To such dreamy nonsense, what "Answer" can we return[97]? Such speculations would be a fair subject for ridicule and merriment, if the subject were not so unspeakably solemn,—the issues so vast, and terribly momentous. We find ourselves introduced into a new world,—of which the denizens talk like madmen, and in a jargon of their own. And yet, that jargon is no sooner understood, than the true character of our new companions becomes painfully evident[98].... He who believes the plain words of Holy Writ, finds himself called "the literalist." He who resolves Scripture into a dream, and the Lord who redeemed him into "a mere shadow," (p. 200) is dignified with the title of "an idealist." "Neither" (we are assured) "should condemn the other. They are fed with the same truths; the literalist unconsciously, the idealist with reflection. Neither can justly say of the other that he undervalues the Sacred Writings, or that he holds them as inspired less properly than himself." (p. 200.) "The ideologian," (who is the same person as the "idealist;" for the gentleman, at this place, changes his name;) "is evidently in possession of a principle which will enable him to stand in charitable relation to persons of very different opinions from his own." (p. 202.) "Relations which may repose on doubtful grounds as matter of history, and, as history, be incapable of being ascertained or verified, may yet be equally suggestive of true ideas with facts absolutely certain. The spiritual significance is the same of the Transfiguration, of opening blind eyes, of causing the tongue of the stammerer to speak plainly, of feeding multitudes with bread in the wilderness, of cleansing leprosy; whatever links may be deficient in the traditional records of particular events." (Ibid.) ... I will but modestly inquire,—What would be said of us, if we were so to expound Holy Scripture in defence of Christianity?
But it is time to dismiss this tissue of worthless as well as most mischievous writing;—even to exhibit which, in the words of its misguided author, ought to be its own sufficient exposure. Do men really expect us to "answer" such groundless assertions, and vague speculations as those which go before? A Faith without Creeds: a Clergy without authority or fixed opinions: a Bible without historical truth:—how can such things, for a moment, be supposed to be[99]? What answer do we render to the sick man who sees unsubstantial goblins on the solid tapestried wall; and mistakes for shadowy apparitions of the night, the forms of flesh and blood which are ministering to his life's necessities? If the Temptation, and the Transfiguration, and the Miracles of Christ be not true history, but ideological allegories,—then why not His Nativity and His Crucifixion,—His Death and His Burial,—His Resurrection and His Ascension into Heaven likewise? "Liberty" (we have been expressly told,) "must be left to all, as to the extent in which they apply the principle" (p. 201.)—Where then is Ideology to begin,—or rather, where is ideology to end? "Why then is Strauss to be blamed for using that universal liberty, and 'resolving into an ideal the whole of the historical and doctrinal person of Jesus?' Why is Strauss' resolution 'an excess?' or where and by what authority, short of his extreme view, would Mr. Wilson himself stop? or at what point of the process? and by what right could he, consistently with his own canon, call on any other speculator, to stay the ideologizing process[100]?"
"Discrepancies in narratives, scientific difficulties, defects in evidence, do not disturb the ideologist as they do the literalist." (p. 203.) No, truly. Nothing troubles him; simply because he believes nothing! The very Sacraments of the Gospel are not secure from his unhallowed touch. "The same principle" (?) is declared to be "capable of application" to them also. "Within these concrete conceptions there lie hid the truer ideas of the virtual presence of the Lord Jesus everywhere that He is preached, remembered, and represented." (p. 204.) ... Do we ever deal thus with any other book of History? And yet, on what possible principle is the Bible to be thus trifled with, and Thucydides to be spared?—I protest, if the historical personages of either Testament may be resolved at will into abstract qualities, and the historical transactions of either Testament may be supposed to represent ideas and notions only,—then, I see not why the Vicar of Great Staughton himself may not prove to be a mythical personage also. Why need Henry Bristow Wilson, B.D.,—who, (as "literalists" say,) in 1841 was one of the 'Four Tutors' who procured the condemnation of Tract No. 90, on the ground that it 'evaded rather than explained the Thirty-nine Articles;' and who, in 1861 writes that "Subscription to the Articles may be thought even inoperative upon the conscience by reason of its vagueness;" (p. 181.)—why need this author be supposed to be a man at all? Why should he not be interpreted "ideologically;" and resolved into the principle of disgraceful Inconsistency of conduct, and "variation of opinion at different periods of life?"
V. In the present crusade against the Bible and the Faith of Christian men, the task of destroying confidence in the first chapter of Genesis has been undertaken by Mr. C. W. Goodwin, M.A. He requires us to "regard it as the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, promulgated in all good faith as the best and most probable account that could be then given of God's Universe." (p. 252.)
Mr. Goodwin remarks with scorn, that "we are asked to believe that a vision of Creation was presented to him by Divine power, for the purpose of enabling him to inform the world of what he had seen; which vision inevitably led him to give a description which has misled the world for centuries, and in which the truth can now only with difficulty be recognized." (p. 247.) He puts "pen to paper," therefore, (he says,) in order to induce the world to a "frank recognition of the erroneous views of nature which the Bible contains." (p. 211.) The importance of the inquiry, he vindicates in the following modest terms:—"Physical Science goes on unconcernedly pursuing its own paths. Theology, (the Science whose object is the dealing of God with Man as a moral being,) maintains but a shivering existence, shouldered and jostled by the sturdy growths of modern thought, and bemoaning itself for the hostility it encounters." (p. 211.)—A few remarks at once suggest themselves.
I cannot help thinking that if any person of ordinary intelligence, unacquainted with the Bible, were to be left to obtain his notion of its contents from "Essays and Reviews," infidel publications generally, and (absit invidia verbo!) from not a few of the Sermons which have been preached and printed in either University of late years,—the notion so obtained would be singularly at variance with the known facts of the case. Would not a man infallibly carry away an impression that the Bible is a book abounding in statements concerning matters of Physical Science which are flatly contradicted by the ascertained phenomena of Nature? Would he not be led to expect that it contained every here and there a theoretical Excursus on certain Astronomical or Physiological subjects? and to anticipate, above all, an occasional chapter on Geology? Great would be his astonishment, surely, at finding that one single chapter comprises nearly the whole of the statements which modern philosophy finds so very hateful; and that chapter, the first chapter in the Bible[101].
But the surprise would grow considerably when the conditions of the problem came to be a little more fully stated. Has then the actual history of the World's Creation been ascertained from some other independent and infallible source? No! Are Geologists as yet so much as agreed even about a theory of the Creation? No! Can it be proved that any part of the Mosaic account is false? Certainly not! Then why all this hostile dogmatism?—To witness the violence of the partisans of Geological discovery, and the arrogance of their pretensions, one would suppose that some Divine Creed of theirs had been impugned: that a revelation had been made to them from Heaven, which the profane and unbelieving world was reluctant to accept. Whereas, these are Christian men, impatient, as it seems, to tear the first leaf out of their Bible: or rather, to throw discredit on the entire volume, by establishing the untrustworthiness of the earliest page!
One single additional consideration completes the strangeness of the picture. If our account of the Six Days of Creation were a sybilline leaf of unknown origin, it would not be unreasonable to treat its revelations as little worth. But since the author of it is confessedly Moses,—the great Hebrew prophet, who lived from b.c. 1571 to 1451, who enjoyed the vision of the Most High; nay, who conversed with God face to face, was with Him in the Mount for thrice forty days, and received from Him the whole details of the Sacred Law;—since this first chapter of Genesis is known to have formed a part of the Church's unbroken heritage from that time onward, and therefore must be acknowledged to be an integral part of the volume of Scripture which, (as our Lord says,) οὐ δύναται λυθῆναι,—"cannot be broken, diluted, loosened, explained away;"—since, further, this account of Creation is observed to occur in the most conspicuous place of the most conspicuous of those books which are designated by an Apostle by the epithet θέοπνευστος, or, "given by inspiration," "filled with the breath," or "Spirit of God;" and when it is considered that our Saviour and His Apostles refer to the primæval history contained in the first two chapters about thirty times[102]:—when, (I say,) all this is duly weighed, surely too strong a primâ facie case has been made out on behalf of the first chapter of Genesis, that its authority should be imperilled by the random statements of every fresh individual who sees fit to master the elements of Geology; and on the strength of that qualification presumes to sit in judgment on the Hebrew Scriptures,—of which, confessedly, he does not understand so much as the alphabet!
It is even amusing to see how vain a little mind can become of a little knowledge. Mr. Goodwin remarks,—"The school-books of the present day, while they teach the child that the Earth moves, yet assure him that it is a little less than six thousand years old, and that it was made in six days." (p. 210.) (I am puzzled to reconcile this statement with the author's declaration that "no well-instructed person now doubts the great antiquity of the Earth any more than its motion." (Ibid.) Would it not have been fairer to have named at least one of the school-books which perpetuate so wicked a heresy?) "On the other hand, Geologists of all religious creeds are agreed that the Earth has existed for an immense series of years,—to be counted by millions rather than by thousands; and that indubitably more than six days elapsed from its first Creation to the appearance of Man upon its surface. By this broad discrepancy between old and new doctrine is the modern mind startled, as were the men of the sixteenth century when told that the earth moved." (p. 210.)