough handling of the tempest; pools and puddles remain quiet. The terrible blows which have been struck at Revelation and Science, and the fierceness of the recoil, but show the amazing reserved force inherent in both. The truth in either can not be set in array against the other. False interpretations of both may clash; true ones never. It is not designed in the present article to attempt a reconciliation of the apparent discrepancies, which may have arisen in the progress of Science between it and

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Revelation. Every year removes some difficulties, but introduces others; and such probably will be the case while our knowledge of Science and Moral Truth remains imperfect. We regret the discrepancies, inasmuch as they indicate our ignorance; we rejoice in them as showing that the subjects between which they arise originated in the Divine Mind, and therefore extend beyond the reach of human thought. If the Bible be true, and Science be true-and both are true if there be a God, and if there be none, the existence of both is the most inconceivable of all things-if they be true, then there is some mode of viewing their relations which will satisfy any reasonable mind. The statements in the Bible, involving scientific facts and allusions, must be in accordance with some law that commends itself to sound reason. The harmony of God's truths are not always to go begging for credence. They shall yet sweep the field of thought of every obstruction; and sweetly command, by their beauty and glory, the loving confidence of every soul of man. And surely we are not debarred from getting glimpses of this glorious vision now.

In our search for the law, which controls the use of scientific language in the Bible, we shall assume, as proved in a preceding article, that the Word of God is not a text book on Natural Science; that it is not intended to explain its facts and phenomena; that its references to Science are incidental and subordinate to its one great purpose-the restoration, through a mediator, of fallen man to the image of God, and to communion with him.

The true position which, it is believed, the Bible holds in its relations to Science, may be presented under two heads:

1st. Its scientific language is phenomenal. It enters into no details, and no explanations of the facts or laws of any Science, but states them as they would appear to an observer.

2d. This mode of statement is not merely admissible, but, under the circumstances, is the only possible mode; and is eminently fit and proper, and in entire harmony with the design of the Bible.

There are two aspects in which almost every scientific occurrence may be contemplated, and consequently two modes of stating such occurrence. 1st. It may be stated phenomenally, that is, just as it would appear to any one who saw the occur

rence, and without any reference to the causes concerned in its production. 2d. By going back of the mere appearance and stating the law or the causes of the occurrence. In some cases,

the appearance and the law are the same, and of course but one statement can then be made.

And here with our

The sun rises in the east, passes across the heavens, and sets in the west. This is the phenomenal aspect; as the thing appears to us. But by a process of reasoning and an effort of the imagination, we resolve this appearance into a higher law, i. e., the rotation of the earth on its axis. present knowledge the explanation ends. A light from a pool of water flashes on our eyes: that is the appearance. We examine and find that it comes from the window of a neighboring house, and falling upon the water is reflected from it. Here is a second appearance, light from the window. A further examination, and it is found that sun light falls upon the window and is reflected from it. This is the third appearance. Now it is true that the light does come from the water and the window, but from neither in the sense of originating in them. To say that the light comes from the water expresses a part of the truth, though not the previous steps by which that part is accomplished. To refer it to the sun even, does not give the whole truth. To make the explanation complete, it would be necessary to state the nature of light, its motion, how bodies can reflect it from their surfaces, how the sun produces light, the kinds of matter of which the sun is composed: indeed, a little deeper inquiry would be necessary-what, after all, is matter, and how was it made, and who made the Maker of matter? and if He was not made, how can that exist which never was made! Explanation would not stop here. There are side issues which need elucidation quite as much as the direct ones, and are connected quite as intimately with the subject. How is light refracted by the humors of the eye; what is the precise effect produced upon the retina; what is transmitted along the optic nerve; what change takes place in the brain; how the mind becomes cognizant of that change; and how that results in what we call sight! An answer to all these queries would not exhaust the subject. Each collateral question has its own. collaterals, and these still others; all of which must be expounded in order to answer fully the first. Relations upon relations

multiply at every step; the farther the advance, the more remote seems the end. And truly so; for that which is boundless lies before us. We are getting entangled among the infinite lines along which God works.

That the scientific language of the Bible is phenomenal, will be admitted by most. The complaint is, that it states scientific facts as they appear, and therefore does not state the truth.

Joshua spoke phenomenally when he said, "Sun, stand thou still on Gibeon, and thou moon over the Valley of Ajalon." And the fulfillment is expressed in the same manner. "So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day.' Whatever may have been the mode by which this miracle was performed-whether by stopping the rotation of the earth; or by some change in the optical properties of the atmosphere; or by hanging out another light in the heavens as the sun departed; or by some mode inconceivable to us-the language is still phenomenal and describes the appearance.

Any number of like cases might be cited, were it necessary, from the Bible to show the phenomenal character of its language upon scientific subjects. Let any one read the Book with reference to this point, and he will find that, right or wrong, it is wonderfully consistent in this respect. A careful analysis of either the preceding or any other like case, will show that no scientific fact can be stated without involving phenomenal language. The statement that the light comes from the water to the eye is phenomenal, and can not be divested of that aspect, except by explaining that light from the window falls upon the water, and is reflected by the latter to the eye. But the phenomenal still lurks in the proposition; it has only been removed one step farther back by the explanation. Another would remove it to the sun; another still would show how the light is produced on that body. And so we might proceed back, step by step, casting off the phenomenal and putting on the scientific dress. But the last step would always be phenomenal in aspect to that which preceded it in the order of causation. And we might as well expect to separate the shadow from its substance, as to divest entirely any scientific fact of its phenomenal character; unless the explanation has swept the whole field of related truths, direct and collateral, and penetrated to the profoundest

depths of the Infinite Mind. Whether, in expressing a scientific fact, the phenomenal shall be retained at the very threshold, or thrown back as far as our knowledge will permit, depends entirely upon the object the writer has in view. If that object be scientific explanation, then let him unravel the interminable web of dependence and causation till the whole subject stands, like a miracle of beauty, before the mind. Still the phenomenal will linger around the outskirts of his field of thought, and amid the thousand avenues radiating from it, which his investigations have opened up. But if his object be merely to make known the event-such, for example, as the miracle of Joshuagood taste and common sense would force him to describe it as it would appear to any beholder. Any attempt to unfold the laws which control the event, would be out of place in such a narrative. Especially so, since the attempt could progress but a few steps along a pathway without end; and the same condition of things, the same necessity for explanation, would exist at the end of that progress as at the beginning; and the same clamor would be raised there, either now or in the future, by other minds. At the same time, the Author of the work would be exposed to the suspicion that he had attempted what he was unable to carry out.

The idea has somehow taken strong hold of many good minds, that it is improper for the Bible to use phenomenal language, though not objectionable in other works. And tender Christian hearts are often shocked and their faith perplexed by intimations from grave philosophers that the Bible is rather loose, to say the least, in its assertions when it says, "The sun stood still in the midst of heaven;" for the sun has no motion the stopping of which could prolong the day. The same objection is urged against the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis. The third verse asserts the creation of light on the first day, the sixteenth that of the sun on the fourth day. These passages are not quoted for the purpose of explaining them. The principles of this article will, it is believed, apply to them and all other like cases.

To charge that the Bible utters falsehood when it speaks of the sun as rising or standing still, and the earth as fixed, is mere subterfuge. The appearance of a thing-its phenomenal aspect is just as truly a fact as the means which cause the fact.