THE WORLDS AND THE WORD.
Men have found the various worlds to be far richer than they originally thought. They have opened door after door in their vast treasuries, have ascended throne after throne of power, and ruled realms of increasing extent. We have no doubt that unfoldings in the future will amaze even those whose expectations have been quickened by the revealings of the past. What if it be found that the Word is equally inexhaustible?
After ages of thought and discovery we have come out of the darkness and misconceptions of men. We believe in no serpent, turtle, or elephant supporting the world; no Atlas holding up the heavens; no crystal domes, "with cycles and epicycles scribbled o'er." What if it be found that one book, written by ignorant men, never fell into these mistakes of the wisest! Nay, more, what if some of the greatest triumphs of modern science are to be found plainly stated in a book older than the writings of Homer? If suns, planets, and satellites, with all their possibilities of life, changes of flora and fauna, could be all provided for, as some scientists tell us, in the fiery star-dust of a cloud, why may not the same Author provide a perpetually widening river of life in his Word? As we believe He is perpetually present in his worlds, we know He has promised to be perpetually present in his Word, making it alive with spirit and life.
The wise men of the past could not avoid alluding to ideas the falsity of which subsequent discovery has revealed; but the writers of the Bible did avoid such erroneous allusion. Of course they referred to some things, as sunrise and sunset, according to appearance; but our most scientific books do the same to-day. That the Bible could avoid teaching the opposite of scientific truth proclaims that a higher than human wisdom was in its teaching.
That negative argument is strong, but the affirmative argument is much stronger. The Bible declares scientific truth far in advance of its discovery, far in advance of man's ability to understand its plain declarations. Take a few conspicuous illustrations:
The Bible asserted from the first that the present order of things had a beginning. After ages of investigation, after researches in the realms of physics, arguments in metaphysics, and conclusions by the necessities of resistless logic, science has reached the same result.
The Bible asserted from the first that creation of matter preceded arrangement. It was chaos—void—without form—darkness; arrangement was a subsequent work. The world was not created in the form it was to have; it was to be moulded, shaped, stratified, coaled, mountained, valleyed, subsequently. All of which science utters ages afterward.
The Bible did not hesitate to affirm that light existed before the sun, though men did not believe it, and used it as a weapon against inspiration. Now we praise men for having demonstrated the oldest record.
It is a recently discovered truth of science that the trata of the earth were formed by the action of water, and the mountains were once under the ocean. It is an idea long familiar to Bible readers: "Thou coverest the earth with the deep as with a garment. The waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. The mountains ascend; the valleys descend into the place thou hast founded for them." Here is a whole volume of geology in a paragraph. The thunder of continental convulsions is God's voice; the mountains rise by God's power; the waters haste away unto the place God prepared for them. Our slowness of geological discovery is perfectly accounted for by Peter. "For of this they are willingly ignorant, that by the word of God there were heavens of old, and land framed out of water, and by means of water, whereby the world that then was, being overflowed by water, perished." We recognize these geological subsidences, but we read them from the testimony of the rocks more willingly than from the testimony of the Word.