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of this doctrine from the world. I am a criminal
because I am endeavoring to convince the mother
that her child does not deserve eternal punishment.
I stand by the graves of those who "died in their
"sins," by the tombs of the "unregenerate," over the
ashes of men who have spent their lives working for
their wives and children, and over the sacred dust of
soldiers who died in defence of flag and country,
and I say to their friends--I say to the living who
loved them, I say to the men and women for whom
they worked, I say to the children whom they edu-
cated, I say to the country for which they died:
These fathers, these mothers, these wives, these
husbands, these soldiers are not in hell.
_Question_. Mr. Talmage insists that the Bible is
scientific, and that the real scientific man sees no
contradiction between revelation and science; that,
on the contrary, they are in harmony. What is your
understanding of this matter?
_Answer_. I do not believe the Bible to be a sci-
entific book. In fact, most of the ministers now admit
that it was not written to teach any science. They
admit that the first chapter of Genesis is not geo-
logically true. They admit that Joshua knew nothing
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of science. They admit that four-footed birds did
not exist in the days of Moses. In fact, the only
way they can avoid the unscientific statements of the
Bible, is to assert that the writers simply used the
common language of their day, and used it, not with
the intention of teaching any scientific truth, but for
the purpose of teaching some moral truth. As a
matter of fact, we find that moral truths have been
taught in all parts of this world. They were taught
in India long before Moses lived; in Egypt long be-
fore Abraham was born; in China thousands of
years before the flood. They were taught by hundreds
and thousands and millions before the Garden of
Eden was planted.
It would be impossible to prove the truth of a
revelation simply because it contained moral truths.
If it taught immorality, it would be absolutely certain
that it was not a revelation from an infinitely good
being. If it taught morality, it would be no reason
for even suspecting that it had a divine origin. But
if the Bible had given us scientific truths; if the
ignorant Jews had given us the true theory of our
solar system; if from Moses we had learned the
nature of light and heat; if from Joshua we had
learned something of electricity; if the minor pro-
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phets had given us the distances to other planets;
if the orbits of the stars had been marked by the
barbarians of that day, we might have admitted that
they must have been inspired. If they had said any-
thing in advance of their day; if they had plucked
from the night of ignorance one star of truth, we
might have admitted the claim of inspiration; but
the Scriptures did not rise above their source, did
not rise above their ignorant authors--above the
people who believed in wars of extermination, in
polygamy, in concubinage, in slavery, and who taught
these things in their "sacred Scriptures."
The greatest men in the scientific world have not
been, and are not, believers in the inspiration of the
Scriptures. There has been no greater astronomer
than Laplace. There is no greater name than
Humboldt. There is no living scientist who stands
higher than Charles Darwin. All the professors in
all the religious colleges in this country rolled into
one, would not equal Charles Darwin. All the cow-
ardly apologists for the cosmogony of Moses do not
amount to as much in the world of thought as Ernst
Haeckel. There is no orthodox scientist the equal
of Tyndall or Huxley. There is not one in this
country the equal of John Fiske. I insist, that the
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foremost men to-day in the scientific world reject the
dogma of inspiration. They reject the science of the
Bible, and hold in utter contempt the astronomy of
Joshua, and the geology of Moses.
Mr. Talmage tells us "that Science is a boy and
"Revelation is a man." Of course, like the most he
says, it is substantially the other way. Revelation,
so-called, was the boy. Religion was the lullaby of
the cradle, the ghost-story told by the old woman,
Superstition. Science is the man. Science asks for
demonstration. Science impels us to investigation,
and to verify everything for ourselves. Most pro-
fessors of American colleges, if they were not afraid
of losing their places, if they did not know that
Christians were bad enough now to take the bread
from their mouths, would tell their students that the
Bible is not a scientific book.