fourteenth century, and that their incumbents were bound to sign
Ptolemaic articles. In that case, with every respect for the efforts of
persons thus hampered to attain and expound the truth, I think men of
common sense would go elsewhere to learn astronomy.
I did not write this paragraph without a {499} knowledge that its sense
would be open to the kind of perversion which it has suffered; but, if that
was clear, the necessity for the statement was still clearer. It is my
deliberate opinion: I reiterate it; and I say that, in my judgment, it is
extremely inexpedient that any subject which calls itself a science should
be entrusted to teachers who are debarred from freely following out
scientific methods to their legitimate conclusions, whatever those
conclusions may be. If I may borrow a phrase paraded at the Church
Congress, I think it "ought to be unpleasant" for any man of science to
find himself in the position of such a teacher.
Human nature is not altered by seating it in a professorial chair, even of
theology. I have very little doubt that if, in the year 1859, the tenure of
my office had depended upon my adherence to the doctrines of Cuvier, the
objections to those set forth in the _Origin of Species_ would have had a
halo of gravity about them that, being free to teach what I pleased, I
failed to discover. And, in making that statement, it does not appear to me
that I am confessing that I should have been debarred by "selfish
interests" from making candid inquiry, or that I should have been biassed
by "sordid motives." I hope that even such a fragment of moral sense as may
remain in an ecclesiastical "infidel" might have got me through the
difficulty; but it would be unworthy to deny or disguise the fact that a
very serious difficulty must have been created for me by the nature of my
tenure. And let it be observed that {500} the temptation, in my case, would
have been far slighter than in that of a professor of theology; whatever
biological doctrine I had repudiated, nobody I cared for would have thought
the worse of me for so doing. No scientific journals would have howled me
down, as the religious newspapers howled down my too honest friend, the
late Bishop of Natal; nor would my colleagues of the Royal Society have
turned their backs upon me, as his episcopal colleagues boycotted him.
I say these facts are obvious, and that it is wholesome and needful that
they should be stated. It is in the interests of theology, if it be a
science, and it is in the interests of those teachers of theology who
desire to be something better than counsel for creeds, that it should be
taken to heart. The seeker after theological truth and that only, will no
more suppose that I have insulted him, than the prisoner who works in
fetters will try to pick a quarrel with me, if I suggest that he would get
on better if the fetters were knocked off; unless indeed, as it is said
does happen in the course of long captivities, that the victim at length
ceases to feel the weight of his chains, or even takes to hugging them, as
if they were honourable ornaments.[141]
* * * * *
{501}
XIII
THE LIGHTS OF THE CHURCH AND THE LIGHT OF SCIENCE
There are three ways of regarding any account of past occurrences, whether
delivered to us orally or recorded in writing.
The narrative may be exactly true. That is to say, the words, taken in
their natural sense, and interpreted according to the rules of grammar, may
convey to the mind of the hearer, or of the reader, an idea precisely
correspondent with one which would have remained in the mind of a witness.
For example, the statement that King Charles the First was beheaded at
Whitehall on the 30th day of January 1649, is as exactly true as any
proposition in mathematics or physics; no one doubts that any person of
sound faculties, properly placed, who was present at Whitehall throughout
that day, and who used his eyes, would have seen the King's head cut off;
and that there would have remained in his mind an idea of that occurrence
which he would have put into words of the same value as those which we use
to express it. {502}
Or the narrative may be partly true and partly false. Thus, some histories
of the time tell us what the King said, and what Bishop Juxon said; or
report royalist conspiracies to effect a rescue; or detail the motives
which induced the chiefs of the Commonwealth to resolve that the King
should die. One account declares that the King knelt at a high block,
another that he lay down with his neck on a mere plank. And there are
contemporary pictorial representations of both these modes of procedure.
Such narratives, while veracious as to the main event, may and do exhibit
various degrees of unconscious and conscious misrepresentation,
suppression, and invention, till they become hardly distinguishable from
pure fictions. Thus, they present a transition to narratives of a third
class, in which the fictitious element predominates. Here, again, there are
all imaginable gradations, from such works as Defoe's quasi-historical
account of the Plague year, which probably gives a truer conception of that
dreadful time than any authentic history, through the historical novel,
drama, and epic, to the purely phantasmal creations of imaginative genius,
such as the old _Arabian Nights_, or the modern _Shaving of Shagpat_. It is
not strictly needful for my present purpose that I should say anything
about narratives which are professedly fictitious. Yet it may be well,
perhaps, if I disclaim any intention of derogating from their value, when I
insist upon the paramount necessity of recollecting that there is no sort
of relation between the ethical, or the aesthetic, or even {503} the
scientific importance of such works, and their worth as historical
documents. Unquestionably, to the poetic artist, or even to the student of
psychology, _Hamlet_ and _Macbeth_ may be better instructors than all the
books of a wilderness of professors of aesthetics or of moral philosophy.
But, as evidence of occurrences in Denmark, or in Scotland, at the times
and places indicated, they are out of court; the profoundest admiration for
them, the deepest gratitude for their influence, are consistent with the
knowledge that, historically speaking, they are worthless fables, in which
any foundation of reality that may exist is submerged beneath the
imaginative superstructure.
At present, however, I am not concerned to dwell upon the importance of
fictitious literature and the immensity of the work which it has effected
in the education of the human race. I propose to deal with the much more
limited inquiry: Are there two other classes of consecutive narratives (as
distinct from statements of individual facts), or only one? Is there any
known historical work which is throughout exactly true, or is there not? In
the case of the great majority of histories the answer is not doubtful:
they are all only partially true. Even those venerable works which bear the
names of some of the greatest of ancient Greek and Roman writers, and which
have been accepted by generation after generation, down to modern times, as
stores of unquestionable truth, have been compelled by scientific
criticism, after a long battle, to descend to the common level, and to
confess to a large admixture of error. I might {504} fairly take this for
granted; but it may be well that I should entrench myself behind the very
apposite words of a historical authority who is certainly not obnoxious to
even a suspicion of sceptical tendencies.
Time was--and that not very long ago--when all the relations of ancient
authors concerning the old world were received with a ready belief; and
an unreasoning and uncritical faith accepted with equal satisfaction
the narrative of the campaigns of Caesar and of the doings of Romulus,
the account of Alexander's marches and of the conquests of Semiramis.
We can most of us remember when, in this country, the whole story of
regal Rome, and even the legend of the Trojan settlement in Latium,
were seriously placed before boys as history, and discoursed of as
unhesitatingly and in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of the Catiline
Conspiracy or the Conquest of Britain....
But all this is now changed. The last century has seen the birth and
growth of a new science--the Science of Historical Criticism.... The
whole world of profane history has been revolutionised....[142]
If these utterances were true when they fell from the lips of a Bampton
lecturer in 1859, with how much greater force do they appeal to us now,
when the immense labours of the generation now passing away constitute one
vast illustration of the power and fruitfulness of scientific methods of
investigation in history, no less than in all other departments of
knowledge.
At the present time, I suppose, there is no one who doubts that histories
which appertain to any {505} other people than the Jews, and their
spiritual progeny in the first century, fall within the second class of the
three enumerated. Like Goethe's Autobiography, they might all be entitled
"Wahrheit und Dichtung"--"Truth and Fiction." The proportion of the two
constituents changes indefinitely; and the quality of the fiction varies
through the whole gamut of unveracity. But "Dichtung" is always there. For
the most acute and learned of historians cannot remedy the imperfections of
his sources of information; nor can the most impartial wholly escape the
influence of the "personal equation" generated by his temperament and by
his education. Therefore, from the narratives of Herodotus to those set
forth in yesterday's _Times_, all history is to be read subject to the
warning that fiction has its share therein. The modern vast development of
fugitive literature cannot be the unmitigated evil that some do vainly say
it is, since it has put an end to the popular delusion of less press-ridden
times, that what appears in print must be true. We should rather hope that
some beneficent influence may create among the erudite a like healthy
suspicion of manuscripts and inscriptions, however ancient; for a bulletin
may lie, even though it be written in cuneiform characters. Hotspur's
starling, that was to be taught to speak nothing but "Mortimer" into the
ears of King Henry the Fourth, might be a useful inmate of every
historian's library, if "Fiction" were substituted for the name of Harry
Percy's friend. {506}
But it was the chief object of the lecturer to the congregation gathered in
St. Mary's, Oxford, thirty-one years ago, to prove to them, by evidence
gathered with no little labour and marshalled with much skill, that one
group of historical works was exempt from the general rule; and that the
narratives contained in the canonical Scriptures are free from any
admixture of error. With justice and candour, the lecturer impresses upon
his hearers that the special distinction of Christianity, among the
religions of the world, lies in its claim to be historical; to be surely
founded upon events which have happened, exactly as they are declared to
have happened in its sacred books; which are true, that is, in the sense
that the statement about the execution of Charles the First is true.
Further, it is affirmed that the New Testament presupposes the historical
exactness of the Old Testament; that the points of contact of "sacred" and
"profane" history are innumerable; and that the demonstration of the
falsity of the Hebrew records, especially in regard to those narratives
which are assumed to be true in the New Testament, would be fatal to
Christian theology.
My utmost ingenuity does not enable me to discover a flaw in the argument
thus briefly summarised. I am fairly at a loss to comprehend how any one,
for a moment, can doubt that Christian theology must stand or fall with the
historical trustworthiness of the Jewish Scriptures. The very conception of
the Messiah, or Christ, is inextricably interwoven with Jewish history; the
identification {507} of Jesus of Nazareth with that Messiah rests upon the
interpretation of passages of the Hebrew Scriptures which have no
evidential value unless they possess the historical character assigned to
them. If the covenant with Abraham was not made; if circumcision and
sacrifices were not ordained by Jahveh; if the "ten words" were not written
by God's hand on the stone tables; if Abraham is more or less a mythical
hero, such as Theseus; the story of the Deluge a fiction; that of the Fall
a legend; and that of the Creation the dream of a seer; if all these
definite and detailed narratives of apparently real events have no more
value as history than have the stories of the regal period of Rome--what is
to be said about the Messianic doctrine, which is so much less clearly
enunciated? And what about the authority of the writers of the books of the
New Testament, who, on this theory, have not merely accepted flimsy
fictions for solid truths, but have built the very foundations of Christian
dogma upon legendary quicksands?
But these may be said to be merely the carpings of that carnal reason which
the profane call common sense; I hasten, therefore, to bring up the forces
of unimpeachable ecclesiastical authority in support of my position. In a
sermon preached last December, in St. Paul's Cathedral,[143] Canon Liddon
declares:--
{508}
For Christians it will be enough to know that our Lord Jesus Christ set
the seal of His infallible sanction on the whole of the Old Testament.
He found the Hebrew Canon as we have it in our hands to-day, and he
treated it as an authority which was above discussion. Nay more: He
went out of His way--if we may reverently speak thus--to sanction not a
few portions of it which modern scepticism rejects. When he would warn
His hearers against the dangers of spiritual relapse, He bids them
remember "Lot's wife."[144] When He would point out how worldly
engagements may blind the soul to a coming judgment, He reminds them
how men ate, and drank, and married, and were given in marriage, until
the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the Flood came and
destroyed them all.[145] If He would put His finger on a fact in past
Jewish history which, by its admitted reality, would warrant belief in
His own coming Resurrection, He points to Jonah's being three days and
three nights in the whale's belly (p. 23).[146]
The preacher proceeds to brush aside the common--I had almost said
vulgar--apologetic pretext that Jesus was using _ad hominem_ arguments, or
"accommodating" his better knowledge to popular ignorance, as well as to
point out the inadmissibility of the other alternative, that he shared the
popular ignorance. And to those who hold the latter view sarcasm is dealt
out with no niggard hand.
But they will find it difficult to persuade mankind that, if He could
be mistaken on a matter of such strictly religious importance as the
value of the sacred literature of His countrymen, He can be safely
trusted about anything else. The trustworthiness of the Old Testament
is, in fact, inseparable from the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus
Christ; and if we believe that He is the true Light of the world, we
shall close our ears against suggestions impairing the credit of those
Jewish Scriptures which have received the stamp of His Divine authority
(p. 25).
{509}
Moreover, I learn from the public journals that a brilliant and sharply-cut
view of orthodoxy, of like hue and pattern, was only the other day
exhibited in that great theological kaleidoscope, the pulpit of St. Mary's,
recalling the time so long past by, when a Bampton lecturer, in the same
place, performed the unusual feat of leaving the faith of old-fashioned
Christians undisturbed.
Yet many things have happened in the intervening thirty-one years. The
Bampton lecturer of 1859 had to grapple only with the infant Hercules of
historical criticism; and he is now a full-grown athlete, bearing on his
shoulders the spoils of all the lions that have stood in his path. Surely a
martyr's courage, as well as a martyr's faith, is needed by any one who, at
this time, is prepared to stand by the following plea for the veracity of
the Pentateuch:--
Adam, according to the Hebrew original, was for 243 years contemporary
with Methuselah, who conversed for a hundred years with Shem. Shem was
for fifty years contemporary with Jacob, who probably saw Jochebed,
Moses's mother. Thus, Moses might by oral tradition have obtained the
history of Abraham, and even of the Deluge, at third hand; and that of
the Temptation and the Fall at fifth hand....
If it be granted--as it seems to be--that the great and stirring events
in a nation's life will, under ordinary circumstances, be remembered
(apart from all written memorials) for the space of 150 years, being
handed down through five generations, it must be allowed (even on mere
human grounds) that the account which Moses gives of the Temptation and
the Fall is to be depended upon, if it passed through no more than four
hands between him and Adam.[147]
{510}
If "the trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ" is to stand or fall with
the belief in the sudden transmutation of the chemical components of a
woman's body into sodium chloride, or on the "admitted reality" of Jonah's
ejection, safe and sound, on the shores of the Levant, after three day's
sea-journey in the stomach of a gigantic marine animal, what possible
pretext can there be for even hinting a doubt as to the precise truth of
the longevity attributed to the Patriarchs? Who that has swallowed the
camel of Jonah's journey will be guilty of the affectation of straining at
such a historical gnat--nay midge--as the supposition that the mother of
Moses was told the story of the Flood by Jacob; who had it straight from
Shem; who was on friendly terms with Methuselah; who knew Adam quite well?
Yet, by the strange irony of things, the illustrious brother of the divine
who propounded this remarkable theory, has been the guide and foremost
worker of that band of investigators of the records of Assyria and of
Babylonia, who have opened to our view, not merely a new chapter, but a new
volume of primeval history, relating to the very people who have the most
numerous points of contact with the life of the ancient Hebrews. Now,
whatever imperfections may yet obscure the full value of the Mesopotamian
records, everything that has been clearly ascertained tends to the
conclusion that the assignment of no more than 4000 years to the period
between the time of the origin of mankind and that of Augustus Caesar, is
wholly inadmissible. Therefore the Biblical {511} chronology, which Canon
Rawlinson trusted so implicitly in 1859, is relegated by all serious
critics to the domain of fable.
But if scientific method, operating in the region of history, of philology,
of archaeology, in the course of the last thirty or forty years, has become
thus formidable to the theological dogmatist, what may not be said about
scientific method working in the province of physical science? For, if it
be true that the Canonical Scriptures have innumerable points of contact
with civil history, it is no less true that they have almost as many with
natural history; and their accuracy is put to the test as severely by the
latter as by the former. The origin of the present state of the heavens and
the earth is a problem which lies strictly within the province of physical
science; so is that of the origin of man among living things; so is that of
the physical changes which the earth has undergone since the origin of man;
so is that of the origin of the various races and nations of men, with all
their varieties of language and physical conformation. Whether the earth
moves round the sun or the contrary; whether the bodily and mental diseases
of men and animals are caused by evil spirits or not; whether there is such
an agency as witchcraft or not--all these are purely scientific questions;
and to all of them the canonical Scriptures profess to give true answers.
And though nothing is more common than the assumption that these books come
into conflict only with the speculative part of modern physical science, no
assumption can have less foundation. {512}
The antagonism between natural knowledge and the Pentateuch would be as
great if the speculations of our time had never been heard of. It arises
out of contradiction upon matters of fact. The books of ecclesiastical
authority declare that certain events happened in a certain fashion; the
books of scientific authority say they did not. As it seems that this
unquestionable truth has not yet penetrated among many of those who speak
and write on these subjects, it may be useful to give a full illustration
of it. And for that purpose I propose to deal, at some length, with the
narrative of the Noachian Deluge given in Genesis.
The Bampton lecturer in 1859, and the Canon of St. Paul's in 1890, are in
full agreement that this history is true, in the sense in which I have
defined historical truth. The former is of opinion that the account
attributed to Berosus records a tradition--
not drawn from the Hebrew record, much less the foundation of that
record; yet coinciding with it in the most remarkable way. The
Babylonian version is tricked out with a few extravagances, as the
monstrous size of the vessel and the translation of Xisuthros; but
otherwise it is the Hebrew history _down to its minutiae_ (p. 64).
Moreover, correcting Niebuhr, the Bampton lecturer points out that the
narrative of Berosus implies the universality of the Flood.
It is plain that the waters are represented as prevailing above the
tops of the loftiest mountains in Armenia--a height which must have
been seen to involve the submersion of all the countries with which the
Babylonians were acquainted (p. 66).
{513}
I may remark, in passing, that many people think the size of Noah's ark
"monstrous," considering the probable state of the art of shipbuilding only
1600 years after the origin of man; while others are so unreasonable as to
inquire why the translation of Enoch is less an "extravagance" than that of
Xisuthros. It is more important, however, to note that the universality of
the Deluge is recognised, not merely as a part of the story, but as a
necessary consequence of some of its details. The latest exponent of
Anglican orthodoxy, as we have seen, insists upon the accuracy of the
Pentateuchal history of the Flood in a still more forcible manner. It is
cited as one of those very narratives to which the authority of the Founder
of Christianity is pledged, and upon the accuracy of which "the
trustworthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ" is staked, just as others have
staked it upon the truth of the histories of demoniac possession in the
Gospels.
Now, when those who put their trust in scientific methods of ascertaining
the truth in the province of natural history find themselves confronted and
opposed, on their own ground, by ecclesiastical pretensions to better
knowledge, it is, undoubtedly, most desirable for them to make sure that
their conclusions, whatever they may be, are well founded. And, if they put
aside the unauthorised interference with their business and relegate the
Pentateuchal history to the region of pure fiction, they are bound to
assure themselves that they do so because the plainest teachings of Nature
(apart from all doubtful {514} speculations) are irreconcilable with the
assertions which they reject.