Yet it might not have required much learning to infer, that the eyes, and ears, and nerves of men who lived ten times as long as we can, must have been more perfect than ours; that a man who could observe nature with such eyes, under a sky where Stoddart now sees the ring of Saturn, the crescent of Venus, and the moons of Jupiter, with the naked eye,[298] and continue his observations for eight hundred years, would certainly acquire a better knowledge of the appearance of things than any number of generations of short-lived men, called away by death before they have well learned how to observe, and able only to leave the shell of their discoveries to their successors; that unless we have some good reason for believing that the mind of man was greatly inferior, before the flood, to what it is now, the antediluvians must have made a progress in the knowledge of the physical sciences, during the three thousand years which elapsed from the creation to the deluge, much greater than the nations of Europe have effected since they began to learn their A, B, C, about the same number of years ago; and that though Noah and his sons might not have preserved all the learning of their drowned contemporaries, they would still have enough to preserve them from the reproach of ignorance and barbarism; at least until their sons have succeeded in building a larger ship than the ark, or a monument equal to the Great Pyramid. The Astronomer Royal of Scotland[299] has demonstrated, that in this imperishable monument, erected four thousand years ago, the builders, who took care to keep it alone, of all the buildings of Egypt, free from idolatrous images or inscriptions, recorded with most laborious care, in multiples of the earth's polar diameter, a metric system, including linear and liquid measures, and a system of weights based on a cubical measure of water of uniform temperature; which uniform temperature they took the utmost care to preserve. He shows further, that they were acquainted with the precession of the equinoxes, with the density of the earth, and with the earth's distance from the sun; or at least calculated it at what proves to be nearly a mean of our discordant calculations; and that they were acquainted with problems just beginning to attract the attention of the science of Europe.
When we know that the Chaldeans taught the Egyptians the expansive power of steam, and the induction of electricity by pointed conductors; that from the most remote antiquity the Chinese were acquainted with decimal fractions, electro-magnetism, the mariner's compass, and the art of making glass; that lenses have been found in the ruins of Nineveh, and that an artificial currency was in circulation in the first cities built after the flood;[300] that astronomical observations were made in China, with so much accuracy, from the deluge till the days of Yau, B. C. 2357, that the necessary intercalations were made for harmonizing the solar with the lunar year, and fixing the true period of 365¼ days; and that similar observations were conducted to a like result within a few years of the same remote period, in Babylon;—if the reader does not conclude that the world may have forgotten as much ancient lore during eighteen hundred years of idolatrous barbarism before the coming of Christ, as it has learned in the same number since, he will, at least, satisfy himself that the ancient patriarchs were not ignorant savages.[301] "Whole nations," says La Place, "have been swept from the earth, with their languages, arts, and sciences, leaving but confused masses of ruins to mark the place where mighty cities stood. Their history, with a few doubtful traditions, has perished; but the perfection of their astronomical observations marks their high antiquity, fixes the periods of their existence, and proves that even at that early time they must have made considerable progress in science."[302] The Infidel theory, that the first men were savages, is a pure fiction, refuted by every known fact of their history.
That, however, is not the matter under discussion. We are not inquiring now, what Moses and the prophets thought, but what the Author of the Bible told them to say. The scribe writes as his employer dictates. "I will put my words in thy mouth," said God to Jeremiah. "My tongue is as the pen of a ready writer," said David. The prophets began, not with "Thus saith Isaiah," but "Thus saith the Lord." Unless the Word of God was utterly different from all his other works, it must transcend the comprehension of man in some respects. The profoundest philosopher is as ignorant of the cause of the vegetation of wheat as the mower who cuts it down; but their ignorance of the mysteries of organic force is no reason why the one may not harvest, and the other eat and live. Just so God's prophets conveyed previous mysteries to the Church, of the full import of which they themselves were ignorant; even as Daniel heard but understood not. The prophets, to whom it was revealed, that they did not minister to themselves, but to us, inquired and searched diligently into the meaning of their own prophecies; which meaning, nevertheless, continued hid for ages and generations.[303] If the prophets of the old economy might be ignorant of the privileges of the gospel day, of which they prophesied, at God's dictation, they might very well be ignorant, also, of the philosophy of creation, and yet write a true account of the facts, from his mouth.
Let us suppose, then, that the ancient Hebrews and their prophets were, if not quite as ignorant of natural science as modern Infidels are pleased to represent them, yet unacquainted with the discoveries of Herschel and Newton; and, as a necessary consequence, that their language was the adequate medium of conveying their imperfect ideas, containing none of the technicalities invented by philosophers to mark modern scientific discoveries; and that God desired to convey to them some religious instruction, through the medium of language; must we suppose it indispensable for this purpose that he should use strange words, and scientific phrases, the meaning of which would not be discovered for thirty-three hundred years? Could not Dr. Alexander write a Sabbath-school book, without filling it full of such phrases as "right ascension," "declination," "precession of the equinoxes," "radius vector," and the like? Or, if some wiseacre did prepare such a book, would it be very useful to children? Perhaps even we, learned philosophers of the nineteenth century, are not out of school yet. How many discoveries are yet to be made in all the sciences; discoveries which will doubtless render our fancied perfection as utterly childish to the philosophers of a thousand years hence as the astronomy of the Greeks seems to us; and demand the use of technical language, which would be as unintelligible to us as our scientific nomenclature would have been to Aristotle. If God may not use popular speech in speaking to the people of any given period, but must needs speak the technical language of perfect science, and if science is now, and always will be, of necessity, imperfect, we are led to the sage conclusion, that every revelation from God to man must always be unintelligible!
Does it necessarily follow, that because the Author of the Bible uses the common phrases, "sun rising," and "sun setting," in a popular treatise upon religion, that therefore he was ignorant of the rotation of the earth, and intended to teach that the sun revolved around it? He is certainly under no more obligation to depart from the common language of mankind, and introduce the technicalities of science into such a discourse, than mankind in general, and our objectors in particular, are to do the like in their common conversation. Now, I demand to know whether they are aware that the earth's rotation on its axis is the cause of day and night? But do you ever hear any of them use such phrases as "earth rising," and "earth setting?" But if an Infidel's daily use of the phrases, "sun rising," "sun setting," and the like, does not prove, either that he is ignorant of the earth's rotation as the cause of that appearance, or that he intends to deceive the world by those phrases, why may not Almighty God be as well informed and as honest as the Infidel, though he also condescends to use the common language of mankind?
Do you ever hear astronomers, in common discourse, use any other language? I suppose Lieut. Maury, and Herschel, and Le Verrier, and Mitchell, know a little of the earth's rotation; but they, too, use the English tongue very much like other people, and speak of sunrise and sunset; yet nobody accuses them of believing in the Ptolemaic astronomy. Hear the immortal Kepler, the discoverer of the laws of planetary revolution: "We astronomers do not pursue this science with the view of altering common language; but we wish to open the gates of truth, without affecting the vulgar modes of speech. We say with the common people, 'The planets stand still, or go down;' 'the sun rises, or sets;' meaning only that so the thing appears to us, although it is not truly so, as all astronomers are agreed. How much less should we require that the Scriptures of divine inspiration, setting aside the common modes of speech, should shape their words according to the model of the natural sciences, and by employing a dark and inappropriate phraseology about things which surpass the comprehension of those whom it designs to instruct, perplex the simple people of God, and thus obstruct its own way toward the attainment of the far more exalted end to which it aims."
It is evident, then, that God not only may, but must, use popular language in addressing the people, in a work not professedly scientific; and that if this popular language be scientifically incorrect, such use of it neither implies his ignorance nor approval of the error.
But it may be worthy of inquiry whether this popular language of mankind, used in the Bible, be scientifically erroneous. If the language be intended to express an absolute reality, no doubt it is erroneous to say the sun rises and sets; but if it be only intended to describe an appearance, and the words themselves declare that intention, it can not be shown to be false to the fact. Now, when the matter is critically investigated, these phrases are found to be far more accurate than those of "earth rising," and "earth setting," which Infidels say the Author of the Bible should have used. For, as up and down have no existence in nature, save with reference to a spectator, and as the earth is always down with respect to a spectator on its surface, neither rising toward him, nor sinking from him, in reality, nor appearing to do so, unless in an earthquake, the improved phrases are false, both to the appearance of things, and to the cause of it. Whereas, our common speech, making no pretensions to describe the causes of appearances, can not contradict any scientific discovery of these causes, and therefore can not be false to the fact; while it truly describes all that it pretends to describe—the appearance of things to our senses. And so, after all the outcry raised against it by sciolists, the vulgar speech of mankind, used by the Author of the Bible, must be allowed to be philosophical enough for his purpose, and theirs; at least till somebody favors both with a better.
Though we are in no way concerned, then, to prove that every poetical figure in Scripture, and every popular illustration taken from nature, corresponds to the accuracy of scientific investigation, before we believe the Bible to be a revelation of our duty to God and man, yet it may be worth while to inquire, further, whether we really find upon its sacred pages such crude and egregious scientific errors as Infidels allege. We have seen in the last chapter, that they are not able to read even its first chapter without blundering. Indeed, they generally boast of their ignorance of its contents. It is a very good rule to take them at their word, and when they quote Scripture, to take it for granted that they quote it wrong, unless you know the contrary. The first thing for you to do when an Infidel tells you the Bible says so and so, is to get the Book, and see whether it does or not. You will generally find that he has either misquoted the words, or mistaken their meaning, from a neglect of the context; or perhaps has both misquoted and mistaken. Then, when you are satisfied of the correct meaning of the text, and he tells you that it is contrary to the discoveries of science, the next point is to ask him, How do you know? You will find his knowledge of science and Scripture about equal. Both these tests should be applied to scientific objections to the Bible, as they are all composed of equal parts of biblical blunders, and philosophical fallacies.
In the objection under consideration, for instance, both statements are wrong. The Bible does not represent the earth as the immovable center of the universe, or as immovable in space at all. It does not represent the sun and stars as revolving around it. Nor are the facts of astronomy more correctly stated. It is not the Bible, but our objector, that is a little behind the age in his knowledge of science.