The Story of Creation as Told By Theology and By Science

by T. S. Ackland

by which they sought to account for the phenomena which they observed. When once the method was changed, when once it had occurred to Kepler that, as it seemed to be impossible to account for the apparent motion of Mars by any theory of circular orbits, it might be worth while to try to ascertain by observation what its orbit really was, a few years of patient labour sufficed to solve the problem.

It was science such as this, then, that our forefathers brought to the interpretation of the Mosaic Record, and the consequence was that when, from time to time, facts were casually brought to light which might have led the way to vast discoveries, their true significance was never discerned; all that was sought from them was some additional support to the old views. Thus sometimes gigantic bones were exhumed: without investigation, it was at once assumed that they were human bones, and they were brought forward to prove the truth of the statement, "There were also giants in the earth in those days." Sea-shells were found on mountain sides, far from and high above the sea—they were evidences of the Deluge.

The second characteristic of that state of mind is its admiration of the startling and the vast. In these alone it recognizes the tokens of unlimited power. It is unable to appreciate those more majestic manifestations of power which are discerned by the enlightened eye, when a stupendous scheme is developed, gradually and imperceptibly, but without pause or hesitation through a long succession of ages; when a multitude of seemingly discordant elements are at last brought together in a perfect work; when a power, unseen and unnoticed, slowly but surely overrules the working of ten thousand apparently independent agents, through a thousand generations, and moulds their separate works into one harmonious whole. Such a manifestation of power as this was beyond the grasp of the untrained mind; but to such intellects there was something irresistibly fascinating in the idea of a world rising into perfect existence in a moment, of innumerable hosts of living creatures called into being at a word. Such was the meaning of the account of creation which naturally suggested itself to the untrained mind, and there was nothing in science in those early days to throw any doubt upon it, and so this belief was unhesitatingly and almost universally adopted. Here and there, indeed, some man of deeper thought than his brethren, such as St. Augustine [Footnote: See St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad Literam," Liber Imperfectus, and Libri Duodecim, and also "Confessionum" Liber xiii.], suspected that there might be more in that seemingly simple record than was generally acknowledged; but such men had no means of verifying their conjectures, and their number was very small. For three thousand years the old view was practically unquestioned, it received the tacit sanction of the Church, it gradually became identified in the minds of all with the record itself, and was as much an article of faith as the very Creed.

This was the state of things, when at last science awoke from its long slumber, and began for the first time to employ its energies in the right direction. Very soon discoveries were made which startled the minds of all believers in the Bible. The first shock which the old belief sustained was from the establishment of the Copernican view of the Solar System. That the world was the immovable centre of the universe, around which sun, moon, and planets moved in their appointed courses, was universally held to be the express teaching of the Bible; and when Galileo ventured to maintain the new views in Italy, the Roman Curia took up the question, and by the agency of the Inquisition wrung from him a reluctant retractation of his so-called heresy. But it was of no avail. The new doctrine was true, and it could not be crushed. Fresh evidence of its truth was continually coming forward, till at last it was universally received. Then the defenders of the Bible had recourse to the suggestion that as the Bible was not intended to teach us science, such errors were of no consequence, But this argument, though perfectly sound with reference to such passages as Joshua x. 12-14, where an event is described as it appeared to those who witnessed it, is not admissible in such a passage as Psalm xcvi. 10, where the supposed immobility of the earth is alleged as a proof of God's sovereignty, and is made the foundation of the duty of proclaiming that sovereignty among the heathen. When the supposed proof was found to be a fallacy, the statement in support of which it was alleged would be more or less shaken. In such a passage, then, the theory of limited inspiration is evidently untenable. At last the only sensible course was adopted. Recourse was had to the original, and it was at once apparent that the supposed difficulty had no real existence, but that there was a very trifling inaccuracy in the translation; for that the word translated "shall not be moved" really signified "shall not be shaken or totter." The same word is used in Psalm xvii. 5, "Hold up my goings in Thy paths, that my footsteps SLIP NOT." Instead, then, of an error, we have an exact description of the earth's motion—a motion so steady and equable, that for thousands of years no single individual out of the myriads who were continually carried along by it had ever suspected its existence.

Well had it been for all if the lesson thus taught had been deeply laid to heart. But unhappily it was entirely unnoticed. Science pursued its way with increasing energy, and more facts were year by year brought to light which seemed entirely to contradict the teaching of the Bible, and again alarm and distrust sprung up in the minds of what, for want of a better name, we may perhaps be allowed to designate as the "Theological Party." The power of the Church of Rome was by this time so far curtailed that the old means of repression were no longer available; but the old spirit survived, and not in Rome only. There was the same blind distrust, the same mistaken zeal for supposed truth, the same indignation which naturally arises when things which we hold precious are attacked, and, as it seems to us, without any sufficient reason.

There was indeed much to account for and even to justify the feelings of anger and alarm which were excited, for the time when these discoveries began to be brought prominently forward was the latter half of the last century. At that time the famous French Academy was doing its deadly work, and the new discoveries were gladly hailed by the infidel philosophers of France, as weapons against the Bible. But the reception given to these discoveries by the theological party, though partially justified by the circumstances of the times, was nevertheless very mischievous in its results. For though the new discoveries were hailed enthusiastically by the infidel school, a very large portion of the men by whom they were made, and of those who were convinced of their truth, were men of a very different character. They were simple earnest seekers after truth as it is displayed in God's works. Their belief in the Bible rested in most cases on the authority of others. They had not investigated for themselves its external evidences; in many cases they had neither the ability nor the opportunity to do so; nor had many of them as yet become practically familiar with that internal evidence which the faithful Christian carries within him, though in time they might have become so, had they not been driven into infidelity by the reception which was given to their discoveries. When men of this character were informed by those to whom they were accustomed to look up as teachers in religious matters, that the discoveries, of the truth of which they were so firmly convinced, and in which they took such justifiable pride, were contradictory to the teaching of the Bible, they were placed in a position of extreme difficulty. For this statement was, in fact, a demand made upon them that they should give up these discoveries as erroneous, or else renounce their belief in the Bible. But their belief in the Bible rested in the main on the authority of others; they felt themselves incompetent judges of the evidence on which it rested, while they were fully acquainted with, and competent judges of, the grounds on which their own discoveries were based. The evidence on which they acted was, to their minds, quite as convincing as the Biblical evidence was to the minds of their antagonists. Two things, then, were pronounced incompatible by what seemed to be a competent authority; they could not adhere to both, and the natural consequence was that their assent was given to those statements which rested on evidence which they thoroughly understood, and the Bible was rejected. Thus it has come to pass that many of our scientific men, if not professed unbelievers, have yet learnt to look upon the Bible with suspicion and distrust. To some of them, as is evident from their writings, their position is a matter of profound sorrow.

There have, indeed, been many noble exceptions to this state of things. Many men whose pre-eminence in scientific knowledge and research is admitted by all, have yet clung in childlike trust to the Bible. They have recognized its authority, they have been satisfied that God's Word could not be in opposition to His Work, and they have been content to wait in unquestioning faith for the day when all that now seems dark and perplexing shall be made clear. But there have also been very many with whom this has not been the case, and their unbelief has not affected themselves alone. The knowledge of it has had a deadly effect upon thousands who were utterly incompetent to form any judgment on either theological or scientific subjects, but who gladly welcomed anything which would help to justify them to their own consciences in their refusal to submit themselves to a law which, in their ignorance, they deemed to be harsh and intolerable. There has also been another class of sufferers. Many persons who loved the Bible, but whose education, and, consequently, whose powers of judgment in the matter were very limited, have received very great injury from the doubt which has been thrown on its authority. Unable of themselves to form a judgment on the subject, they could not be unmoved by the opinion expressed by those whom they regarded as better informed than themselves. Hence their faith has received a shock always painful and dangerous, often perhaps fatal.

Many attempts have been made to overcome the difficulty which has thus arisen. When geologists first began to study the lessons which are to be learnt from fossils, a suggestion was made which, though it was soon shown to be untenable, has still perhaps a few supporters. It was said that these fossils were not what they seemed to be, the remains of creatures which once lived, but simple stones, fashioned from the first in their present form by the will of the Creator. But such an idea is at variance with all that either Nature or Revelation teaches us concerning God. All those who have any familiarity with the subject cannot but feel that the suggestion of such a solution of the difficulty is little short of a suggestion that the Almighty has stamped a lie upon the face of His own Work.

Another proposed solution, which for a time seemed satisfactory, assumed several successive creations and destructions of the world to have taken place in the interval between the first and second verses of Genesis. To these all the fossil remains were ascribed, while the present state of things was supposed to be the result of the operations recorded in the remainder of the chapter. But as geological knowledge advanced, it soon became clear that there were no breaks in the chain of life; no points at which one set of creatures had died out, while another had not yet arisen to fill up the void, but that all change had been gradual and progressive, and that species still living on the earth are identical with some which were in existence when the lowest tertiary strata were in process of formation—a time which must have been many thousand years prior to the appearance of man.

Other attempts have been made upon literary grounds. Hugh Miller [Footnote: Testimony of the Rocks.] carefully worked out a suggestion derived from a German source, that the history of Creation was presented to Moses in a series of six visions, which appeared to him as so many days with intervening nights. More recently Dr. Rorison [Footnote: In Answers to "Essays and Reviews.">[ has maintained that the first chapter of Genesis is not a history at all, but a poem—"the Hymn of Creation." There is, however, nothing in the chapter itself to confirm either of these views. When visions are recorded elsewhere we are told that they are visions, but no such hint is given us here. Nor do we find in the passage any of the characteristics of Hebrew poetry. It is inserted in an Historical document, and in the absence of any proof to the contrary, it is plainly itself also to be regarded as History.