It is sometimes said, that a religious messenger from God does not come
amongst men for the sake of teaching truths in science, or of correcting
errors in science. Most justly is this said: but often in terms far too
feeble. For generally these terms are such as to imply, that, although no
direct and imperative function of his mission, it was yet open to him, as
a permissible function--that, although not pressing with the force of an
obligation upon the missionary, it was yet at his discretion--if not to
correct other men's errors, yet at least in his own person to speak with
scientific precision. I contend that it was _not_. I contend, that to
have uttered the truths of astronomy, of geology, &c., at the era of new-
born Christianity, was not only _below_ and _beside_ the purposes of a
religion, but would have been _against_ them. Even upon errors of a far
more important class than errors in science can ever be--superstitions,
for instance, that degraded the very idea of God; prejudices and false
usages, that laid waste human happiness (such as slavery, and many
hundreds of other abuses that might be mentioned), the rule evidently
acted upon by the Founder of Christianity was this--Given the purification
of the well-head, once assumed that the fountains of truth are cleansed,
all these derivative currents of evil will cleanse themselves. As a
general rule, the branches of error were disregarded, and the roots only
attacked. If, then, so lofty a station was taken with regard even to such
errors as really _had_ moral and spiritual relations, how much more with
regard to the comparative trifles (as in the ultimate relations of human
nature they are) of merely human science! But, for my part, I go further,
and assert, that upon three reasons it was impossible for any messenger
from God (or offering himself in that character) to have descended into
the communication of truth merely scientific, or economic, or worldly. And
the three reasons are these:--_First_, Because such a descent would have
degraded his mission, by lowering it to the base level of a collusion with
human curiosity, or (in the most favorable case) of a collusion with petty
and transitory interests. _Secondly_, Because it would have ruined his
mission, by disturbing its free agency, and misdirecting its energies, in
two separate modes: first, by destroying the spiritual _auctoritas_ (the
prestige and consideration) of the missionary; secondly, by vitiating the
spiritual atmosphere of his audience--that is, corrupting and misdirecting
the character of their thoughts and expectations. He that in the early
days of Christianity should have proclaimed the true theory of the solar
system, or that by any chance word or allusion should then, in a condition
of man so little prepared to receive such truths, have asserted or assumed
the daily motion of the earth on its own axis, or its annual motion round
the sun, would have found himself entangled at once and irretrievably in
the following unmanageable consequences:--First of all, and
instantaneously, he would have been roused to the alarming fact, that, by
this dreadful indiscretion he himself, the professed deliverer of a new
and spiritual religion, had in a moment untuned the spirituality of his
audience. He would find that he had awakened within them the passion of
curiosity--the most unspiritual of passions, and of curiosity in a fierce
polemic shape. The very safest step in so deplorable a situation would be,
instantly to recant. Already by this one may estimate the evil, when such
would be its readiest palliation. For in what condition would the
reputation of the teacher be left for discretion and wisdom as an
intellectual guide, when his first act must be to recant--and to recant
what to the whole body of his hearers would wear the character of a
lunatic proposition. Such considerations might possibly induce him _not_
to recant. But in that case the consequences are far worse. Having once
allowed himself to sanction what his hearers regard as the most monstrous
of paradoxes, he has no liberty of retreat open to him. He must stand to
the promises of his own acts. Uttering the first truth of a science, he is
pledged to the second; taking the main step, he is committed to all which
follow. He is thrown at once upon the endless controversies which science
in every stage provokes, and in none more than in the earliest. Starting,
besides, from the authority of a divine mission, he could not (as others
might) have the privilege of selecting arbitrarily or partially. If upon
one science, then upon all; if upon science, then upon art; if upon art
and science, then upon _every_ branch of social economy his reformations
and advances are equally due--due as to all, if due as to any. To move in
one direction, is constructively to undertake for all. Without power to
retreat, he has thus thrown the intellectual interests of his followers
into a channel utterly alien to the purposes of a spiritual mission.
The spiritual mission, therefore, the purpose for which only the religious
teacher was sent, has now perished altogether--overlaid and confounded by
the merely scientific wranglings to which his own inconsiderate
precipitance has opened the door. But suppose at this point that the
teacher, aware at length of the mischief which he has caused, and seeing
that the fatal error of uttering one solitary novel truth upon a matter of
mere science is by inevitable consequence to throw him upon a road leading
altogether away from the proper field of his mission, takes the laudable
course of confessing his error, and of attempting a return into his proper
spiritual province. This may be his best course; yet, after all, it will
not retrieve his lost ground. He returns with a character confessedly
damaged. His very excuse rests upon the blindness and shortsightedness
which forbade his anticipating the true and natural consequences. Neither
will his own account of the case be generally accepted. He will not be
supposed to retreat from further controversy, as inconsistent with
spiritual purposes, but because he finds himself unequal to the dispute.
And, in the very best case, he is, by his own acknowledgment, tainted with
human infirmity. He has been ruined for a servant of inspiration; and how?
By a process, let it be remembered, of which all the steps are inevitable
under the same agency: that is, in the case of any primitive Christian
teacher having attempted to speak the language of scientific truth in
dealing with the phenomena of astronomy, geology, or of any merely human
knowledge.
Now, thirdly and lastly, in order to try the question in an extreme form,
let it be supposed that, aided by powers of working miracles, some early
apostle of Christianity should actually have succeeded in carrying through
the Copernican system of astronomy, as an article of blind belief, sixteen
centuries before the progress of man's intellect had qualified him for
naturally developing that system. What, in such a case, would be the true
estimate and valuation of the achievement? Simply this, that he had thus
succeeded in cancelling and counteracting a determinate scheme of divine
discipline and training for man. Wherefore did God give to man the powers
for contending with scientific difficulties? Wherefore did he lay a secret
train of continual occasions, that should rise, by relays, through scores
of generations, for provoking and developing those activities in man's
intellect, if, after all, he is to send a messenger of his own, more than
human, to intercept and strangle all these great purposes? This is to
mistake the very meaning and purposes of a revelation. A revelation is not
made for the purpose of showing to indolent men that which, by faculties
already given to them, they may show to themselves; no: but for the
purpose of showing _that_ which the moral darkness of man will not,
without supernatural light, allow him to perceive. With disdain,
therefore, must every thoughtful person regard the notion, that God could
wilfully interfere with his own plans, by accrediting ambassadors to
reveal astronomy, or any other science, which he has commanded men, by
qualifying men, to reveal for themselves.
Even as regards astronomy--a science so nearly allying itself to religion
by the loftiness and by the purity of its contemplations--Scripture is
nowhere the _parent_ of any doctrine, nor so much as the silent
sanctioner of any doctrine. It is made impossible for Scripture to teach
falsely, by the simple fact that Scripture, on such subjects, will not
condescend to teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language of men
(which at any rate it must do, in order to make itself understood), not by
way of sanctioning a theory, but by way of using a fact. The Bible, for
instance, _uses_ (postulates) the phenomena of day and night, of
summer and winter; and, in relation to their causes, speaks by the same
popular and inaccurate language which is current for ordinary purposes,
even amongst the most scientific of astronomers. For the man of science,
equally with the populace, talks of the sun as rising and setting, as
having finished half his day's journey, &c., and, without pedantry, could
not in many cases talk otherwise. But the results, which are all that
concern Scripture, are equally true, whether accounted for by one
hypothesis which is philosophically just, or by another which is popular
and erring.
Now, on the other hand, in geology and cosmology, the case is stronger.
_Here_ there is no opening for a compliance even with a _language_ that is
erroneous; for no language at all is current upon subjects that have never
engaged the popular attention. _Here_, where there is no such stream of
apparent phenomena running counter (as in astronomy there is) to the real
phenomena, neither is there any popular language opposed to the
scientific. The whole are abtruse speculations, even as regards their
objects, nor dreamed of as possibilities, either in their true aspects or
their false aspects, till modern times. The Scriptures, therefore, nowhere
allude to such sciences, either as taking the shape of histories, applied
to processes current and in movement, or as taking the shape of theories
applied to processes past and accomplished. The Mosaic cosmogony, indeed,
gives the succession of natural births; and probably the general outline
of such a succession will be more and more confirmed as geology advances.
But as to the time, the duration, of this successive evolution, it is the
idlest of notions that the Scriptures either have, or could have,
condescended to human curiosity upon so awful a prologue to the drama of
this world. Genesis would no more have indulged so mean a passion with
respect to the mysterious inauguration of the world, than the Apocalypse
with respect to its mysterious close. 'Yet the six _days_ of Moses!' Days!
But is it possible that human folly should go the length of understanding
by the Mosaical _day_, the mysterious _day_ of that awful agency which
moulded the heavens and the heavenly host, no more than the ordinary
_nychthemeron_ or cycle of twenty-four hours? The period implied in a
_day_, when used in relation to the inaugural manifestation of
creative power in that vast drama which introduces God to man in the
character of a demiurgus or creator of the world, indicated one stage
amongst six; involving probably many millions of years. The silliest of
nurses, in her nursery babble, could hardly suppose that the mighty
process began on a Monday morning, and ended on Saturday night. If we are
seriously to study the value and scriptural acceptation of scriptural
words and phrases, I presume that our first business will be to collate
the use of these words in one part of Scripture, with their use in other
parts, holding the same spiritual relations. The creation, for instance,
does not belong to the earthly or merely historical records, but to the
spiritual records of the Bible; to the same category, therefore, as the
prophetic sections of the Bible. Now, in those, and in the Psalms, how do
we understand the word _day_? Is any man so little versed in biblical
language as not to know, that (except in the merely historical parts of
the Jewish records) every section of time has a secret and separate
acceptation in the Scriptures? Does an aeon, though a Grecian word, bear
scripturally (either in Daniel or in St. John) any sense known to Grecian
ears? Do the seventy _weeks_ of the prophet mean weeks in the sense
of human calendars? Already the Psalms (xc.), already St. Peter (2d
Epist.), warn us of a peculiar sense attached to the word _day_ in
divine ears. And who of the innumerable interpreters understands the
twelve hundred and sixty days in Daniel, or his two thousand and odd days,
to mean, by possibility, periods of twenty-four hours? Surely the theme of
Moses was as mystical, and as much entitled to the benefit of mystical
language, as that of the prophets.
The sum of this matter is this:--God, by a Hebrew prophet, is sublimely
described as _the Revealer_; and, in variation of his own expression,
the same prophet describes him as the Being 'that knoweth the darkness.'
Under no idea can the relations of God to man be more grandly expressed.
But of what is he the revealer? Not surely of those things which he has
enabled man to reveal for himself, but of those things which, were it not
through special light from heaven, must eternally remain sealed up in
inaccessible darkness. On this principle we should all laugh at a revealed
cookery. But essentially the same ridicule, not more, and not less,
applies to a revealed astronomy, or a revealed geology. As a fact, there
_is_ no such astronomy or geology: as a possibility, by the _a priori_
argument which I have used (viz., that a revelation on such fields would
counteract _other_ machineries of providence), there _can_ be no such
astronomy or geology in the Bible. Consequently there _is_ none.
Consequently there can be no schism or feud upon _these_ subjects between
the Bible and the philosophies outside.