FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM.
I. THE OLDER INTERPRETATION.
Character of the great sacred
books of the world
General laws governing the development and influence of sacred
literature.--The law of its origin
Legends concerning the Septuagint
The law of wills and causes
The law of inerrancy
Hostility to the revision of King James's translation of the
Bible
The law of unity
Working of these laws seen in the great rabbinical schools
The law of allegorical interpretation
Philo
Judaeus
Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria
Occult significance of numbers
Origen
Hilary of Poitiers and Jerome
Augustine
Gregory the Great
Vain attempts to check the flood of allegorical interpretations
Bede.--Savonarola
Methods of modern criticism for the first time employed by
Lorenzo Valla
Erasmus
Influence of the Reformation on the belief in the infallibility
of the sacred books.--Luther and Melanchthon
Development of scholasticism in the Reformed Church
Catholic belief in the inspiration of the Vulgate
Opposition in Russia to the revision of the Slavonic Scriptures
Sir Isaac Newton as a commentator
Scriptural interpretation at the beginning of the eighteenth
century
II. BEGINNINGS OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
Theological beliefs regarding the Pentateuch
The book of Genesis
Doubt thrown on the sacred theory by Aben Ezra
By Carlstadt and Maes
Influence of the discovery that the Isidorian
Decretals were forgeries
That the writings ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite were
serious
Hobbes and La Peyrere
Spinoza
Progress of biblical criticism in France.--Richard Simon
LeClerc
Bishop Lowth
Astruc
Eichhorn's application of the "higher criticism" to biblical
research
Isenbiehl
Herder
Alexander Geddes
Opposition to the higher criticism in Germany
Hupfeld
Vatke and Reuss
Kuenen
Wellhausen
III. THE CONTINUED GROWTH OF SCIENTIFIC INTERPRETATION.
Progress of the higher criticism in Germany and Holland
Opposition to it in England
At the University of Oxford
Pusey
Bentley
Wolf
Niebuhr and Arnold
Milman
Thirlwall and Grote
The publication of Essays and Reviews, and the storm raised by
book
IV. THE CLOSING STRUGGLE.
Colenso's work on the Pentateuch
The persecution of him
Bishop Wilberforce's part in it
Dean Stanley's
Bishop Thirlwall's
Results of Colenso's work
Sanday's Bampton Lectures
Keble College and Lux
Mundi
Progress of biblical criticism among the dissenters
In France.--Renan
In the Roman Catholic Church
The encyclical letter of Pope Leo XIII
In America.--Theodore Parker
Apparent strength of the old theory of inspiration
Real strength of the new movement
V. VICTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY METHODS.
Confirmation of the conclusions of the higher criticism by
Assyriology and Egyptology
Light thrown upon Hebrew religion by the translation of the
sacred books of the East
The influence of Persian thought.--The work of the Rev. Dr. Mills
The influence of Indian thought.--Light thrown by the study of
Brahmanism and Buddhism
The work of Fathers Huc and Gabet
Discovery that Buddha himself had been canonized as a Christian
saint
Similarity between the ideas and legends of Buddhism and those of
Christianity
The application of the higher criticism to the New Testament
The English "Revised Version" of Studies on the formation of the
canon of Scripture
Recognition of the laws governing its development
Change in the spirit of the controversy over the higher criticism
VI. RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM.
Development of a scientific atmosphere during the last three
centuries
Action of modern science in reconstruction of religious truth
Change wrought by it in the conception of a sacred literature
Of the Divine Power.--Of man.---Of the world at large
Of our Bible
CHAPTER I. FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION.
I. THE VISIBLE UNIVERSE.
Among those masses of cathedral sculpture which preserve so much of
medieval theology, one frequently recurring group is noteworthy for
its presentment of a time-honoured doctrine regarding the origin of the
universe.
The Almighty, in human form, sits benignly, making the sun, moon, and
stars, and hanging them from the solid firmament which supports the
"heaven above" and overarches the "earth beneath."
The furrows of thought on the Creator's brow show that in this work he
is obliged to contrive; the knotted muscles upon his arms show that he
is obliged to toil; naturally, then, the sculptors and painters of
the medieval and early modern period frequently represented him as the
writers whose conceptions they embodied had done--as, on the seventh
day, weary after thought and toil, enjoying well-earned repose and the
plaudits of the hosts of heaven.
In these thought-fossils of the cathedrals, and in other revelations of
the same idea through sculpture, painting, glass-staining, mosaic work,
and engraving, during the Middle Ages and the two centuries following,
culminated a belief which had been developed through thousands of years,
and which has determined the world's thought until our own time.
Its beginnings lie far back in human history; we find them among the
early records of nearly all the great civilizations, and they hold a
most prominent place in the various sacred books of the world. In nearly
all of them is revealed the conception of a Creator of whom man is an
imperfect image, and who literally and directly created the visible
universe with his hands and fingers.
Among these theories, of especial interest to us are those which
controlled theological thought in Chaldea. The Assyrian inscriptions
which have been recently recovered and given to the English-speaking
peoples by Layard, George Smith, Sayce, and others, show that in the
ancient religions of Chaldea and Babylonia there was elaborated a
narrative of the creation which, in its most important features, must
have been the source of that in our own sacred books. It has now become
perfectly clear that from the same sources which inspired the accounts
of the creation of the universe among the Chaldeo-Babylonian, the
Assyrian, the Phoenician, and other ancient civilizations came the ideas
which hold so prominent a place in the sacred books of the Hebrews. In
the two accounts imperfectly fused together in Genesis, and also in
the account of which we have indications in the book of Job and in the
Proverbs, there, is presented, often with the greatest sublimity,
the same early conception of the Creator and of the creation--the
conception, so natural in the childhood of civilization, of a Creator
who is an enlarged human being working literally with his own hands,
and of a creation which is "the work of his fingers." To supplement this
view there was developed the belief in this Creator as one who, having
... "from his ample palm Launched forth the rolling planets into space."
sits on high, enthroned "upon the circle of the heavens," perpetually
controlling and directing them.
From this idea of creation was evolved in time a somewhat nobler view.
Ancient thinkers, and especially, as is now found, in Egypt, suggested
that the main agency in creation was not the hands and fingers of the
Creator, but his VOICE. Hence was mingled with the earlier, cruder
belief regarding the origin of the earth and heavenly bodies by
the Almighty the more impressive idea that "he spake and they were
made"--that they were brought into existence by his WORD.(1)
(1) Among the many mediaeval representations of the creation of the
universe, I especially recall from personal observation those sculptured
above the portals of the cathedrals of Freiburg and Upsala, the
paintings on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa, and most striking of
all, the mosaics of the Cathedral of Monreale and those in the Capella
Palatina at Palermo. Among peculiarities showing the simplicity of the
earlier conception the representation of the response of the Almighty
on the seventh day is very striking. He is shown as seated in almost the
exact attitude of the "Weary Mercury" of classic sculpture--bent, and
with a very marked expression of fatigue upon his countenance and in the
whole disposition of his body.
The Monreale mosaics are pictured in the great work of Gravina, and in
the Pisa frescoes in Didron's Iconographie, Paris, 1843, p. 598. For
an exact statement of the resemblances which have settled the question
among the most eminent scholars in favour of the derivation of the
Hebrew cosmogony from that of Assyria, see Jensen, Die Kosmologie
der Babylonier, Strassburg, 1890, pp. 304,306; also Franz Lukas, Die
Grundbegriffe in den Kosmographien der alten Volker, Leipsic, 1893,
pp. 35-46; also George Smith's Chaldean Genesis, especially the German
translation with additions by Delitzsch, Leipsic, 1876, and Schrader,
Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, Giessen, 1883, pp. 1-54,
etc. See also Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israel, vol. i, chap i,
L'antique influence babylonienne. For Egyptian views regarding creation,
and especially for the transition from the idea of creation by the hands
and fingers of the Creator to creation by his VOICE and his "word," see
Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of Civilization, pp. 145-146.
Among the early fathers of the Church this general view of creation
became fundamental; they impressed upon Christendom more and more
strongly the belief that the universe was created in a perfectly literal
sense by the hands or voice of God. Here and there sundry theologians of
larger mind attempted to give a more spiritual view regarding some parts
of the creative work, and of these were St. Gregory of Nyssa and St.
Augustine. Ready as they were to accept the literal text of Scripture,
they revolted against the conception of an actual creation of the
universe by the hands and fingers of a Supreme Being, and in this
they were followed by Bede and a few others; but the more material
conceptions prevailed, and we find these taking shape not only in the
sculptures and mosaics and stained glass of cathedrals, and in the
illuminations of missals and psalters, but later, at the close of the
Middle Ages, in the pictured Bibles and in general literature.
Into the Anglo-Saxon mind this ancient material conception of the
creation was riveted by two poets whose works appealed especially to the
deeper religious feelings. In the seventh century Caedmon paraphrased
the account given in Genesis, bringing out this material conception in
the most literal form; and a thousand years later Milton developed out
of the various statements in the Old Testament, mingled with a theology
regarding "the creative Word" which had been drawn from the New, his
description of the creation by the second person in the Trinity, than
which nothing could be more literal and material:
"He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This universe and all created things.
One foot he centred, and the other turned
Round through the vast profundity obscure,
And said, 'Thus far extend, thus far thy bounds:
This be thy just circumference, O world!'"(2)
(2) For Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and the general subject of the
development of an evolution theory among the Greeks, see the excellent
work by Dr. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, pp.33 and following; for
Caedmon, see any edition--I have used Bouterwek's, Gutersloh, 1854; for
Milton, see Paradise Lost, book vii, lines 225-231.
So much for the orthodox view of the MANNER of creation.
The next point developed in this theologic evolution had reference to
the MATTER of which the universe was made, and it was decided by an
overwhelming majority that no material substance existed before the
creation of the material universe--that "God created everything out of
nothing." Some venturesome thinkers, basing their reasoning upon the
first verses of Genesis, hinted at a different view--namely, that the
mass, "without form and void," existed before the universe; but this
doctrine was soon swept out of sight. The vast majority of the fathers
were explicit on this point. Tertullian especially was very severe
against those who took any other view than that generally accepted as
orthodox: he declared that, if there had been any pre-existing matter
out of which the world was formed, Scripture would have mentioned it;
that by not mentioning it God has given us a clear proof that there
was no such thing; and, after a manner not unknown in other theological
controversies, he threatens Hermogenes, who takes the opposite view,
with the woe which impends on all who add to or take away from the
written word.
St. Augustine, who showed signs of a belief in a pre-existence of
matter, made his peace with the prevailing belief by the simple
reasoning that, "although the world has been made of some material, that
very same material must have been made out of nothing."
In the wake of these great men the universal Church steadily followed.
The Fourth Lateran Council declared that God created everything out
of nothing; and at the present hour the vast majority of the
faithful--whether Catholic or Protestant--are taught the same doctrine;
on this point the syllabus of Pius IX and the Westminster Catechism
fully agree.(3)
(3) For Tertullian, see Tertullian against Hermogenes, chaps. xx and
xxii; for St. Augustine regarding "creation from nothing," see the De
Genesi contra Manichaeos, lib, i, cap. vi; for St. Ambrose, see the
Hexameron, lib, i, cap iv; for the decree of the Fourth Lateran Council,
and the view received in the Church to-day, see the article Creation in
Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary.
Having thus disposed of the manner and matter of creation, the next
subject taken up by theologians was the TIME required for the great
work.
Here came a difficulty. The first of the two accounts given in Genesis
extended the creative operation through six days, each of an evening
and a morning, with much explicit detail regarding the progress made in
each. But the second account spoke of "THE DAY" in which "the Lord God
made the earth and the heavens." The explicitness of the first account
and its naturalness to the minds of the great mass of early theologians
gave it at first a decided advantage; but Jewish thinkers, like Philo,
and Christian thinkers, like Origen, forming higher conceptions of
the Creator and his work, were not content with this, and by them was
launched upon the troubled sea of Christian theology the idea that the
creation was instantaneous, this idea being strengthened not only by the
second of the Genesis legends, but by the great text, "He spake, and
it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast"--or, as it appears in
the Vulgate and in most translations, "He spake, and they were made; he
commanded, and they were created."
As a result, it began to be held that the safe and proper course was to
believe literally BOTH statements; that in some mysterious manner God
created the universe in six days, and yet brought it all into existence
in a moment. In spite of the outcries of sundry great theologians,
like Ephrem Syrus, that the universe was created in exactly six days of
twenty-four hours each, this compromise was promoted by St. Athanasius
and St. Basil in the East, and by St. Augustine and St. Hilary in the
West.
Serious difficulties were found in reconciling these two views, which
to the natural mind seem absolutely contradictory; but by ingenious
manipulation of texts, by dexterous play upon phrases, and by the
abundant use of metaphysics to dissolve away facts, a reconciliation
was effected, and men came at least to believe that they believed in
a creation of the universe instantaneous and at the same time extended
through six days.(4)
(4) For Origen, see his Contra Celsum, cap xxxvi, xxxvii; also his
De Principibus, cap. v; for St. Augustine, see his De Genesi conta
Manichaeos and De Genesi ad Litteram, passim; for Athanasius, see his
Discourses against the Arians, ii, 48,49.
Some of the efforts to reconcile these two accounts were so fruitful as
to deserve especial record. The fathers, Eastern and Western, developed
out of the double account in Genesis, and the indications in the Psalms,
the Proverbs, and the book of Job, a vast mass of sacred science bearing
upon this point. As regards the whole work of creation, stress was laid
upon certain occult powers in numerals. Philo Judaeus, while believing
in an instantaneous creation, had also declared that the world was
created in six days because "of all numbers six is the most productive";
he had explained the creation of the heavenly bodies on the fourth day
by "the harmony of the number four"; of the animals on the fifth day
by the five senses; of man on the sixth day by the same virtues in the
number six which had caused it to be set as a limit to the creative
work; and, greatest of all, the rest on the seventh day by the vast mass
of mysterious virtues in the number seven.
St. Jerome held that the reason why God did not pronounce the work of
the second day "good" is to be found in the fact that there is something
essentially evil in the number two, and this was echoed centuries
afterward, afar off in Britain, by Bede.
St. Augustine brought this view to bear upon the Church in the following
statement: "There are three classes of numbers--the more than perfect,
the perfect, and the less than perfect, according as the sum of them
is greater than, equal to, or less than the original number. Six is the
first perfect number: wherefore we must not say that six is a perfect
number because God finished all his works in six days, but that God
finished all his works in six days because six is a perfect number."
Reasoning of this sort echoed along through the mediaeval Church until
a year after the discovery of America, when the Nuremberg Chronicle
re-echoed it as follows: "The creation of things is explained by the
number six, the parts of which, one, two, and three, assume the form of
a triangle."
This view of the creation of the universe as instantaneous and also as
in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, became virtually
universal. Peter Lombard and Hugo of St. Victor, authorities of vast
weight, gave it their sanction in the twelfth century, and impressed it
for ages upon the mind of the Church.
Both these lines of speculation--as to the creation of everything out
of nothing, and the reconciling of the instantaneous creation of the
universe with its creation in six days--were still further developed by
other great thinkers of the Middle Ages.
St. Hilary of Poictiers reconciled the two conceptions as follows: "For,
although according to Moses there is an appearance of regular order
in the fixing of the firmament, the laying bare of the dry land, the
gathering together of the waters, the formation of the heavenly bodies,
and the arising of living things from land and water, yet the creation
of the heavens, earth, and other elements is seen to be the work of a
single moment."
St. Thomas Aquinas drew from St. Augustine a subtle distinction which
for ages eased the difficulties in the case: he taught in effect that
God created the substance of things in a moment, but gave to the work of
separating, shaping, and adorning this creation, six days.(5)
(5) For Philo Judaeus, see his Creation of the World, chap. iii; for
St. Augustine on the powers of numbers in creation, see his De Genesi ad
Litteram iv, chap. ii; for Peter Lombard, see the Sententiae, lib. ii,
dist. xv, 5; and for Hugo of St. Victor, see De Sacrementis, lib i, pars
i; also, Annotat, Elucidat in Pentateuchum, cap. v, vi, vii; for St.
Hilary, see De Trinitate, lib. xii; for St. Thomas Aquinas, see his
Summa Theologica, quest lxxxiv, arts. i and ii; the passage in the
Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, is in fol. iii; for Vousset, see his Discours
sur l'Histoire Universelle; for the sacredness of the number seven among
the Babylonians, see especially Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das
Alte Testament, pp. 21,22; also George Smith et al.; for general ideas
on the occult powers of various numbers, especially the number seven,
and the influence of these ideas on theology and science, see my chapter
on astronomy. As to medieaval ideas on the same subject, see Detzel,
Christliche Ikonographie, Frieburg, 1894, pp. 44 and following.
The early reformers accepted and developed the same view, and Luther
especially showed himself equal to the occasion. With his usual boldness
he declared, first, that Moses "spoke properly and plainly, and neither
allegorically nor figuratively," and that therefore "the world with all
creatures was created in six days." And he then goes on to show how, by
a great miracle, the whole creation was also instantaneous.
Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of nothing
and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six days, citing the
text: "He spake, and they were made."
Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid especial
stress on the creation in six days: having called attention to the
fact that the biblical chronology shows the world to be not quite
six thousand years old and that it is now near its end, he says that
"creation was extended through six days that it might not be tedious for
us to occupy the whole of life in the consideration of it."
Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring: "So important is it to
comprehend the work of creation that we see the creed of the Church take
this as its starting point. Were this article taken away there would be
no original sin, the promise of Christ would become void, and all the
vital force of our religion would be destroyed." The Westminster divines
in drawing up their Confession of Faith specially laid it down as
necessary to believe that all things visible and invisible were created
not only out of nothing but in exactly six days.
Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protestant reformers
regarding the necessity of holding closely to the so-called Mosaic
account of creation. As late as the middle of the eighteenth century,
when Buffon attempted to state simple geological truths, the theological
faculty of the Sorbonne forced him to make and to publish a most
ignominious recantation which ended with these words: "I abandon
everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and
generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."
Theologians, having thus settled the manner of the creation, the matter
used in it, and the time required for it, now exerted themselves to fix
its DATE.
The long series of efforts by the greatest minds in the Church, from
Eusebius to Archbishop Usher, to settle this point are presented in
another chapter. Suffice it here that the general conclusion arrived
at by an overwhelming majority of the most competent students of the
biblical accounts was that the date of creation was, in round numbers,
four thousand years before our era; and in the seventeenth century, in
his great work, Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University
of Cambridge, and one of the most eminent Hebrew scholars of his time,
declared, as the result of his most profound and exhaustive study of
the Scriptures, that "heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were
created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water,"
and that "this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on
October 23, 4004 B. C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's method, the result of
hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since Bede
in the eighth century, and Vincent of Beauvais in the thirteenth, had
declared that creation must have taken place in the spring. Yet, alas!
within two centuries after Lightfoot's great biblical demonstration as
to the exact hour of creation, it was discovered that at that hour
an exceedingly cultivated people, enjoying all the fruits of a highly
developed civilization, had long been swarming in the great cities of
Egypt, and that other nations hardly less advanced had at that time
reached a high development in Asia.(6)
(6) For Luther, see his Commentary on Genesis, 1545, introduction,
and his comments on chap. i, verse 12; the quotations from Luther's
commentary are taken mainly from the translation by Henry Cole, D.D.,
Edinburgh, 1858; for Melanchthon, see Loci Theologici, in Melanchthon,
Opera, ed. Bretschneider, vol. xxi, pp. 269, 270, also pp. 637, 638--in
quoting the text (Ps. xxiii, 9) I have used, as does Melanchthon
himself, the form of the Vulgate; for the citations from Calvin, see his
Commentary on Genesis (Opera omnia, Amsterdam, 1671, tom. i, cap. ii, p.
8); also in the Institutes, Allen's translation, London, 1838, vol.
i, chap. xv, pp. 126,127; for the Peter Martyr, see his Commentary
on Genesis, cited by Zockler, vol. i, p. 690; for articles in the
Westminster Confession of Faith, see chap. iv; for Buffon's recantation,
see Lyell, Principles of Geology, chap iii, p. 57. For Lightfoot's
declaration, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822.
But, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had thus settled the
manner of creation, the matter employed in it, the time required for it,
and the exact date of it, there remained virtually unsettled the
first and greatest question of all; and this was nothing less than the
question, WHO actually created the universe?
Various theories more or less nebulous, but all centred in texts of
Scripture, had swept through the mind of the Church. By some theologians
it was held virtually that the actual creative agent was the third
person of the Trinity, who, in the opening words of our sublime creation
poem, "moved upon the face of the waters." By others it was held that
the actual Creator was the second person of the Trinity, in behalf of
whose agency many texts were cited from the New Testament. Others held
that the actual Creator was the first person, and this view was embodied
in the two great formulas known as the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds,
which explicitly assigned the work to "God the Father Almighty, Maker of
heaven and earth." Others, finding a deep meaning in the words "Let US
make," ascribed in Genesis to the Creator, held that the entire Trinity
directly created all things; and still others, by curious metaphysical
processes, seemed to arrive at the idea that peculiar combinations of
two persons of the Trinity achieved the creation.
In all this there would seem to be considerable courage in view of the
fearful condemnations launched in the Athanasian Creed against all who
should "confound the persons" or "divide the substance of the Trinity."
These various stages in the evolution of scholastic theology were
also embodied in sacred art, and especially in cathedral sculpture, in
glass-staining, in mosaic working, and in missal painting.
The creative Being is thus represented sometimes as the third person of
the Trinity, in the form of a dove brooding over chaos; sometimes as the
second person, and therefore a youth; sometimes as the first person,
and therefore fatherly and venerable; sometimes as the first and second
persons, one being venerable and the other youthful; and sometimes
as three persons, one venerable and one youthful, both wearing papal
crowns, and each holding in his lips a tip of the wing of the dove,
which thus seems to proceed from both and to be suspended between them.
Nor was this the most complete development of the medieval idea. The
Creator was sometimes represented with a single body, but with three
faces, thus showing that Christian belief had in some pious minds gone
through substantially the same cycle which an earlier form of belief had
made ages before in India, when the Supreme Being was represented with
one body but with the three faces of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.
But at the beginning of the modern period the older view in its
primitive Jewish form was impressed upon Christians by the most mighty
genius in art the world has known; for in 1512, after four years of
Titanic labour, Michael Angelo uncovered his frescoes within the vault
of the Sistine Chapel.
They had been executed by the command and under the sanction of the
ruling Pope, Julius II, to represent the conception of Christian
theology then dominant, and they remain to-day in all their majesty
to show the highest point ever attained by the older thought upon the
origin of the visible universe.
In the midst of the expanse of heaven the Almighty Father--the first
person of the Trinity--in human form, august and venerable, attended by
angels and upborne by mighty winds, sweeps over the abyss, and, moving
through successive compartments of the great vault, accomplishes the
work of the creative days. With a simple gesture he divides the light
from the darkness, rears on high the solid firmament, gathers together
beneath it the seas, or summons into existence the sun, moon, and
planets, and sets them circling about the earth.
In this sublime work culminated the thought of thousands of years; the
strongest minds accepted it or pretended to accept it, and nearly two
centuries later this conception, in accordance with the first of the
two accounts given in Genesis, was especially enforced by Bossuet,
and received a new lease of life in the Church, both Catholic and
Protestant.(7)
(7) For strange representations of the Creator and of the creation by
one, two, or three persons of the Trinity, see Didron, Iconographie
Chretienne, pp. 35, 178, 224, 483, 567-580, and elsewhere; also Detzel
as already cited. The most naive of all survivals of the mediaeval idea
of creation which the present writer has ever seen was exhibited in
1894 on the banner of one of the guilds at the celebration of the
four-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Munich Cathedral.
Jesus of Nazareth, as a beautiful boy and with a nimbus encircling his
head, was shown turning and shaping the globe on a lathe, which he keeps
in motion with his foot. The emblems of the Passion are about him,
God the Father looking approvingly upon him from a cloud, and the dove
hovering between the two. The date upon the banner was 1727.
But to these discussions was added yet another, which, beginning in the
early days of the Church, was handed down the ages until it had died out
among the theologians of our own time.
In the first of the biblical accounts light is created and the
distinction between day and night thereby made on the first day,
while the sun and moon are not created until the fourth day. Masses of
profound theological and pseudo-scientific reasoning have been developed
to account for this--masses so great that for ages they have obscured
the simple fact that the original text is a precious revelation to us of
one of the most ancient of recorded beliefs--the belief that light and
darkness are entities independent of the heavenly bodies, and that the
sun, moon, and stars exist not merely to increase light but to "divide
the day from the night, to be for signs and for seasons, and for days
and for years," and "to rule the day and the night."
Of this belief we find survivals among the early fathers, and especially
in St. Ambrose. In his work on creation he tells us: "We must remember
that the light of day is one thing and the light of the sun, moon,
and stars another--the sun by his rays appearing to add lustre to
the daylight. For before sunrise the day dawns, but is not in full
refulgence, for the sun adds still further to its splendour." This
idea became one of the "treasures of sacred knowledge committed to the
Church," and was faithfully received by the Middle Ages. The medieval
mysteries and miracle plays give curious evidences of this: In a
performance of the creation, when God separates light from darkness, the
stage direction is, "Now a painted cloth is to be exhibited, one half
black and the other half white." It was also given more permanent form.
In the mosaics of San Marco at Venice, in the frescoes of the Baptistery
at Florence and of the Church of St. Francis at Assisi, and in the altar
carving at Salerno, we find a striking realization of it--the Creator
placing in the heavens two disks or living figures of equal size, each
suitably coloured or inscribed to show that one represents light and the
other darkness. This conception was without doubt that of the person or
persons who compiled from the Chaldean and other earlier statements the
accounts of the creation in the first of our sacred books.(8)
(8) For scriptural indications of the independent existence of light and
darkness, compare with the first verses of the chapter of Genesis such
passages as Job xxxviii, 19,24; for the general prevalence of this early
view, see Lukas, Kosmogonie, pp. 31, 33, 41, 74, and passim; for the
view of St. Ambrose regarding the creation of light and of the sun, see
his Hexameron, lib. 4, cap. iii; for an excellent general statement,
see Huxley, Mr. Gladstone and Genesis, in the Nineteenth Century, 1886,
reprinted in his Essays on Controverted Questions, London, 1892,
note, pp. 126 et seq.; for the acceptance in the miracle plays of the
scriptural idea of light and darkness as independent creations, see
Wright, Essays on Archeological Subjects, vol. ii, p.178; for an
account, with illustrations, of the mosaics, etc., representing this
idea, see Tikkanen, Die Genesis-mosaiken von San Marco, Helsingfors,
1889, p. 14 and 16 of the text and Plates I and II. Very naively the
Salerno carver, not wishing to colour the ivory which he wrought, has
inscribed on one disk the word "LUX" and on the other "NOX." See also
Didron, Iconographie, p. 482.
Thus, down to a period almost within living memory, it was held,
virtually "always, everywhere, and by all," that the universe, as we now
see it, was created literally and directly by the voice or hands of the
Almighty, or by both--out of nothing--in an instant or in six days, or
in both--about four thousand years before the Christian era--and for the
convenience of the dwellers upon the earth, which was at the base and
foundation of the whole structure.
But there had been implanted along through the ages germs of another
growth in human thinking, some of them even as early as the
Babylonian period. In the Assyrian inscriptions we find recorded the
Chaldeo-Babylonian idea of AN EVOLUTION of the universe out of the
primeval flood or "great deep," and of the animal creation out of the
earth and sea. This idea, recast, partially at least, into monotheistic
form, passed naturally into the sacred books of the neighbours and
pupils of the Chaldeans--the Hebrews; but its growth in Christendom
afterward was checked, as we shall hereafter find, by the more powerful
influence of other inherited statements which appealed more intelligibly
to the mind of the Church.
Striking, also, was the effect of this idea as rewrought by the early
Ionian philosophers, to whom it was probably transmitted from the
Chaldeans through the Phoenicians. In the minds of Ionians like
Anaximander and Anaximenes it was most clearly developed: the first of
these conceiving of the visible universe as the result of processes of
evolution, and the latter pressing further the same mode of reasoning,
and dwelling on agencies in cosmic development recognised in modern
science.
This general idea of evolution in Nature thus took strong hold upon
Greek thought and was developed in many ways, some ingenious, some
perverse. Plato, indeed, withstood it; but Aristotle sometimes developed
it in a manner which reminds us of modern views.
Among the Romans Lucretius caught much from it, extending the
evolutionary process virtually to all things.
In the early Church, as we have seen, the idea of a creation direct,
material, and by means like those used by man, was all-powerful for the
exclusion of conceptions based on evolution. From the more simple and
crude of the views of creation given in the Babylonian legends, and
thence incorporated into Genesis, rose the stream of orthodox thought
on the subject, which grew into a flood and swept on through the Middle
Ages and into modern times. Yet here and there in the midst of this
flood were high grounds of thought held by strong men. Scotus Erigena
and Duns Scotus, among the schoolmen, bewildered though they were,
had caught some rays of this ancient light, and passed on to their
successors, in modified form, doctrines of an evolutionary process in
the universe.
In the latter half of the sixteenth century these evolutionary theories
seemed to take more definite form in the mind of Giordano Bruno, who
evidently divined the fundamental idea of what is now known as the
"nebular hypothesis"; but with his murder by the Inquisition at Rome
this idea seemed utterly to disappear--dissipated by the flames which in
1600 consumed his body on the Campo dei Fiori.
Yet within the two centuries divided by Bruno's death the world was led
into a new realm of thought in which an evolution theory of the visible
universe was sure to be rapidly developed. For there came, one after
the other, five of the greatest men our race has produced--Copernicus,
Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton--and when their work was done
the old theological conception of the universe was gone. "The spacious
firmament on high"--"the crystalline spheres"--the Almighty enthroned
upon "the circle of the heavens," and with his own lands, or with angels
as his agents, keeping sun, moon, and planets in motion for the benefit
of the earth, opening and closing the "windows of heaven," letting down
upon the earth the "waters above the firmament," "setting his bow in the
cloud," hanging out "signs and wonders," hurling comets, "casting forth
lightnings" to scare the wicked, and "shaking the earth" in his wrath:
all this had disappeared.
These five men had given a new divine revelation to the world; and
through the last, Newton, had come a vast new conception, destined to
be fatal to the old theory of creation, for he had shown throughout the
universe, in place of almighty caprice, all-pervading law. The bitter
opposition of theology to the first four of these men is well known;
but the fact is not so widely known that Newton, in spite of his deeply
religious spirit, was also strongly opposed. It was vigorously urged
against him that by his statement of the law of gravitation he "took
from God that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him
in Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism," and that he
"substituted gravitation for Providence."
But, more than this, these men gave a new basis for the theory of
evolution as distinguished from the theory of creation.
Especially worthy of note is it that the great work of Descartes,
erroneous as many of its deductions were, and, in view of the lack of
physical knowledge in his time, must be, had done much to weaken the
old conception. His theory of a universe brought out of all-pervading
matter, wrought into orderly arrangement by movements in accordance with
physical laws--though it was but a provisional hypothesis--had done much
to draw men's minds from the old theological view of creation; it was an
example of intellectual honesty arriving at errors, but thereby aiding
the advent of truths. Crippled though Descartes was by his almost
morbid fear of the Church, this part of his work was no small factor
in bringing in that attitude of mind which led to a reception of the
thoughts of more unfettered thinkers.
Thirty years later came, in England, an effort of a different sort, but
with a similar result. In 1678 Ralph Cudworth published his Intellectual
System of the Universe. To this day he remains, in breadth of
scholarship, in strength of thought, in tolerance, and in honesty, one
of the greatest glories of the English Church, and his work was
worthy of him. He purposed to build a fortress which should protect
Christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe, ancient
or modern. The foundations of the structure were laid with old thoughts
thrown often into new and striking forms; but, as the superstructure
arose more and more into view, while genius marked every part of it,
features appeared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings.
From the old theories of direct personal action on the universe by the
Almighty he broke utterly. He dwelt on the action of law, rejected the
continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact
that in the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles," and argued
vigorously in favour of the origin and maintenance of the universe as
a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an inward
principle. The Balaks of seventeenth-century orthodoxy might well
condemn this honest Balaam.
Toward the end of the next century a still more profound genius,
Immanuel Kant, presented the nebular theory, giving it, in the light of
Newton's great utterances, a consistency which it never before had; and
about the same time Laplace gave it yet greater strength by mathematical
reasonings of wonderful power and extent, thus implanting firmly in
modern thought the idea that our own solar system and others--suns,
planets, satellites, and their various movements, distances, and
magnitudes--necessarily result from the obedience of nebulous masses to
natural laws.
Throughout the theological world there was an outcry at once against
"atheism," and war raged fiercely. Herschel and others pointed out
many nebulous patches apparently gaseous. They showed by physical and
mathematical demonstrations that the hypothesis accounted for the great
body of facts, and, despite clamour, were gaining ground, when the
improved telescopes resolved some of the patches of nebulous matter
into multitudes of stars. The opponents of the nebular hypothesis were
overjoyed; they now sang paeans to astronomy, because, as they said,
it had proved the truth of Scripture. They had jumped to the conclusion
that all nebula must be alike; that, if SOME are made up of systems of
stars, ALL must be so made up; that none can be masses of attenuated
gaseous matter, because some are not.
Science halted for a time. The accepted doctrine became this: that the
only reason why all the nebula are not resolved into distinct stars is
that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in time came
the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis, and thence
Fraunhofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited gaseous body is
non-continuous, with interrupting lines; and Draper's discovery that the
spectrum of an ignited solid is continuous, with no interrupting lines.
And now the spectroscope was turned upon the nebula, and many of them
were found to be gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the inference
that in these nebulous masses at different stages of condensation--some
apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres--we have the
process of development actually going on, and observations like those of
Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confirmation to this view. Then
came the great contribution of the nineteenth century to physics, aiding
to explain important parts of the vast process by the mechanical theory
of heat.
Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever, and about
1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rotation of a fluid
globe came in apparently to illustrate if not to confirm it. Even so
determined a defender of orthodoxy as Mr. Gladstone at last acknowledged
some form of a nebular hypothesis as probably true.
Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological views
to science under the claim that science concurs with theology, which we
have seen in so many other fields; and, as typical, an example may
be given, which, however restricted in its scope, throws light on the
process by which such surrenders are obtained. A few years since one of
the most noted professors of chemistry in the city of New York, under
the auspices of one of its most fashionable churches, gave a lecture
which, as was claimed in the public prints and in placards posted in the
streets, was to show that science supports the theory of creation given
in the sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and
a brilliant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen,
and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It was
beautifully made. As the coloured globule of oil, representing the
earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density, as it
became flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from it and
revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings broke into
satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about the central
mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst into rapturous
applause.
Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the
audience to the eminent professor for "this perfect demonstration of the
exact and literal conformity of the statements given in Holy Scripture
with the latest results of science." The motion was carried unanimously
and with applause, and the audience dispersed, feeling that a great
service had been rendered to orthodoxy. Sancta simplicitas!
What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen elsewhere
with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage. Scores of
theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in knowledge, has
been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavoured to "reconcile" the two accounts in
Genesis with each other and with the truths regarding the origin of
the universe gained by astronomy, geology, geography, physics, and
chemistry. The result has been recently stated by an eminent theologian,
the Hulsean Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.
He declares, "No attempt at reconciling genesis with the exacting
requirements of modern sciences has ever been known to succeed without
entailing a degree of special pleading or forced interpretation to
which, in such a question, we should be wise to have no recourse."(9)
(9) For an interesting reference to the outcry against Newton, see
McCosh, The Religious Aspect of Evolution, New York, 1890, pp. 103,
104; for germs of an evolutionary view among the Babylonians, see George
Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis, New York, 1876, pp. 74, 75; for a
germ of the same thought in Lucretius, see his De Natura Rerum, lib.
v, pp.187-194, 447-454; for Bruno's conjecture (in 1591), see Jevons,
Principles of Science, London, 1874, vol. ii, p. 36; for Kant's
statement, see his Naturgeschichte des Himmels; for his part in the
nebular hypothesis, see Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i,
p.266; for the value of Plateau's beautiful experiment, very cautiously
estimated, see Jevons, vol. ii, p. 36; also Elisee Reclus, The Earth,
translated by Woodward, vol. i, pp. 14-18, for an estimate still more
careful; for a general account of discoveries of the nature of nebulae
by spectroscope, see Draper, Conflict between Religion and Science; for
a careful discussion regarding the spectra of solid, liquid, and gaseous
bodies, see Schellen, Spectrum Analysis, pp. 100 et seq.; for a very
thorough discussion of the bearings of discoveries made by spectrum
analysis upon the nebular hypothesis, ibid., pp. 532-537; for a
presentation of the difficulties yet unsolved, see an article by Plummer
in the London Popular Science Review for January, 1875; for an excellent
short summary of recent observations and thoughts on this subject, see
T. Sterry Hunt, Address at the Priestley Centennial, pp. 7, 8; for an
interesting modification of this hypothesis, see Proctor's writings; for
a still more recent view see Lockyer's two articles on The Sun's Place
in Nature for February 14 and 25, 1895.
The revelations of another group of sciences, though sometimes bitterly
opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theologians, have finally set
the whole question at rest. First, there have come the biblical
critics--earnest Christian scholars, working for the sake of truth--and
these have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt the
existence of at least two distinct accounts of creation in our book of
Genesis, which can sometimes be forced to agree, but which are generally
absolutely at variance with each other. These scholars have further
shown the two accounts to be not the cunningly devised fables of
priestcraft, but evidently fragments of earlier legends, myths, and
theologies, accepted in good faith and brought together for the noblest
of purposes by those who put in order the first of our sacred books.
Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the devoted students
of ancient monuments and records; of these are such as Rawlinson, George
Smith, Sayce, Oppert, Jensen, Schrader, Delitzsch, and a phalanx of
similarly devoted scholars, who have deciphered a multitude of ancient
texts, especially the inscriptions found in the great library of
Assurbanipal at Nineveh, and have discovered therein an account of the
origin of the world identical in its most important features with the
later accounts in our own book of Genesis.
These men have had the courage to point out these facts and to connect
them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylonian myths, legends,
and theories were far earlier than those of the Hebrews, which so
strikingly resemble them, and which we have in our sacred books; and
they have also shown us how natural it was that the Jewish accounts of
the creation should have been obtained at that remote period when the
earliest Hebrews were among the Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew
poetic accounts of creation were drawn either from the sacred traditions
of these earlier peoples or from antecedent sources common to various
ancient nations.
In a summary which for profound thought and fearless integrity does
honour not only to himself but to the great position which he holds,
the Rev. Dr. Driver, Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ Church at
Oxford, has recently stated the case fully and fairly. Having pointed
out the fact that the Hebrews were one people out of many who thought
upon the origin of the universe, he says that they "framed theories to
account for the beginnings of the earth and man"; that "they either did
this for themselves or borrowed those of their neighbours"; that "of the
theories current in Assyria and Phoenicia fragments have been preserved,
and these exhibit points of resemblance with the biblical narrative
sufficient to warrant the inference that both are derived from the same
cycle of tradition."
After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets he says:
"In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the conclusion
that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same source as these other
records. The biblical historians, it is plain, derived their materials
from the best human sources available.... The materials which with other
nations were combined into the crudest physical theories or associated
with a grotesque polytheism were vivified and transformed by the
inspired genius of the Hebrew historians, and adapted to become the
vehicle of profound religious truth."
Not less honourable to the sister university and to himself is the
statement recently made by the Rev. Dr. Ryle, Hulsean Professor of
Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a Christian "must
either renounce his confidence in the achievements of scientific
research or abandon his faith in Scripture is a monstrous perversion of
Christian freedom." He declares: "The old position is no longer tenable;
a new position has to be taken up at once, prayerfully chosen, and
hopefully held." He then goes on to compare the Hebrew story of creation
with the earlier stories developed among kindred peoples, and especially
with the pre-existing Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they
are from the same source. He points out that any attempt to explain
particular features of the story into harmony with the modern scientific
ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but he says that, if
we adopt a natural interpretation, "we shall consider that the Hebrew
description of the visible universe is unscientific as judged by modern
standards, and that it shares the limitations of the imperfect knowledge
of the age at which it was committed to writing." Regarding the account
in Genesis of man's physical origin, he says that it "is expressed
in the simple terms of prehistoric legend, of unscientific pictorial
description."
In these statements and in a multitude of others made by eminent
Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what the victory
is which has now been fully won over the older theology.
Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other sources, it
has come to be acknowledged by the most eminent scholars at the leading
seats of Christian learning that the accounts of creation with which
for nearly two thousand years all scientific discoveries have had to
be "reconciled"--the accounts which blocked the way of Copernicus, and
Galileo, and Newton, and Laplace--were simply transcribed or evolved
from a mass of myths and legends largely derived by the Hebrews from
their ancient relations with Chaldea, rewrought in a monotheistic sense,
imperfectly welded together, and then thrown into poetic forms in the
sacred books which we have inherited.
On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted to the
physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the universe,
as we at present know it, is the result of an evolutionary process--that
is, of the gradual working of physical laws upon an early condition of
matter; on the other hand, we have other great groups of men devoted to
historical, philological, and archaeological science whose researches
all converge toward the conclusion that our sacred accounts of creation
were the result of an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion.
The great body of theologians who have so long resisted the conclusions
of the men of science have claimed to be fighting especially for "the
truth of Scripture," and their final answer to the simple conclusions
of science regarding the evolution of the material universe has been the
cry, "The Bible is true." And they are right--though in a sense nobler
than they have dreamed. Science, while conquering them, has found in our
Scriptures a far nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for
which theologians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more
as we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great sacred
books of the world is found in their revelation of the steady striving
of our race after higher conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations, both
in morals and religion. Unfolding and exhibiting this long-continued
effort, each of the great sacred books of the world is precious, and
all, in the highest sense, are true. Not one of them, indeed, conforms
to the measure of what mankind has now reached in historical and
scientific truth; to make a claim to such conformity is folly, for it
simply exposes those who make it and the books for which it is made to
loss of their just influence.
That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our own
most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions, beliefs,
and aspirations of our race from its childhood through the great
turning-points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and
especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often are as a record
of historical outward fact; recent researches in the East are constantly
increasing this value; but it is not for this that we prize them most:
they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as
a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true
because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing
the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle,
code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development
of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are
not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is
not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In
welding together into noble form, whether in the book of Genesis, or in
the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere, the great conceptions
of men acting under earlier inspiration, whether in Egypt, or Chaldea,
or India, or Persia, the compilers of our sacred books have given to
humanity a possession ever becoming more and more precious; and modern
science, in substituting a new heaven and a new earth for the old--the
reign of law for the reign of caprice, and the idea of evolution for
that of creation--has added and is steadily adding a new revelation
divinely inspired.
In the light of these two evolutions, then--one of the visible universe,
the other of a sacred creation-legend--science and theology, if the
master minds in both are wise, may at last be reconciled. A great
step in this reconciliation was recently seen at the main centre
of theological thought among English-speaking people, when, in the
collection of essays entitled Lux Mundi, emanating from the college
established in these latter days as a fortress of orthodoxy at Oxford,
the legendary character of the creation accounts in our sacred books was
acknowledged, and when the Archbishop of Canterbury asked, "May not the
Holy Spirit at times have made use of myth and legend?"(10)
(10) For the first citations above made, see The Cosmogony of Genesis,
by the Rev. S. R. Driver, D.D., Canon of Christ Church and Regius
Professor of Hebrew at Oxford, in the Expositor for January, 1886; for
the second series of citations, see the Early Narratives of Genesis, by
Herbert Edward Ryle, Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, London,
1892. For evidence that even the stiffest of Scotch Presbyterians have
come to discard the old literal biblical narrative of creation and
to regard the declaration of the Westminster Confession thereon as
a "disproved theory of creation," see Principal John Tulloch,
in Contemporary Review, March, 1877, on Religious Thought in
Scotland--especially page 550.
II. THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS REGARDING THE ANIMALS AND MAN.
In one of the windows of the cathedral at Ulm a mediaeval glass-stainer
has represented the Almighty as busily engaged in creating the animals,
and there has just left the divine hands an elephant fully
accoutred, with armour, harness, and housings, ready-for war. Similar
representations appear in illuminated manuscripts and even in early
printed books, and, as the culmination of the whole, the Almighty is
shown as fashioning the first man from a hillock of clay and extracting
from his side, with evident effort, the first woman.
This view of the general process of creation had come from far,
appearing under varying forms in various ancient cosmogonies. In
the Egyptian temples at Philae and Denderah may still be seen
representations of the Nile gods modelling lumps of clay into men, and
a similar work is ascribed in the Assyrian tablets to the gods of
Babylonia. Passing into our own sacred books, these ideas became the
starting point of a vast new development of theology.(11)
(11) For representations of Egyptian gods creating men out of lumps
of clay, see Maspero and Sayce, The Dawn of History, p. 156; for the
Chaldean legends of the creation of men and animals, see ibid., p. 543;
see also George Smith, Chaldean Accounts of Genesis, Sayce's edition,
pp. 36, 72, and 93; also for similar legends in other ancient nations,
Lenormant, Origines de l'Histoire, pp. 17 et seq.; for mediaeval
representations of the creation of man and woman, see Didron,
Iconographie, pp. 35, 178, 224, 537.
The fathers of the Church generally received each of the two conflicting
creation legends in Genesis literally, and then, having done their best
to reconcile them with each other and to mould them together, made them
the final test of thought upon the universe and all things therein. At
the beginning of the fourth century Lactantius struck the key-note of
this mode of subordinating all other things in the study of creation to
the literal text of Scripture, and he enforces his view of the creation
of man by a bit of philology, saying the final being created "is called
man because he is made from the ground--homo ex humo."
In the second half of the same century this view as to the literal
acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by St. Ambrose, who, in his
work on the creation, declared that "Moses opened his mouth and poured
forth what God had said to him." But a greater than either of them
fastened this idea into the Christian theologies. St. Augustine,
preparing his Commentary on the Book of Genesis, laid down in one famous
sentence the law which has lasted in the Church until our own time:
"Nothing is to be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since
greater is that authority than all the powers of the human mind." The
vigour of the sentence in its original Latin carried it ringing down the
centuries: "Major est Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii
capacitas."
Through the mediaeval period, in spite of a revolt led by no other
than St. Augustine himself, and followed by a series of influential
churchmen, contending, as we shall hereafter see, for a modification of
the accepted view of creation, this phrase held the minds of men firmly.
The great Dominican encyclopaedist, Vincent of Beauvais, in his Mirror
of Nature, while mixing ideas brought from Aristotle with a theory
drawn from the Bible, stood firmly by the first of the accounts given in
Genesis, and assigned the special virtue of the number six as a reason
why all things were created in six days; and in the later Middle Ages
that eminent authority, Cardinal d' Ailly, accepted everything regarding
creation in the sacred books literally. Only a faint dissent is seen
in Gregory Reisch, another authority of this later period, who, while
giving, in his book on the beginning of things, a full length woodcut
showing the Almighty in the act of extracting Eve from Adam's side,
with all the rest of new-formed Nature in the background, leans in his
writings, like St. Augustine, toward a belief in the pre-existence of
matter.
At the Reformation the vast authority of Luther was thrown in favour
of the literal acceptance of Scripture as the main source of natural
science. The allegorical and mystical interpretations of earlier
theologians he utterly rejected. "Why," he asks, "should Moses use
allegory when he is not speaking of allegorical creatures or of an
allegorical world, but of real creatures and of a visible world, which
can be seen, felt, and grasped? Moses calls things by their right names,
as we ought to do.... I hold that the animals took their being at once
upon the word of God, as did also the fishes in the sea."
Not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account of creation
given in Genesis was Calvin. He warns those who, by taking another view
than his own, "basely insult the Creator, to expect a judge who will
annihilate them." He insists that all species of animals were created
in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, and that no new
species has ever appeared since. He dwells on the production of birds
from the water as resting upon certain warrant of Scripture, but adds,
"If the question is to be argued on physical grounds, we know that
water is more akin to air than the earth is." As to difficulties in the
scriptural account of creation, he tells us that God "wished by these to
give proofs of his power which should fill us with astonishment."
The controlling minds in the Roman Church steadfastly held this view. In
the seventeenth century Bossuet threw his vast authority in its favour,
and in his Discourse on Universal History, which has remained the
foundation not only of theological but of general historical teaching
in France down to the present republic, we find him calling attention to
what he regards as the culminating act of creation, and asserting that,
literally, for the creation of man earth was used, and "the finger of
God applied to corruptible matter."
The Protestant world held this idea no less persistently. In the
seventeenth century Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge, the great rabbinical scholar of his time,
attempted to reconcile the two main legends in Genesis by saying that of
the "clean sort of beasts there were seven of every kind created, three
couples for breeding and the odd one for Adam's sacrifice on his fall,
which God foresaw"; and that of unclean beasts only one couple was
created.
So literal was this whole conception of the work of creation that in
these days it can scarcely be imagined. The Almighty was represented
in theological literature, in the pictured Bibles, and in works of art
generally, as a sort of enlarged and venerable Nuremberg toymaker. At
times the accounts in Genesis were illustrated with even more literal
exactness; thus, in connection with a well-known passage in the sacred
text, the Creator was shown as a tailor, seated, needle in hand,
diligently sewing together skins of beasts into coats for Adam and Eve.
Such representations presented no difficulties to the docile minds of
the Middle Ages and the Reformation period; and in the same spirit, when
the discovery of fossils began to provoke thought, these were declared
to be "models of his works approved or rejected by the great Artificer,"
"outlines of future creations," "sports of Nature," or "objects placed
in the strata to bring to naught human curiosity"; and this kind of
explanation lingered on until in our own time an eminent naturalist,
in his anxiety to save the literal account in Genesis, has urged that
Jehovah tilted and twisted the strata, scattered the fossils through
them, scratched the glacial furrows upon them, spread over them
the marks of erosion by water, and set Niagara pouring--all in an
instant--thus mystifying the world "for some inscrutable purpose, but
for his own glory."(12)
(12) For the citation from Lactantius, see Divin. Instit., lib. ii, cap.
xi, in Migne, tome vi, pp. 311, 312; for St. Augustine's great phrase,
see the De Genes. ad litt., ii, 5; for St. Ambrose, see lib. i, cap. ii;
for Vincent of Beauvais, see the Speculum Naturale, lib. i, cap. ii, and
lib. ii, cap. xv and xxx; also Bourgeat, Etudes sur Vincent de Beauvais,
Paris, 1856, especially chaps. vii, xii, and xvi; for Cardinal d"ailly,
see the Imago Mundi, and for Reisch, see the various editions of the
Margarita Philosophica; for Luther's statements, see Luther's Schriften,
ed. Walch, Halle, 1740, Commentary on Genesis, vol. i; for Calvin's view
of the creation of the animals, including the immutability of Species,
see the Comm. in Gen., tome i of his Opera omnia, Amst., 1671, cap. i,
v, xx, p. 5, also cap. ii, v, ii, p. 8, and elsewhere; for Bossuet, see
his Discours sur l'Histoire universelle (in his OEuvres, tome v, Paris,
1846); for Lightfoot, see his works, edited by Pitman, London, 1822;
for Bede, see the Hexaemeron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, p.21; for Mr.
Gosse'smodern defence of the literal view, see his Omphalos, London,
1857, passim.
The next important development of theological reasoning had regard to
the DIVISIONS of the animal kingdom.
Naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the inquiring
mind was that between useful and noxious creatures, and the question
therefore occurred, How could a good God create tigers and serpents,
thorns and thistles? The answer was found in theological considerations
upon SIN. To man's first disobedience all woes were due. Great men
for eighteen hundred years developed the theory that before Adam's
disobedience there was no death, and therefore neither ferocity nor
venom.
Some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine are worthy of
a passing glance. St. Augustine expressly confirmed and emphasized the
view that the vegetable as well as the animal kingdom was cursed on
account of man's sin. Two hundred years later this utterance had been
echoed on from father to father of the Church until it was caught by
Bede; he declared that before man's fall animals were harmless, but were
made poisonous or hurtful by Adam's sin, and he said, "Thus fierce and
poisonous animals were created for terrifying man (because God foresaw
that he would sin), in order that he might be made aware of the final
punishment of hell."
In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by Peter Lombard into
his great theological work, the Sentences, which became a text-book of
theology through the middle ages. He affirmed that "no created things
would have been hurtful to man had he not sinned; they became hurtful
for the sake of terrifying and punishing vice or of proving and
perfecting virtue; they were created harmless, and on account of sin
became hurtful."
This theological theory regarding animals was brought out in the
eighteenth century with great force by John Wesley. He declared that
before Adam's sin "none of these attempted to devour or in any wise hurt
one another"; "the spider was as harmless as the fly, and did not lie
in wait for blood." Not only Wesley, but the eminent Dr. Adam Clarke and
Dr. Richard Watson, whose ideas had the very greatest weight among the
English Dissenters, and even among leading thinkers in the Established
Church, held firmly to this theory; so that not until, in our own
time, geology revealed the remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous
creatures, many of them with half-digested remains of other animals in
their stomachs, all extinct long ages before the appearance of man upon
earth, was a victory won by science over theology in this field.
A curious development of this doctrine was seen in the belief drawn
by sundry old commentators from the condemnation of the serpent in
Genesis--a belief, indeed, perfectly natural, since it was evidently
that of the original writers of the account preserved in the first of
our sacred books. This belief was that, until the tempting serpent was
cursed by the Almighty, all serpents stood erect, walked, and talked.
This belief was handed down the ages as part of "the sacred deposit of
the faith" until Watson, the most prolific writer of the evangelical
reform in the eighteenth century and the standard theologian of the
evangelical party, declared: "We have no reason at all to believe
that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode or degree until its
transformation; that he was then degraded to a reptile to go upon his
belly imports, on the contrary, an entire loss and alteration of the
original form." Here, again, was a ripe result of the theologic method
diligently pursued by the strongest thinkers in the Church during nearly
two thousand years; but this "sacred deposit" also faded away when the
geologists found abundant remains of fossil serpents dating from periods
long before the appearance of man.
Troublesome questions also arose among theologians regarding animals
classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was especially exercised
thereby. He says: "I confess I am ignorant why mice and frogs were
created, or flies and worms.... All creatures are either useful, hurtful,
or superfluous to us.... As for the hurtful creatures, we are either
punished, or disciplined, or terrified by them, so that we may not
cherish and love this life." As to the "superfluous animals," he says,
"Although they are not necessary for our service, yet the whole design
of the universe is thereby completed and finished." Luther, who followed
St. Augustine in so many other matters, declined to follow him fully in
this. To him a fly was not merely superfluous, it was noxious--sent by
the devil to vex him when reading.
Another subject which gave rise to much searching of Scripture and long
trains of theological reasoning was the difference between the creation
of man and that of other living beings.
Great stress was laid by theologians, from St. Basil and St. Augustine
to St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, and from Luther to Wesley, on the
radical distinction indicated in Genesis, God having created man "in his
own image." What this statement meant was seen in the light of the later
biblical statement that "Adam begat Seth in his own likeness, after his
image."
In view of this and of well-known texts incorporated from older creation
legends into the Hebrew sacred books it came to be widely held that,
while man was directly moulded and fashioned separately by the Creator's
hand, the animals generally were evoked in numbers from the earth and
sea by the Creator's voice.
A question now arose naturally as to the DISTINCTIONS OF SPECIES among
animals. The vast majority of theologians agreed in representing all
animals as created "in the beginning," and named by Adam, preserved in
the ark, and continued ever afterward under exactly the same species.
This belief ripened into a dogma. Like so many other dogmas in the
Church, Catholic and Protestant, its real origins are to be found rather
in pagan philosophy than in the Christian Scriptures; it came far more
from Plato and Aristotle than from Moses and St. Paul. But this was not
considered: more and more it became necessary to believe that each
and every difference of species was impressed by the Creator "in the
beginning," and that no change had taken place or could have taken place
since.
Some difficulties arose here and there as zoology progressed and
revealed ever-increasing numbers of species; but through the Middle
Ages, and indeed long after the Reformation, these difficulties were
easily surmounted by making the ark of Noah larger and larger, and
especially by holding that there had been a human error in regard to its
measurement.(13)
(13) For St. Augustine, see De Genesis and De Trinitate, passim; for
Bede, see Hexaemeron, lib. i, in Migne, tome xci, pp. 21, 36-38, 42; and
De Sex Dierum Criatione, in Migne, tome xciii, p. 215; for Peter Lombard
on "noxious animals," see his Sententiae, lib. ii, dist. xv, 3, Migne,
tome cxcii, p. 682; for Wesley, Clarke, and Watson, see quotations from
them and notes thereto in my chapter on Geology; for St. Augustine
on "superfluous animals," see the De Genesi, lib. i, cap. xvi, 26; on
Luther's view of flies, see the Table Talk and his famous utterance,
"Odio muscas quia sunt imagines diaboli et hoereticorum"; for the agency
of Aristotle and Plato in fastening the belief in the fixity of species
into Christian theology, see Sachs, Geschichte der Botanik, Munchen,
1875, p. 107 and note, also p. 113.
But naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics and laymen
a human desire to go beyond these special points in the history of
animated beings--a desire to know what the creation really IS.
Current legends, stories, and travellers' observations, poor as they
were, tended powerfully to stimulate curiosity in this field.
Three centuries before the Christian era Aristotle had made the
first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity, and had begun
a development of studies in natural history which remains one of the
leading achievements in the story of our race.
But the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the early
Church--that all study of Nature was futile in view of the approaching
end of the world--indicated so clearly in the New Testament and voiced
so powerfully by Lactantius and St. Augustine--held back this current
of thought for many centuries. Still, the better tendency in humanity
continued to assert itself. There was, indeed, an influence coming from
the Hebrew Scriptures themselves which wrought powerfully to this end;
for, in spite of all that Lactantius or St. Augustine might say as to
the futility of any study of Nature, the grand utterances in the Psalms
regarding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of the
truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom logic drew away
from it.
But, as a matter of course, in the early Church and throughout the
Middle Ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould. Without
some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual edification they were
considered futile too much prying into the secrets of Nature was very
generally held to be dangerous both to body and soul; only for showing
forth God's glory and his purposes in the creation were such studies
praiseworthy. The great work of Aristotle was under eclipse. The early
Christian thinkers gave little attention to it, and that little was
devoted to transforming it into something absolutely opposed to his
whole spirit and method; in place of it they developed the Physiologus
and the Bestiaries, mingling scriptural statements, legends of the
saints, and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike
simplicity. In place of research came authority--the authority of the
Scriptures as interpreted by the Physio Cogus and the Bestiaries--and
these remained the principal source of thought on animated Nature for
over a thousand years.
Occasionally, indeed, fear was shown among the rulers in the Church,
even at such poor prying into the creation as this, and in the fifth
century a synod under Pope Gelasius administered a rebuke to the
Physiologus; but the interest in Nature was too strong: the great
work on Creation by St. Basil had drawn from the Physiologus precious
illustrations of Holy Writ, and the strongest of the early popes,
Gregory the Great, virtually sanctioned it.
Thus was developed a sacred science of creation and of the divine
purpose in Nature, which went on developing from the fourth century to
the nineteenth--from St. Basil to St. Isidore of Seville, from Isidore
to Vincent of Beauvais, and from Vincent to Archdeacon Paley and the
Bridgewater Treatises.
Like all else in the Middle Ages, this sacred science was developed
purely by theological methods. Neglecting the wonders which the
dissection of the commonest animals would have afforded them, these
naturalists attempted to throw light into Nature by ingenious use of
scriptural texts, by research among the lives of the saints, and by the
plentiful application of metaphysics. Hence even such strong men as
St. Isidore of Seville treasured up accounts of the unicorn and dragons
mentioned in the Scriptures and of the phoenix and basilisk in profane
writings. Hence such contributions to knowledge as that the basilisk
kills serpents by his breath and men by his glance, that the lion when
pursued effaces his tracks with the end of his tail, that the pelican
nourishes her young with her own blood, that serpents lay aside their
venom before drinking, that the salamander quenches fire, that the hyena
can talk with shepherds, that certain birds are born of the fruit of a
certain tree when it happens to fall into the water, with other masses
of science equally valuable.
As to the method of bringing science to bear on Scripture, the
Physiologus gives an example, illustrating the passage in the book of
Job which speaks of the old lion perishing for lack of prey. Out of
the attempt to explain an unusual Hebrew word in the text there came a
curious development of error, until we find fully evolved an account of
the "ant-lion," which, it gives us to understand, was the lion mentioned
by Job, and it says: "As to the ant-lion, his father hath the shape of
a lion, his mother that of an ant; the father liveth upon flesh and the
mother upon herbs; these bring forth the ant-lion, a compound of both
and in part like to either; for his fore part is like that of a lion and
his hind part like that of an ant. Being thus composed, he is neither
able to eat flesh like his father nor herbs like his mother, and so he
perisheth."
In the middle of the thirteenth century we have a triumph of this
theological method in the great work of the English Franciscan
Bartholomew on The Properties of Things. The theological method as
applied to science consists largely in accepting tradition and in
spinning arguments to fit it. In this field Bartholomew was a master.
Having begun with the intent mainly to explain the allusions in
Scripture to natural objects, he soon rises logically into a survey of
all Nature. Discussing the "cockatrice" of Scripture, he tells us: "He
drieth and burneth leaves with his touch, and he is of so great venom
and perilous that he slayeth and wasteth him that nigheth him without
tarrying; and yet the weasel overcometh him, for the biting of the
weasel is death to the cockatrice. Nevertheless the biting of the
cockatrice is death to the weasel if the weasel eat not rue before. And
though the cockatrice be venomous without remedy while he is alive,
yet he looseth all the malice when he is burnt to ashes. His ashes be
accounted profitable in working of alchemy, and namely in turning and
changing of metals."
Bartholomew also enlightens us on the animals of Egypt, and says, "If
the crocodile findeth a man by the water's brim he slayeth him, and then
he weepeth over him and swalloweth him."
Naturally this good Franciscan naturalist devotes much thought to the
"dragons" mentioned in Scripture. He says: "The dragon is most greatest
of all serpents, and oft he is drawn out of his den and riseth up into
the air, and the air is moved by him, and also the sea swelleth against
his venom, and he hath a crest, and reareth his tongue, and hath teeth
like a saw, and hath strength, and not only in teeth but in tail, and
grieveth with biting and with stinging. Whom he findeth he slayeth.
Oft four or five of them fasten their tails together and rear up their
heads, and sail over the sea to get good meat. Between elephants and
dragons is everlasting fighting; for the dragon with his tail spanneth
the elephant, and the elephant with his nose throweth down the
dragon.... The cause why the dragon desireth his blood is the coldness
thereof, by the which the dragon desireth to cool himself. Jerome saith
that the dragon is a full thirsty beast, insomuch that he openeth his
mouth against the wind to quench the burning of his thirst in that wise.
Therefore, when he seeth ships in great wind he flieth against the sail
to take the cold wind, and overthroweth the ship."
These ideas of Friar Bartholomew spread far and struck deep into the
popular mind. His book was translated into the principal languages of
Europe, and was one of those most generally read during the Ages of
Faith. It maintained its position nearly three hundred years; even after
the invention of printing it held its own, and in the fifteenth century
there were issued no less than ten editions of it in Latin, four in
French, and various versions of it in Dutch, Spanish, and English.
Preachers found it especially useful in illustrating the ways of God
to man. It was only when the great voyages of discovery substituted
ascertained fact for theological reasoning in this province that its
authority was broken.
The same sort of science flourished in the Bestiaries, which were used
everywhere, and especially in the pulpits, for the edification of the
faithful. In all of these, as in that compiled early in the thirteenth
century by an ecclesiastic, William of Normandy, we have this lesson,
borrowed from the Physiologus: "The lioness giveth birth to cubs which
remain three days without life. Then cometh the lion, breatheth upon
them, and bringeth them to life.... Thus it is that Jesus Christ
during three days was deprived of life, but God the Father raised him
gloriously."
Pious use was constantly made of this science, especially by monkish
preachers. The phoenix rising from his ashes proves the doctrine of the
resurrection; the structure and mischief of monkeys proves the existence
of demons; the fact that certain monkeys have no tails proves that Satan
has been shorn of his glory; the weasel, which "constantly changes its
place, is a type of the man estranged from the word of God, who findeth
no rest."
The moral treatises of the time often took the form of works on natural
history, in order the more fully to exploit these religious teachings of
Nature. Thus from the book On Bees, the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre,
we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war on them out of natural
hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the demons who dwell in the
air and with lightning and tempest assail and vex mankind--whereupon he
fills a long chapter with anecdotes of such demonic warfare on mortals.
In like manner his fellow-Dominican, the inquisitor Nider, in his book
The Ant Hill, teaches us that the ants in Ethiopia, which are said to
have horns and to grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of
atrocious heretics, like Wyclif and the Hussites, who bark and bite
against the truth; while the ants of India, which dig up gold out of
the sand with their feet and hoard it, though they make no use of it,
symbolize the fruitless toil with which the heretics dig out the gold of
Holy Scripture and hoard it in their books to no purpose.
This pious spirit not only pervaded science; it bloomed out in art, and
especially in the cathedrals. In the gargoyles overhanging the walls, in
the grotesques clambering about the towers or perched upon pinnacles, in
the dragons prowling under archways or lurking in bosses of foliage, in
the apocalyptic beasts carved upon the stalls of the choir, stained into
the windows, wrought into the tapestries, illuminated in the letters
and borders of psalters and missals, these marvels of creation suggested
everywhere morals from the Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and the
Exempla.(14)
(14) For the Physiologus, Bestiaries, etc., see Berger de Xivrey,
Traditions Teratologiques; also Hippeau's edition of the Bestiare de
Guillaume de Normandie, Caen, 1852, and such medieaval books of Exempla
as the Lumen Naturae; also Hoefer, Histoire de la Zoologie; also
Rambaud, Histoire de la Civilisation Francaise, Paris, 1885, vol i, pp.
368, 369; also Cardinal Pitra, preface to the Spicilegium Solismense,
Paris, 1885, passim; also Carus, Geschichte der Zoologie; and for
an admirable summary, the article Physiologus in the Encyclopedia
Britannica. In the illuminated manuscripts in the Library of Cornell
University are some very striking examples of grotesques. For admirably
illustrated articles on the Bestiaries, see Cahier and Martin, Melanges
d'Archeologie, Paris, 1851, 1852, and 1856, vol. ii of the first series,
pp. 85-232, and second series, volume on Curiosities Mysterieuses, pp.
106-164; also J. R. Allen, Early Christian Symbolism in Great Britain
and Ireland (London, 1887), lecture vi; for an exhaustive discussion of
the subject, see Das Thierbuch des normannischen Dichters Guillaume le
Clerc, herausgegeben von Reinisch, Leipsic, 1890; and for an Italian
examlpe, Goldstaub and Wendriner, Ein Tosco-Venezianischer Bestiarius,
Halle, 1892, where is given, on pp. 369-371, a very pious but very
comical tradition regarding the beaver, hardly mentionable to ears
polite. For Friar Bartholomew, see (besides his book itself) Medieval
Lore, edited by Robert Steele, London, 1893, pp. 118-138.
Here and there among men who were free from church control we have work
of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Abd Allatif
made observations upon the natural history of Egypt which showed a truly
scientific spirit, and the Emperor Frederick II attempted to promote a
more fruitful study of Nature; but one of these men was abhorred as a
Mussulman and the other as an infidel. Far more in accordance with the
spirit of the time was the ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis, whose book
on the topography of Ireland bestows much attention upon the animals
of the island, and rarely fails to make each contribute an appropriate
moral. For example, he says that in Ireland "eagles live for so many
ages that they seem to contend with eternity itself; so also the saints,
having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed fruit
of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly so high that
their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in the Holy Scriptures
strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets of the heavenly mysteries,
beyond what is allowed, fall below, as if the wings of the presumptuous
imaginations on which they are borne were scorched."
In one of the great men of the following century appeared a gleam of
healthful criticism: Albert the Great, in his work on the animals,
dissents from the widespread belief that certain birds spring from trees
and are nourished by the sap, and also from the theory that some are
generated in the sea from decaying wood.
But it required many generations for such scepticism to produce much
effect, and we find among the illustrations in an edition of Mandeville
published just before the Reformation not only careful accounts but
pictured representations both of birds and of beasts produced in the
fruit of trees.(15)
(15) For Giraldus Cambrensis, see the edition in the Bohn Library,
London, 1863, p. 30; for the Abd Allatif and Frederick II, see Hoefer,
as above; for Albertus Magnus, see the De Animalibus, lib. xxiii; for
the illustrations in Mandeville, see the Strasburg edition, 1484;
for the history of the myth of the tree which produces birds, see Max
Muller's lectures on the Science of Language, second series, lect. xii.
This general employment of natural science for pious purposes went on
after the Reformation. Luther frequently made this use of it, and his
example controlled his followers. In 1612, Wolfgang Franz, Professor of
Theology at Luther's university, gave to the world his sacred history of
animals, which went through many editions. It contained a very ingenious
classification, describing "natural dragons," which have three rows of
teeth to each jaw, and he piously adds, "the principal dragon is the
Devil."
Near the end of the same century, Father Kircher, the great Jesuit
professor at Rome, holds back the sceptical current, insists upon the
orthodox view, and represents among the animals entering the ark sirens
and griffins.
Yet even among theologians we note here and there a sceptical spirit
in natural science. Early in the same seventeenth century Eugene
Roger published his Travels in Palestine. As regards the utterances
of Scripture he is soundly orthodox: he prefaces his work with a map
showing, among other important points referred to in biblical history,
the place where Samson slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of
an ass, the cavern which Adam and Eve inhabited after their expulsion
from paradise, the spot where Balaam's ass spoke, the place where Jacob
wrestled with the angel, the steep place down which the swine possessed
of devils plunged into the sea, the position of the salt statue which
was once Lot's wife, the place at sea where Jonah was swallowed by
the whale, and "the exact spot where St. Peter caught one hundred and
fifty-three fishes."
As to natural history, he describes and discusses with great theological
acuteness the basilisk. He tells us that the animal is about a foot and
a half long, is shaped like a crocodile, and kills people with a single
glance. The one which he saw was dead, fortunately for him, since in
the time of Pope Leo IV--as he tells us--one appeared in Rome and killed
many people by merely looking at them; but the Pope destroyed it with
his prayers and the sign of the cross. He informs us that Providence
has wisely and mercifully protected man by requiring the monster to cry
aloud two or three times whenever it leaves its den, and that the divine
wisdom in creation is also shown by the fact that the monster is obliged
to look its victim in the eye, and at a certain fixed distance, before
its glance can penetrate the victim's brain and so pass to his heart.
He also gives a reason for supposing that the same divine mercy has
provided that the crowing of a cock will kill the basilisk.
Yet even in this good and credulous missionary we see the influence of
Bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for, having been told many
stories regarding the salamander, he secured one, placed it alive upon
the burning coals, and reports to us that the legends concerning its
power to live in the fire are untrue. He also tried experiments with
the chameleon, and found that the stories told of it were to be received
with much allowance: while, then, he locks up his judgment whenever he
discusses the letter of Scripture, he uses his mind in other things much
after the modern method.
In the second half of the same century Hottinger, in his Theological
Examination of the History of Creation, breaks from the belief in the
phoenix; but his scepticism is carefully kept within the limits imposed
by Scripture. He avows his doubts, first, "because God created the
animals in couples, while the phoenix is represented as a single,
unmated creature"; secondly, "because Noah, when he entered the ark,
brought the animals in by sevens, while there were never so many
individuals of the phoenix species"; thirdly, because "no man is known
who dares assert that he has ever seen this bird"; fourthly, because
"those who assert there is a phoenix differ among themselves."
In view of these attacks on the salamander and the phoenix, we are not
surprised to find, before the end of the century, scepticism regarding
the basilisk: the eminent Prof. Kirchmaier, at the University of
Wittenberg, treats phoenix and basilisk alike as old wives' fables. As
to the phoenix, he denies its existence, not only because Noah took no
such bird into the ark, but also because, as he pithily remarks, "birds
come from eggs, not from ashes." But the unicorn he can not resign, nor
will he even concede that the unicorn is a rhinoceros; he appeals to
Job and to Marco Polo to prove that this animal, as usually conceived,
really exists, and says, "Who would not fear to deny the existence of
the unicorn, since Holy Scripture names him with distinct praises?"
As to the other great animals mentioned in Scripture, he is so
rationalistic as to admit that behemoth was an elephant and leviathan a
whale.
But these germs of a fruitful scepticism grew, and we soon find
Dannhauer going a step further and declaring his disbelief even in the
unicorn, insisting that it was a rhinoceros--only that and nothing more.
Still, the main current continued strongly theological. In 1712 Samuel
Bochart published his great work upon the animals of Holy Scripture. As
showing its spirit we may take the titles of the chapters on the horse:
"Chapter VI. Of the Hebrew Name of the Horse."
"Chapter VII. Of the Colours of the Six Horses in Zechariah."
"Chapter VIII. Of the Horses in Job."
"Chapter IX. Of Solomon's Horses, and of the Texts wherein the Writers
praise the Excellence of Horses."
"Chapter X. Of the Consecrated Horses of the Sun."
Among the other titles of chapters are such as: Of Balaam's Ass; Of the
Thousand Philistines slain by Samson with the Jawbone of an Ass; Of
the Golden Calves of Aaron and Jeroboam; Of the Bleating, Milk, Wool,
External and Internal Parts of Sheep mentioned in Scripture; Of Notable
Things told regarding Lions in Scripture; Of Noah's Dove and of the
Dove which appeared at Christ's Baptism. Mixed up in the book, with
the principal mass drawn from Scripture, were many facts and reasonings
taken from investigations by naturalists; but all were permeated by the
theological spirit.(16)
(16) For Franz and Kircher, see Perrier, La Philosophie Zoologique avant
Darwin, 1884, p. 29; for Roger, see his La Terre Saincte, Paris, 1664,
pp. 89-92, 130, 218, etc.; for Hottinger, see his Historiae
Creatonis Examen theologico-philologicum, Heidelberg, 1659, lib.
vi, quaest lxxxiii; for Kirchmaier, see his Disputationes Zoologicae
(published collectively after his death), Jena, 1736; for Dannhauer, see
his Disputationes Theologicae, Leipsic, 1707, p. 14; for Bochart, see
his Hierozoikon, sive De Animalibus Sacre Scripturae, Leyden, 1712.
The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two thousand
years theologically, we find by the middle of the sixteenth century some
promising beginnings of a different method--the method of inquiry into
Nature scientifically--the method which seeks not plausibilities but
facts. At that time Edward Wotton led the way in England and Conrad
Gesner on the Continent, by observations widely extended, carefully
noted, and thoughtfully classified.
This better method of interrogating Nature soon led to the formation of
societies for the same purpose. In 1560 was founded an Academy for the
Study of Nature at Naples, but theologians, becoming alarmed, suppressed
it, and for nearly one hundred years there was no new combined effort
of that sort, until in 1645 began the meetings in London of what was
afterward the Royal Society. Then came the Academy of Sciences in
France, and the Accademia del Cimento in Italy; others followed in all
parts of the world, and a great new movement was begun.
Theologians soon saw a danger in this movement. In Italy, Prince Leopold
de' Medici, a protector of the Florentine Academy, was bribed with a
cardinal's hat to neglect it, and from the days of Urban VIII to Pius
IX a similar spirit was there shown. In France, there were frequent
ecclesiastical interferences, of which Buffon's humiliation for stating
a simple scientific truth was a noted example. In England, Protestantism
was at first hardly more favourable toward the Royal Society, and the
great Dr. South denounced it in his sermons as irreligious.
Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology and
science: while new investigators had mainly given up the medieval method
so dear to the Church, they had very generally retained the conception
of direct creation and of design throughout creation--a design having
as its main purpose the profit, instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of
man.
On this the naturally opposing tendencies of theology and science were
compromised. Science, while somewhat freed from its old limitations,
became the handmaid of theology in illustrating the doctrine of creative
design, and always with apparent deference to the Chaldean and other
ancient myths and legends embodied in the Hebrew sacred books.
About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great victory of
the scientific over the theologic method. At that time Francesco Redi
published the results of his inquiries into the doctrine of spontaneous
generation. For ages a widely accepted doctrine had been that water,
filth, and carrion had received power from the Creator to generate
worms, insects, and a multitude of the smaller animals; and this
doctrine had been especially welcomed by St. Augustine and many of the
fathers, since it relieved the Almighty of making, Adam of naming, and
Noah of living in the ark with these innumerable despised species.
But to this fallacy Redi put an end. By researches which could not be
gainsaid, he showed that every one of these animals came from an egg;
each, therefore, must be the lineal descendant of an animal created,
named, and preserved from "the beginning."
Similar work went on in England, but under more distinctly theological
limitations. In the same seventeenth century a very famous and popular
English book was published by the naturalist John Ray, a fellow of the
Royal Society, who produced a number of works on plants, fishes, and
birds; but the most widely read of all was entitled The Wisdom of God
manifested in the Works of Creation. Between the years 1691 and 1827 it
passed through nearly twenty editions.
Ray argued the goodness and wisdom of God from the adaptation of the
animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives and surroundings.
In the first years of the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of the
Royal Society, published his Cosmologia Sacra to refute anti-scriptural
opinions by producing evidences of creative design. Discussing "the ends
of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is scurvy meat, lays but two
eggs in the year, but a pheasant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay
and hatch fifteen or twenty." He points to the fact that "those of value
which lay few at a time sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove."
He breaks decidedly from the doctrine that noxious things in Nature are
caused by sin, and shows that they, too, are useful; that, "if nettles
sting, it is to secure an excellent medicine for children and cattle";
that, "if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better hedge"; and
that, "if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the thief." "Weasels,
kites, and other hurtful animals induce us to watchfulness; thistles and
moles, to good husbandry; lice oblige us to cleanliness in our
bodies, spiders in our houses, and the moth in our clothes." This very
optimistic view, triumphing over the theological theory of noxious
animals and plants as effects of sin, which prevailed with so much force
from St. Augustine to Wesley, was developed into nobler form during the
century by various thinkers, and especially by Archdeacon Paley, whose
Natural Theology exercised a powerful influence down to recent
times. The same tendency appeared in other countries, though various
philosophers showed weak points in the argument, and Goethe made sport
of it in a noted verse, praising the forethought of the Creator in
foreordaining the cork tree to furnish stoppers for wine-bottles.
Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main movement
culminated in the Bridgewater Treatises. Pursuant to the will of the
eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the President of the Royal Society selected
eight persons, each to receive a thousand pounds sterling for writing
and publishing a treatise on the "power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as
manifested in the creation." Of these, the leading essays in regard
to animated Nature were those of Thomas Chalmers, on The Adaptation of
External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man; of Sir
Charles Bell, on The Hand as evincing Design; of Roget, on Animal and
Vegetable Physiology with reference to Natural Theology; and of Kirby,
on The Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural
Theology.
Besides these there were treatises by Whewell, Buckland, Kidd, and
Prout. The work was well done. It was a marked advance on all that had
appeared before, in matter, method, and spirit. Looking back upon it
now we can see that it was provisional, but that it was none the less
fruitful in truth, and we may well remember Darwin's remark on
the stimulating effect of mistaken THEORIES, as compared with the
sterilizing effect of mistaken OBSERVATIONS: mistaken observations lead
men astray, mistaken theories suggest true theories.
An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the
ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it.
Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms has
been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of orthodoxy.
No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the Rev. Prof.
Zoeckler says of this movement to demonstrate creative purpose and
design, and of the men who took part in it, "The earth appeared in their
representation of it like a great clothing shop and soup kitchen, and
God as a glorified rationalistic professor." Such a statement as this
is far from just to the conceptions of such men as Butler, Paley,
and Chalmers, no matter how fully the thinking world has now outlived
them.(17)
(17) For a very valuable and interesting study on the old idea of the
generation of insects from carrion, see Osten-Sacken, on the Oxen-born
Bees of the Ancients, Heidelberg, 1894; for Ray, see the work cited,
London, 1827, p. 153; for Grew, see Cosmologia Sacra, or a Discourse on
the Universe, as it is the Creature and Kingdom of God; chiefly written
to demonstrate the Truth and Excellency of the Bible, by Dr. Nehemiah
Grew, Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society of
London, 1701; for Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises, see the usual
editions; also Lange, History of Rationalism. Goethe's couplet ran as
follows:
"Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenerschopfer, der Gnadig, Als er den
Korkbaum erschuf, gleich auch die Stopfel erfand."
For the quotation from Zoeckler, see his work already cited, vol. ii,
pp. 74, 440.
But, noble as the work of these men was, the foundation of fact on which
they reared it became evidently more and more insecure. For as far
back as the seventeenth century acute theologians had begun to discern
difficulties more serious than any that had before confronted them.
More and more it was seen that the number of different species was far
greater than the world had hitherto imagined. Greater and greater had
become the old difficulty in conceiving that, of these innumerable
species, each had been specially created by the Almighty hand; that each
had been brought before Adam by the Almighty to be named; and that each,
in couples or in sevens, had been gathered by Noah into the ark. But the
difficulties thus suggested were as nothing compared to those raised by
the DISTRIBUTION of animals.
Even in the first days of the Church this had aroused serious thought,
and above all in the great mind of St. Augustine. In his City of God he
had stated the difficulty as follows: "But there is a question about all
these kinds of beasts, which are neither tamed by man, nor spring from
the earth like frogs, such as wolves and others of that sort,.... as
to how they could find their way to the islands after that flood which
destroyed every living thing not preserved in the ark.... Some, indeed,
might be thought to reach islands by swimming, in case these were very
near; but some islands are so remote from continental lands that it does
not seem possible that any creature could reach them by swimming. It
is not an incredible thing, either, that some animals may have been
captured by men and taken with them to those lands which they intended
to inhabit, in order that they might have the pleasure of hunting;
and it can not be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished
through the agency of angels, commanded or allowed to perform this
labour by God."
But this difficulty had now assumed a magnitude of which St. Augustine
never dreamed. Most powerful of all agencies to increase it were the
voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Amerigo Vespucci, and
other navigators of the period of discovery. Still more serious did it
become as the great islands of the southern seas were explored. Every
navigator brought home tidings of new species of animals and of races of
men living in parts of the world where the theologians, relying on the
statement of St. Paul that the gospel had gone into all lands, had for
ages declared there could be none; until finally it overtaxed even
the theological imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to
the divine command, distributing the various animals over the earth,
dropping the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe,
the ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North America.
The first striking evidence of this new difficulty was shown by the
eminent Jesuit missionary, Joseph Acosta. In his Natural and Moral
History of the Indies, published in 1590, he proved himself honest and
lucid. Though entangled in most of the older scriptural views, he broke
away from many; but the distribution of animals gave him great trouble.
Having shown the futility of St. Augustine's other explanations, he
quaintly asks: "Who can imagine that in so long a voyage men woulde
take the paines to carrie Foxes to Peru, especially that kinde they call
'Acias,' which is the filthiest I have seene? Who woulde likewise say
that they have carried Tygers and Lyons? Truly it were a thing worthy
the laughing at to thinke so. It was sufficient, yea, very much, for
men driven against their willes by tempest, in so long and unknowne a
voyage, to escape with their owne lives, without busying themselves to
carrie Woolves and Foxes, and to nourish them at sea."
It was under the impression made by this new array of facts that in 1667
Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on The Origin of Animals
and the Migration of Peoples. This book shows, like that of Acosta,
the shock and strain to which the discovery of America subjected the
received theological scheme of things. It was issued with the special
approbation of the Bishop of Salzburg, and it indicates the possibility
that a solution of the whole trouble may be found in the text, "Let the
earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." Milius goes on to
show that the ancient philosophers agree with Moses, and that "the earth
and the waters, and especially the heat of the sun and of the genial
sky, together with that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be
inherent in the soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial
animals, and birds." On the other hand, he is very severe against those
who imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals. But the
subject with which Milius especially grapples is the DISTRIBUTION of
animals. He is greatly exercised by the many species found in America
and in remote islands of the ocean--species entirely unknown in the
other continents--and of course he is especially troubled by the fact
that these species existing in those exceedingly remote parts of the
earth do not exist in the neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. He confesses
that to explain the distribution of animals is the most difficult part
of the problem. If it be urged that birds could reach America by flying
and fishes by swimming, he asks, "What of the beasts which neither fly
nor swim?" Yet even as to the birds he asks, "Is there not an infinite
variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily, and have such
a horror of the water, that they would not even dare trust themselves to
fly over a wide river?" As to fishes, he says, "They are very averse
to wandering from their native waters," and he shows that there are
now reported many species of American and East Indian fishes entirely
unknown on the other continents, whose presence, therefore, can not be
explained by any theory of natural dispersion.
Of those who suggest that land animals may have been dispersed over the
earth by the direct agency of man for his use or pleasure he asks: "Who
would like to get different sorts of lions, bears, tigers, and other
ferocious and noxious creatures on board ship? who would trust himself
with them? and who would wish to plant colonies of such creatures in
new, desirable lands?"
His conclusion is that plants and animals take their origin in the lands
wherein they are found; an opinion which he supports by quoting from the
two narrations in Genesis passages which imply generative force in earth
and water.
But in the eighteenth century matters had become even worse for the
theological view. To meet the difficulty the eminent Benedictine, Dom
Calmet, in his Commentary, expressed the belief that all the species of
a genus had originally formed one species, and he dwelt on this view
as one which enabled him to explain the possibility of gathering all
animals into the ark. This idea, dangerous as it was to the fabric of
orthodoxy, and involving a profound separation from the general doctrine
of the Church, seems to have been abroad among thinking men, for we
find in the latter half of the same century even Linnaeus inclining to
consider it. It was time, indeed, that some new theological theory be
evolved; the great Linnaeus himself, in spite of his famous declaration
favouring the fixity of species, had dealt a death-blow to the
old theory. In his Systema Naturae, published in the middle of the
eighteenth century, he had enumerated four thousand species of animals,
and the difficulties involved in the naming of each of them by Adam and
in bringing them together in the ark appeared to all thinking men more
and more insurmountable.
What was more embarrassing, the number of distinct species went on
increasing rapidly, indeed enormously, until, as an eminent zoological
authority of our own time has declared, "for every one of the species
enumerated by Linnaeus, more than fifty kinds are known to the
naturalist of to-day, and the number of species still unknown doubtless
far exceeds the list of those recorded."
Already there were premonitions of the strain made upon Scripture by
requiring a hundred and sixty distinct miraculous interventions of the
Creator to produce the hundred and sixty species of land shells found
in the little island of Madeira alone, and fourteen hundred distinct
interventions to produce the actual number of distinct species of a
single well-known shell.
Ever more and more difficult, too, became the question of the
geographical distribution of animals. As new explorations were made in
various parts of the world, this danger to the theological view went on
increasing. The sloths in South America suggested painful questions: How
could animals so sluggish have got away from the neighbourhood of Mount
Ararat so completely and have travelled so far?
The explorations in Australia and neighbouring islands made matters
still worse, for there was found in those regions a whole realm of
animals differing widely from those of other parts of the earth.
The problem before the strict theologians became, for example, how to
explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in the ark and be now
only found in Australia: his saltatory powers are indeed great, but
how could he by any series of leaps have sprung across the intervening
mountains, plains, and oceans to that remote continent? and, if the
theory were adopted that at some period a causeway extended across the
vast chasm separating Australia from the nearest mainland, why did not
lions, tigers, camels, and camelopards force or find their way across
it?
The theological theory, therefore, had by the end of the eighteenth
century gone to pieces. The wiser theologians waited; the unwise
indulged in exhortations to "root out the wicked heart of unbelief," in
denunciation of "science falsely so called," and in frantic declarations
that "the Bible is true"--by which they meant that the limited
understanding of it which they had happened to inherit is true.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological theory
of creation--though still preached everywhere as a matter of form--was
clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost: such strong men
as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman Church, Dean Buckland in the Anglican,
and Hugh Miller in the Scottish Church, made heroic efforts to save
something from it, but all to no purpose. That sturdy Teutonic and
Anglo-Saxon honesty, which is the best legacy of the Middle Ages to
Christendom, asserted itself in the old strongholds of theological
thought, the universities. Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler
nor the nimble reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as the line
of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old
astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the Almighty sitting
above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it
with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed
the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals
to suit the needs and purposes of man. They had developed a system of a
very different sort, and this we shall next consider.(18)