Professor W. G. Elmslie, D.D.: Memoir and Sermons

by William Gray Elmslie

Doing this, you shall reach not merely passive resignation, but joy, and peace, and trust. For of humble submission hope is born. "Let Israel hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever." Perchance all you can do now is just, in weariness, more out of helpless despair than active expectancy, to fall back on a faint, broken-hearted trust in God's goodness. It is an act of faith, poor enough, in truth, but it holds in it the promise and potency of a better confidence. For it is into the arms of God that it carries you. Resting there in the lap of His infinite love, you shall feel the warmth of His great heart penetrating softly into yours. The weary, throbbing pain will slowly pass away. Deep rest and quiet peace will steal into your spirit. And at length, out of a helpless, compelled, and well-nigh hopeless surrender, there shall be born within you fearless trust and winged reliance, and you shall hope in the Lord from henceforth and for ever.

XVII.
THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS.

There is in many people's minds a painful uneasiness about the relation of the Bible to modern science and philosophy. The appearance of each new theory is deprecated by believers with pious timidity, and hailed by sceptics with unholy hope. On neither side is this a dignified or a wholesome attitude. Its irksome and intrusive pressure promotes neither a robust piety nor a sober-minded science. It is worth while inquiring whether there is any sufficient foundation for either alarm or expectancy in the actual relations of the Bible to scientific thought. We shall work out our answer to the question on the historical battle-field of the 1st chapter of Genesis. Results reached there will be found to possess a more or less general validity.

There are two records of creation—one is contained in the Bible, which claims to be God's Word; the other is stamped in the structure of the world, which is God's work. Both being from the same Author, we should expect them to agree in their general tenour; but in fact, so far from being in harmony, they have an appearance of mutual contradiction that demands explanation.

In studying the problem certain considerations must be borne in mind. There is a loose way of talking about antagonism between the natural and the revealed accounts of creation. That is not quite accurate. Conflict between these there cannot be, for they never actually come into contact. It is not they, but our theories, that meet and collide. The discord is not in the original sources, but in our renderings of them. That is a very different matter, and of quite incommensurate importance.

The Bible story is very old. It is written in an ancient and practically dead language. The meaning of many of the words cannot be fixed with precision. The significance of several fundamental phrases is at best little more than conjecture. Since it was penned men's minds have grown and changed. The very moulds of human thought have altered. Current impressions, conceptions, ideas are different. It is hard to determine, with even probability, what is said, still harder to realise what was thought. Certainty is impossible. No rendering should be counted infallible, not even our own. Every interpretation ought to be advanced with modest diffidence, held tentatively, revised with alacrity, and adjusted to new facts without timidity and without shame. This has not been the characteristic attitude of commentators. The exegesis of the 1st chapter of Genesis presents a long array of theories, propounded with authority, defended dogmatically, and ignominiously discredited and deserted. Had a more lowly spirit presided over their inception, maintenance, and abandonment, the list would perhaps not have been shorter, but the retrospect would have been less humiliating. As it is, we can hardly complain of the sting of satire that lurks in Kepler's recital of Theology's successive retreats: "In theology we balance authorities; in philosophy we weigh reasons. A holy man was Lactantius, who denied that the earth was round. A holy man was Augustine, who granted the rotundity, but denied the antipodes. A holy thing to me is the Inquisition, which allows the smallness of the earth, but denies its motion. But more holy to me is truth. And hence I prove by philosophy that the earth is round, inhabited on every side, of small size, and in motion among the stars. And this I do with no disrespect to the doctors."

The physical record is also very old. Its story is carved in a script that is often hardly legible, and set forth in symbols that are not easy to decipher. The testimony of the rocks embodies results of creation, but does not present the actual operations. Effects suggest processes, but do not disclose their precise measure, manner, and origination. You may dissect a great painting into its ultimate lines and elements, and from the canvas peel off the successive layers of colour, and duly record their number and order; but when you have done you have not even touched the essential secret of its creation. In determining the first origin of things the limitation of science is absolute, and even in tracing the subsequent development there is room for error, ignorance, and diversity of explanation. Of certainties in scientific theory there are few. For the most part, all that can be attained is probability, especially in speculative matters, such as estimates of time, explanations of formation, and theories of causation. As in exegesis, so in geology, all hypotheses ought to be counted merely tentative, maintained with modesty, and held open at every point to revision and reconstruction. The necessity of caution and reserve needs no enforcing for any one who knows the variety and inconsistency of the phases through which speculative geology has passed in our own generation. In this destiny of transitoriness it does but share the lot of all scientific theory. Professor Huxley was once cruel enough to call attention to the fact that "extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules." The statement is a graphic, if somewhat ferocious, reminder of a melancholy fact, and the fate of these trespassing divines should warn their successors—as the Professor means it should—not to stray out of their proper pastures. But has it fared very differently with the mighty men of science who have essayed to solve the high problems of existence and to make all mysteries plain? Take up a history of philosophy, turn over its pages, study its dreary epitomes of defunct theories, and as you survey the long array of skeletons tell me, are you not reminded of the prophet who found himself "set down in the midst of the valley which was full of dry bones: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry"?

If it is human to err, theology and geology have alike made full proof of their humanity. That in itself is not their fault, but their misfortune. The pity of it is that to the actual fact of fallibility they have so often added the folly of pretended infallibility. The resultant duty is an attitude of mutual modesty, of reserve in suspecting contradiction, of patience in demanding an adjustment, of perseverance in separate and honest research, of serenity of mind in view of difficulties, coupled with a quiet expectation of final fitting. The two accounts are alike trustworthy. They are not necessarily identical in detail. It is enough that they should correspond in their essential purport. It may be that the one is the complement of the other, as soul is to body—unlike, yet vitally allied. Perchance their harmony is not that of duplicates, but of counterparts. They were made not to overlap like concentric circles, but to interlock like toothed wheels. In the end, when partial knowledge has given way to perfect, they will be seen to correspond, and nothing will be broken but the premature structures of adjustment with which men have thought to make them run smoother than they were meant to do.

To attempt anew a task that has proved so disastrous, and is manifestly so difficult, must be admitted to be bold, if not even foolhardy. But its very desperateness is its justification. To fall in a forlorn hope is not ignoble. To miss one's way in threading the labyrinth of the 1st chapter of Genesis is pardonable, a thing almost to be expected. If in seeking to escape Scylla the traveller should fall into Charybdis, no one will be surprised—not even himself. It is in the most undogmatic spirit that we wish to put forward our reading of the chapter. It is presented simply as a possible rendering. What can be said for it will be said as forcibly as may be. It is open to objection from opposite sides. That may be not altogether against it, since truth is rarely extreme. Difficulties undoubtedly attach to it, and defects as well. At best it can but contribute to the ultimate solution. Perchance its share in the task may be no more than to show by trial that another way of explanation is impossible. Well, that too is a service. Every fresh by-way proved impracticable, and closed to passage, brings us a step nearer the pathway of achievement. For the loyal lover of truth it is enough even so to have been made tributary to the truth.