'What a striking contrast is brought out in this history, and yet what a close and strong bond between those whom I scarcely dare to call the two performers! In no tradition or poetical invention, in no religious mythology does God appear so exalted, so pure, so free from all the imperfection and disquietude of human nature, so immutable and serene, so truly God as in the Bible. On the other hand, among no people, in no historical narrative or document is man portrayed as more violent, more barbarous, more brutal, more cruel, more prone to ingratitude and rebellion against God, than among the Hebrews. Nowhere else, and in no other history does the distance seem so great between the divine sphere and the human region—between the sovereign and his subjects. And yet the Israelites never separate themselves from God. In spite of their vices and evil passions they always turn again to the Lord, and always acknowledge his law and his government, even at the very time that they violate the one and rebel against the other. God is, however, nowhere manifested as so solicitous with regard to man—at the same time so exacting and so sympathetic; he does not change a man at one stroke, and by a single act of his sovereign will; he watches all his short-comings, his weakness and his errors, but never forsakes him; he holds the torch of Divine light always before his eyes, and never loses his interest in the destiny of mankind. Religion and morality are the subjects which not only predominate, but which are exclusively presented in the sacred volume: nowhere else have the aspirations and labours of human science held so insignificant a position in human thought and society; God, and the relation between man and God,—this, and this only, occupies every page of the Bible.
'I do not hesitate to affirm that science, with its special and manifold subjects, astronomy, geology, geography, chronology, physical science, historical criticism, all are foreign to the plan and design of the Holy Scriptures. The study of science is the work of the human intellect, and of the human intellect alone: science is a fruit that ripens slowly, and is only brought to perfection by the intellectual labour of many generations. If then, in addition to those facts which are expressly declared to be miraculous, you find statements and assertions in the Bible which are in opposition to the established truths of science, do not be astonished or dismayed; it is not the word of God on these subjects; it is the language of the men of that age, and it accords with the measure of their knowledge, or rather of their ignorance; it is the language which they spoke, and in which it was necessary to speak to them if they were to understand what was said.
'The fact is so simple that I am astonished that it should be necessary to assert it: in all times and places, among all nations and in every age, there are spontaneous instincts, and common aspirations and ideas in matters of religion and morality, which not only clothe themselves, as it were, in the same language, but have the power of making their language intelligible to all those to whom it is addressed, in spite of the difference which there may be in their several degrees of education and civilization. But we meet with nothing similar in purely scientific matters; the majority of men see and speak, not in accordance with the facts of science, but according to appearances; and they understand, or do not understand, they listen, or do not listen, just in so far as they have any knowledge of science, or are ignorant of it. What would the Hebrews in the desert have said, or the Jews who gathered round the Apostles, or the savages of Polynesia addressed by the first Christian missionaries, if they had been told that it is the earth which revolves round the sun, and that the earth is a spheroid, inhabitable and inhabited at the opposite points of its circumference? What more natural and inevitable than the agreement of the language of Scripture with the imperfect knowledge which men possessed of scientific subjects, even although the light of Divine inspiration was, at the same time, shed upon the laws which govern the spiritual and moral nature of human beings?
'No one admires and honours science more than I do: the study of science is one of man's highest vocations, but it has nothing to do with the relation between man and God, and the influence of God upon man. God is not a lofty philosopher who reveals scientific truths to men in order that they may have the noble pleasure of contemplating and disseminating them; the search for these truths is a purely human labour. The divine work is grander and more complicated, and it is essentially practical. That which all men and every man needs and craves, the most ignorant as well as the most learned, that which humanity demands from God is the knowledge of those religious and moral truths which ought to influence the soul and life, and in accordance with which the life of the future will be regulated. God meets this requirement of the whole human race; and the Bible is addressed to all that they may be saved by leading a new life, not that they may be well taught in matters of science.' [Footnote 64]
[Footnote 64: Meditations sur la Religion chrétienne, vol. i. p. 151; vol. iii. p. 27.]
If Calvin had lived in the nineteenth century I am inclined to believe that his clear and vigorous intellect would have preserved him from falling into this error of attributing universal infallibility to every word contained in the Bible, and that he would have recognised the aim and the true tendency of those Divine revelations of which the Bible is so noble a monument. Even a hundred years after his death the labours of the great critics of the seventeenth century, of Richard Simon, Bayle, and John Leclerc, would have helped him, by the clear light which they threw on this question, and would have shown him how to shield the Christian faith effectually both from improper attacks and from the legitimate discoveries of human science. The domain of science is not the same as that of Christian faith, nor are they equal; the very aim of revelation has been to enunciate truths, and to shed a light into the soul which no amount of scientific labour would have sufficed to procure. This is the real and true character of the Bible; it is from this that all its authority proceeds, and by this, at the same time, that the limits of its sphere are defined.
Chapter VII.
Calvin's Theory Of Free-will And Predestination.
Calvin's second grave error consists, as I think, in his theory of free-will and predestination. He denies free-will, and believes that the destiny of every man, his future salvation or damnation, is determined from all eternity by the irrevocable decrees of God; and at the same time that he affirms this two-fold doctrine, he exhausts himself in ineffectual attempts to assert and uphold the moral obligation and responsibility of man in this dual condition.