The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science | Page 6

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).
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 passed 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 more
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.<6>
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
days' 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 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