II.
(Continued from p. 182.)
IF we look over the history of science, we cannot but note that its theories are constantly changing. Prof. Frank Allen, head of the department of physics of the University of Manitoba, said to the writer recently:—”There is scarcely a theory of science which is generally accepted to-day, of which I would be ready to affirm that it may not be abandoned within a few years. Nearly all the theories which were regarded as satisfactory a few years ago, are now either modified or discarded by scientists.”
The repeated abandonment of scientific theories and the ever-increasing knowledge of the authenticity of the Word of God should teach all Christians to accept the Scripture at its face value, and, even though portions of it are assailed by sceptics and “scientists falsely so-called” to await with unshaken faith the day when the hidden things shall be made known, and it shall be evident that God has revealed through inspired writers that which is forever true. . . .
If we accept the Word of God and make an honest interpretation of it, we must recognise God in the creation of matter, in the creation of life, and in the creation of all kinds of life. This is the fair, the logical, the Christian conclusion. The atheist builds his world without God, the deist with God looking on, and even self-styled theists of the present day often regard God as having nothing more than an indifferent oversight of the progress of the world. The latter is not a true theist, nor does he give God His full and rightful place in the world. A man who is a materialist or a deist should be willing to be designated as such. One should not profess Christianity in the Church and materialism in science. The Christian should give God, not the least place, but the largest possible place in the creation and life of the world.
Against the sin of atheism, materialism, scepticism, deism, and all the wickedness, corruption, immorality, and violence which follows, God is testifying to-day in every fossiliferous rock of the world. These and a multitude of other sins provoked the wrath of God against the antediluvian world. To hold the theory of spontaneous generation, and the brute origin of man is to rule God out as the great and sole Creator of all things, and it was ruling God out which was the underlying sin of the antediluvian world. When, therefore, you observe a piece of chalk, coral or crinoidal limestone, amber, coal, carbonaceous shale, millstone grit, or other fossiliferous rock, you have before you a monument of God’s judgment because of sin.
When God made a covenant with Noah, He promised not to destroy the earth again with a universal deluge. But God did not reverse His attitude toward sin. Though He recognised that “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” He promised that He would not curse the earth any more for man’s sake, nor smite again every living thing as He had done. That so long as the earth remained, seed time and harvest, summer and winter should not cease. God has kept His promise, but through four thousand years of succeeding history He has made clear by precept and example that He cannot tolerate sin, and that He will judge men for it. His wrath burns against sin just as strongly it did in antediluvian times. “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Ps. vii., 11). After naming a number of prevalent sins, Paul said to the Ephesians: “Let no man deceive you with vain words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience” (Eph. v., 5). Jesus Christ points out a day when He shall judge the wicked—among them many outwardly moral men—and when they shall be condemned for ever (Matt. xxv. 31-46). When walking among the stones of this earth Jesus replied to those who criticised His disciples for praising Him: “If these should hold their peace the stones would immediately cry out” (Luke xix., 40). That would have been a testimony from the rocks against a sin of omission, but the rocks are crying out every day against sins of commission. Their fossils are warning us against the sins of the antediluvian world, violence, drunkenness, impurity, rejection of God, and other sins of which they were guilty, which are no doubt similar to the sins of the world to-day. This may help us to understand why men shall one day call to the mountains and to the rocks to fall on them and to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb (Rev. vi., 16). They have failed to accept the testimony of the rocks and forsake their sins. Divès wanted Abraham to send a messenger from the dead to warn his brethren lest they should go to the place of torment as he had done. God sends a messenger from a world which was cut off on account of sin when He sends us to look upon the fossils of the ancient world.
If we accept the teaching of the Bible in all its fulness, and receive seriously its warning against sin, this does not mean that we are ready to block the progress of science or scientific investigation. Christianity welcomes investigation. Those who investigate it, and are convinced, do not become worse, but better scientists and students of literature. . . .
The Christian religion has always been the root of progress. A noted scholar said of the University of Leyden: “The Senate Chamber of Leyden’s University is the most memorable hall of science.” It was a group of Christian Hollanders, more than three hundred years ago, thankful to God for preservation of life and liberty, who founded Leyden University. On examination of a list of the twenty universities which were established in Europe between the years 1550 A.D. and 1700 A.D., will reveal the fact that they were all founded and maintained by some religious denomination. In America Harvard University was founded by the Puritans in 1636. Its first private benefactor was Rev. John Harvard, from whom it received its name. Rev. James Blair was active in establishing, and became the first president of William and Mary College. It was founded in 1692. Almost all the early primary and higher schools of education were organised and supported by Christian men and women. Why, then, the meaningless cry of the rationalist that the Christian who does not accept the theory of evolution is about to impede the progress of education in general and science in particular? Some rationalists are endeavouring to show that the “stupendous progress” of science during the past century has been due to the teaching of evolution. Jesus properly characterised such men as “blind leaders of the blind.” It is true that progress has been made, but it has not been the result of the teaching of evolution or the inherent wisdom of the agnostics. It has been the result of the larger and deeper influence of Christianity. In order to prove this, one needs merely to ask what progress had been made in science or in any department of education in heathen lands where Christian missionaries have not gone? Compare fetish, Buddhist, or Mohammedan worshippers with Christians in their advance in civilisation and science. Science is not harassed, or its progress impeded, by any argument which we have advanced, or any motive which may have been unexpressed. Let men search in the field of geology, zoology, botany, astronomy, anthropology, medicine, chemistry, physics, psychology, metallurgy, or any other branch of science, but let them always remember that God gives them the minds with which they work; that He has given them His word as a general guide in that work; that He has created both matter and life by His almighty power, and that He has given them intelligent and immortal souls in order that they may honour Him.
Why will men praise King James I., and the scholars who met at Westminster, Cambridge, and Oxford to give the well-known Authorised Version of the Bible to the world, and then lay that Book aside while they search in every other avenue of the world for a solution of that which it makes known in the simplest language? Why will men honour the name of William Wilberforce, as the man who overcame physical deformities and various handicaps, and who struck the shackles from the British slaves, and at the same time forget the fact that he cried: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner,” in 1775, when his life lay all before him, and that he uttered the same prayer in 1833, when his work was done and he was passing out of this world? . . . Unquestionably the Christian’s Bible has been, and is, the greatest incentive toward progress in every worthy department of education, wherever it has been received among the nations of the world.
What, then, has been the difficulty when men have failed to see in the Bible and in the true religion an unparalleled blessing? The Apostle Paul, when writing to a church located in a great commercial and corrupt city, pointed out the root of the difficulty many centuries ago. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (I. Cor. ii., 14).
The scientist of to-day needs to come to Jesus Christ like the learned Nicodemus of old, and sit at His feet as a little child. He should begin at the first of John and learn that Christ was in the beginning with God. That “all things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made.” He should learn, like Nicodemus, that he needs not merely life, but a new life which is born of the Spirit, in order to apprehend God and the things of God. Peter points out that all who were saved from the Flood in Noah’s day were saved in the ark, and that all who are saved to-day are saved through the resurrected Christ. This is the heart and fountain of all truth. The greatest biologist and philosopher before Christ pointed out the great and enduring fact that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. i., 7). This is the greatest fact that can be given in the present generation. Science alone cannot give it. Science can develop a man’s brain, but it cannot give him a heart that will love and bless. The trained head and the unregenerate heart may combine to curse and destroy. Science can place in a man’s hand a weapon that will kill, but it cannot transform his heart so that he shall desire to sacrifice and save. When science shall have classified all knowledge, it will place on the pinnacle of this mountain of accumulated facts the greatest of all facts, that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The old stone book can point, does point, to sin; it points to a fallen, sin-cursed, ruined world. But that is all that it can do, and here it leaves both the scholar and the proletarian. The written Book points to a way out. It points upwards. It points to a Redeemer who can lift—has lifted—the curse of sin, and guides the way toward a land where there is no sin nor sorrow nor death. And here we have the harmony, the grandeur, the glory of the Two Books. They each have their message. Why confine ourselves, our pupils, or our ideals to the old stone book? Look into it! Read it, and read it rightly! But look into the Written Book, and there see the greatest fact of the universe. There see the One who, though He hated sin, came into a world cursed with it to redeem fallen men!
The Written Book points the geologist to One whose presence makes the mountains tremble (Ps. civ. 6), whose touch causes them to smoke (Ps. cxliv. 5), and whose voice calms the waves of the sea (Mark iv. 39); the astronomer to One who knows the number of the stars and calls them all by name (Ps. cxlvii. 4); the zoologist to One who calls all the beasts, creeping things, and flying fowl to praise Him (Ps. cxlviii. 10); the botanist to One purer than the lilies (Song of Solomon ii. 2); the embryologist to One who sees our substance yet being imperfect (Ps. cxxxix. 16); the anatomist to One who knows all our frame (Ps. ciii. 14); the physician to One who heals all our diseases (Ps. ciii. 3); the chemist to One whose blood makes the blackest sin whiter than the snow (Is. i. 18); the physicist to One who conserves all matter (Eccles. iii. 14); the orthopedist to One who makes the lame walk (Matt. xv. 31); the oculist to One who makes the blind see (Luke vii. 22); the psychologist to One who knows all man’s thoughts (Luke vi. 8); the economist to One who sees that when goods are increased they are increased that eat them (Eccles. v. 2); the physiologist to One who gives men strength in their old age (Ps. xcii. 14); the artist to One who sets His bow in the clouds (Gen. ix. 13); the aeronaut to One who makes the clouds His chariot and who rides upon the wings of the wind (Ps. civ. 3); the wireless telegraphist to One who takes the wings of the morning and bears His message to the uttermost part of the sea (Ps. cxxxix. 19); the electrician to One who uses the lightning as His messenger (Job xxxviii. 35); the meteorologist to One who has gathered the wind in His fists (Prov. xxx. 4); the agriculturalist to One who causes grass to grow for the cattle and the herb for the use of man (Ps. civ. 14); the mineralogist to One who is more precious than gold (Ps. xix. 10); and all, to One who is more radiant than the dawn (Ps. xix. 5); more majestic than the mountains (Song of Solomon ii. 8); more glorious than the sun (Acts xxvi. 13); to Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God (John vi. 69).