The Bible and Science

The Oracles of God must have some relation, however indirect, to truth at large. The God of all truth cannot, in any of His utterances, contradict Himself. His kingdom cannot stand and be divided against itself. Manifestly His works and His word must, in all essentials, agree. Hence the question as to the attitude of the Bible toward science cannot be avoided.

There is a scientific element in the Word of God, though it is not in any proper sense a scientific treatise, and for obvious reasons should not be; since there is no need of any supernatural revelation of scientific facts, which may be ascertained in natural ways. God would neither waste miraculous energy on His own part, nor encourage on man’s part, intellectual indolence and inertia. Moreover, the reception of scientific truth by man is partly dependent on its discovery by man; the research which ultimately unvails the mysteries of nature, meanwhile develops in the investigators the capacity for the apprehension and appreciation of such truth when disclosed. Ignorance is naturally blind, only intelligence being openeyed; and it is this painstaking study of the facts and phenomena of nature which transforms ignorance into intelligence, and so endows man with scientific vision.

If God, in the Bible, plainly pre-announced scientific facts, He would therefore, be unwise and self-contradictory; and such pre-announcement would be harmful rather than useful, perplexing the reader, raising controversy, dividing human opinion and discrediting divine revelation.

While all this may be fairly conceded, on the other hand, the God of the Bible, being also the God of nature, it is equally plain that, on whatever theme the Omniscient One speaks, even incidentally and casually, He must be at home. When a thoroughly educated man writes a history, his culture appears even in incidental references to other departments of knowledge, such as geography and astronomy, and his education will be seen even in his grammar and spelling. The All-knowing God cannot be supposed to betray ignorance on any subject, nor the God of all truth to lend Himself to falsehood. The Bible claims divine authorship. Infinite veracity cannot lend sanction to what is essentially erroneous, nor can omniscience conceal itself behind the veil of popular illusion and delusion, prevailing superstition, or careless inaccuracy.

Certain propositions seem both to be self-evident, and to deserve to be put boldly at the front in all discussion of the attitude of the Bible toward science:

1. The Bible is not, and could not, in the nature of things, be, primarily, a scientific book.

2. Were it such it would impugn the wisdom of its divine author, and discredit its divine origin.

3. Incidentally, and unavoidably, however, it must touch upon the realm of science.

4. God, the only Infallible Scientist, cannot be supposed to make mis-statements, or exhibit ignorance.

While these are self-evident propositions, it follows that, as some reference to scientific facts is inevitable, there must be a skillful management of such references, so that, without losing sight of its primary purpose as a moral and spiritual guide, the Bible shall not, at any point, be in conflict with essential truth.

The following additional statements, which we are prepared to defend, also indicate the general line of the discussion which follows:

I. Without anticipating, directly, scientific discovery, Biblical language, properly interpreted, does not contradict established facts.

2. A poetic phraseology is often used, which by the flexibility of figurative or imaginative terms, allows room for expansion and accommodation to facts when known.

3. Tested by cosmogony, astronomy, geology and zoology, physiology and comparative anatomy, natural philosophy and sanitary science, etc., this Book evinces superhuman knowledge and wisdom.

4. Hence the Bible is a scientific marvel. It belongs to the oldest class of literature, yet it is the youngest and newest in adaptation to scientific discovery, and perpetually keeps abreast of human progress.

Close examination reveals what might be expected, if this is God’s book — divine ingenuity in solving the problem already indicated. Infinite wisdom devised a middle path between preannouncement of scientific facts and laws, and endorsement of current errors and absurdities. The elastic phraseology employed is susceptible of a new and broader interpretation as new facts come to light, which demand such accommodation. In some instances popular language is used which is not technically accurate, and yet such language does not indicate ‘’error,” being perfectly

37 admissible, because true to facts of appearance. With the foremost modern scientists it is both customary and accounted proper to describe such natural phenomena without so correcting the terms used as to conform strictly and technically to scientific standards. The most learned natural philosopher does not hesitate to speak of the sun’s rising and the horizon’s sinking, though both are due to the earth’s axial revolution, and are only facts of appearance. Similar latitude may properly be claimed for the Word of God, which conforms its language to such facts of appearance, where no essential error is involved.

The final conclusion to which we are compelled to come is that the scientific terms used in the Bible constitute a part of the Oracles of God, such language being itself oracular or essentially parabolic, hiding the truth in enigma — mysteriously enfolding a germ of scientific fact, which subsequent research is to unfold, expand, and invest with a new, true and unsuspected scientific meaning. These statements a few examples will suffice to illustrate, and so to vindicate:

I. The mother of all the sciences is Cosmogony, the science of creation. Man’s first question, as he opens his eyes intelligently upon the universe of matter, is, “How came all this to be? and when?

and by whom? Out of this as natural offspring come all the other questions as to the physical constitution of the universe and the mystery of planetary and stellar worlds: the constitution of man and his complex nature and being; of the lower animals, and their various ranks in the scale of being; of plants, and the mystery of vegetable life; and the constitution of the earth with its material forms and forces. The study of cosmogony leads also to the more general and comprehensive science of natural philosophy, which deals with the phenomena of life, light, heat, motion, and all forms or manifestations of force in the universe, with the grand laws which govern them.

As to Cosmogony, this mother of all sciences, one brief sublime sentence in the opening verse of the Bible, grandly declares:

“In the Beginning God Created the Heavens AND the Earth.”

There was, then, a beginning: when, it is not said; but back of that beginning was One who had no beginning. Creation had a Creator. This one short sentence of ten words is yet so pregnant with divine meaning that, after thousands of years, men are yet finding in it new and grander significances.

How many errors are here corrected! “In the

39 beginning” — the fact that there was a beginning contradicts the eternity of matter. “In the beginning, God” — that refutes atheism. It was one God, not many, — that knocks over polytheism. “God created” — that forbids the doctrine of chance. God is separate from creation — that precludes pantheism. Matter is not God, — that denies materialism. As we enter the vestibule of this book the first five words of the ten meet us with a complete denial of the false philosophies of the ages.

How far this story of the genesis of all things is abreast of modern science, every new approach to absolute and final truth is continually revealing. Infidels have sought to make irreconcilable contradiction where a reverent reader will discover the most singular and surprising correspondence.

A quotation from a very recent volume may furnish an example:

“So far as the material universe is concerned, the two primary factors were matter and motion as manifestations of persistent force. Besides these two modes we think of phenomena also in relation to their sequences, and in relation to their coexistences. The former of these two modes we call “time” and the latter “space.” Mr. Herbert

Spencer devotes a chapter to the consideration of what he calls the most general forms into which the manifestations of the unknown are re-divisible; and these forms he finds to be these five: space, time, matter, motion, force.

“Now, if the starting point of religion is really scientific, it must follow that these five forms which are the factors of all phenomena ought to make their appearance at an early stage in her scheme. We shall not, of course, expect to find them expressed in the terminology of science, but shall look for their theological equivalents. Is this expectation realized? We answer, that in the first two verses (of Genesis) we shall find all five. They are these:

“In the beginning” Time

“God created the heavens” Space

“And the earth” Matter

“And the Spirit of Elohim” Force

“Moved” Motion.”*

2. Geology, the science of the earth’s structure and constitution, treating of the operation of its physical forces, and the past history of its developments, is one of the youngest of the sciences. Pythagoras and Strabo, the only men among the ancients whose scientific opinions deserve much notice, made scarcely a beginning in the direction of geology;

*“The Conflict of Truth,’” L. Hugh Capron, p. 135. 41 and Pythagoras belonged to the sixth century B.C., and Strabo to the first B. C. During the dark ages, no progress was made; but in the sixteenth century geological questions began to stir Italy, especially, the nature of fossils. In the seventeenth century Leibnitz and others carried on researches, but it was not till a full century later that Smith, in 1790, published his “Tabular View of the British Strata,” the issue of his geological map of England, in 1815, forming an epoch in the history of this science, since which strides have been rapid.

A department of knowledge, thus first really explored in the eighteenth century, would, therefore, be most unlikely to prove in accord with the opening chapter of the earliest book of the Bible, if that were a merely human production. The correspondence, however, is remarkable.

Geology, so far as it may claim to have settled anything, outlines the story of creation somewhat thus:

First, a state of chaos or general confusion, the solid, liquid and fluid elements being mixed somewhat as they are in a great conflagration.

Secondly, that there was a light, chemical or cosmic in character, which pervaded this general chaos or confusion.

Thirdly, that condensation took place between the steaming vapors above and below, those below forming rain and water, those above forming clouds, and occupying what is called the firmament. There came to be thus an “expanse” of atmosphere between the waters of the clouds and the waters of the sea.

Fourthly, that out of this great abyss of waters, the dry land appeared as the waters subsided.

Fifthly, that upon this continent thus arising above the waters, vegetation began to appear, and took three forms — plant, herb and tree, or the grasses, the plants and the trees.

Sixthly, animal life, beginning with what are known as the “protozoa” or first forms of life, which developed out of the ooze of the ocean bed; animal life ascending through its different grades until,

Seventhly, man comes on the scene as the consummate climax and crown of God’s creative work.

Chaos, chemical light, expanse of atmosphere, appearance of land, vegetation in three forms, animal life, from the protozoa to the higher vertebrata, and, finally, man — exactly Moses* order in the first chapter of Genesis! First chaos; then God says, “Let light be,” and light was; then an expanse of atmosphere, called in the English Bible, the firmament, but in the Hebrew “Rakya** — an expanse — a marvellously accurate word; then the continent, the dry land; vegetation in three forms; and then life — “the waters brought forth life;” then, bye and bye, higher animals, and at the end of the mammalia, man himself.

Nothing was known about geology when Moses wrote, nor for thousands of years after. Who was it that guided him in this poetic description of Creation, to give thus accurately what the most modern of sciences affirms was the original order? There is nothing else like this in ancient literature. Whenever any of the ancient writers touched the science of creation absurd blunders were made. Even Plato thought the earth to be an intelligent being, and earthquakes were supposed to be such motions of the earth as a huge animal would make if writhing in pain!

In styling the description of creation as “poetic,” it is not meant to give currency to the notion that these first chapters of Genesis are simply a poem, having no historic fact behind them. When Moses as a prophet was shown the vision of creation, he must have looked back, as John in the Apocalypse looked forward; and as a series of visions of creation passed before his mind, he described what he saw: an evening darkness, and a morning developing into light; another evening developing into another morning; and so another, and still another; until the six creative days all passed before him in this backward prophetic vision; and probably he did not understand what he himself wrote, as is said of the prophets (i Peter i :io-12), nor does any reader, however reverent and scientific, yet understand all that was then written; the studies of eternity alone will clothe these visions with their full celestial meaning. Meanwhile, those who search this Book reverently, find here and there suggestions from God to make them confident of His authorship of these mysterious pages.

3. The science of Comparative Anatomy is only about one hundred years old. Cuvier, about the beginning of the nineteenth century, lifted what had hitherto been a mass of unconnected details to the dignity of a science. He compared the various forms of animal life, observing and recording points of similarity and dissimilarity; and so arranged facts according to a scientific classification. Comparative anatomy shows an order in the animal creation, from the lowest forms to the highest, rather than reversely, the question of rank among vertebrate animals being determined by the pro-, portion of brain to the spinal column, In fish it is. 2 to I; in reptiles, 2^^ to i; in birds, 3 to i; in mammals, 4 to I; then in man it takes a leap, and the proportion of brain to the spinal column is 33 to i, which raises man far above any other animal.

Common sense and observation might have shown Moses that man is far above mammals as a class, and the mammals higher than most fishes and birds, but no common sense or ordinary observation would have shown that the fish belongs below the reptile, or the reptile below the bird. Yet, thousands of years before comparative anatomy took rank among the sciences, Moses followed the correct order of classification in this story of creation. A candid and rational scientist looking at that first chapter of Genesis, must ask how any unaided human mind could have guided the hand that wrote those words.

4. Anthropology is the science of man’s constitution. The question arises as we look on mankind, “How is man made?” Was there any science in the days of Moses to teach him how man was constituted? Yet, in the second chapter of Genesis, with the boldness of certainty, he writes, that “God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” (Hebrew, “the breath of lives”), as though this phrase included both the animal life man has in common with the animal creation, and the spiritual

life he received in common with God.

According to the Word of God, man is a compound of spirit, soul, and body,* and, as taught in the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, when “the dust returns to the earth as it was,” “the spirit returns unto God who gave it,” death being the dissolution and separation of that which God brought into original unity. That leaves little room for the theory of the “sleep of souls,” for when one dies, he does not go into the earth, body and soul, to sleep there, but, while the dust returns to the earth, the spirit returns to God who gave it, — a plain reference to the original record in the second chapter of Genesis.

“God formed man out of the dust of the ground.” The human body suggests little if any similarity in composition to the earth. Moses had no knowledge, as a human writer, that his body was one with the ground, but modern chemical analysis detects at least fourteen elements in the human body identical with the “dust,” — such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, silicon, magnesia, sodium, phosphorus, carbon. Yet nothing could be more unlike matter in its highly organized form in the human body, than the “dust” of the ground from which that human body is divinely declared to have been formed. It was reserved for modern

*lThes. v;23.

analytical chemistry to demonstrate that what Moses wrote is exactly true, when he represented the Creator as taking the plain earth clay and making out of that the human organism, though nothing whatsoever in man’s appearance suggests this as a fact of observation. It has to be known scientifically, yet it could not have been known scientifically when Moses wrote Genesis.

In the story of the creation three words are used that are similar, yet unlike, the difference being more apparent in the Hebrew, though seen also in the English — “created,” “formed,” “made.” One of these words means “to make, out and out”; another, “to form out of preexisting matter,” as a potter takes clay and forms it into a vessel; and the other means “to give a cosmical form,” that is, to make with reference to plan, symmetry, order, beauty, as God took crude matter and formed it into crystals.

No one of these expressions is used in connection with light. How unique are those five words in the Hebrew, “Be light, and light was.” It is not recorded that God said, “Let earth be, and earth was,” or “Let stars be, and stars were.” But he said, “Let light be.” Light is not a substance. There have been two modern theories of light, — the corpuscular theory and the undulatory theory; but the later discoveries have shown that light is a mode of motion, — vibrations so rapid through the ether that they pass over 186,000 miles a second. Why should not Moses have said that God “created” light, as he does say that He created the light bearers. He called forth the light. He made the celestial lamp or light -bearers out of material. He did not make the light out of material, new, or preexisting; He simply bade it send through the universe vibrations like those of a musical chord. How majestic and magnificent! “In the beginning God;” “In the beginning God created;” “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth;” “In the beginning God said, *Be light,’ and light was.” He kept the sacred writers from the mistakes that mere observers would have made, and that they did make when they began to teach natural science. There was in Infinite Intelligence and Omniscience behind the ignorance of Moses, which guarded his pen from making any of those fatal mistakes that would have marred the Word of God through all the ages.

The 28th and 38th chapters of Job, two chapters in what is probably the oldest of all poems, have been declared to contain more science than the whole literature of the human race up to the Christian era, and some of the most remarkable anticipations of scientific discovery are to be found there.

Several great discoveries of modern times could not, in the nature of the case, have been known to any writers of the Bible; and yet the phraseology of the Bible is found in every case marvellously accommodated to them. The discoveries referred to are such as the following: The vast number of the stars and the immensity of space; the universal laws of motion and rotation, the nature and properties of light, and of lightning the weight of the atmosphere, and the circulation of the blood.

(i.) The vast number of the stars. This is entirely a modern discovery. The first reliable catalogue of the stars was made by Hipparchus, about 150 B. C, and the second by Ptolemy about 150 years after Christ. Both these catalogues give, in the entire southern and northern celestial hemispheres, about 3,000 — a very easy number to count, and there was then no idea of any other stars invisible to the naked eye. When Galileo turned his telescope toward the heavens on the 7th of January, 1 6 10, for the first time it was known that there were stars never before seen; he saw the four satellites of Jupiter, and announced his remarkable discovery. From this point, as telescopes improved, discovery went forward until now it is known that the stars are absolutely countless. When the elder Herschel erected his monster telescope, forty feet in length, and turned it to the heavens in 1789, he talked of “star dust.” He threw new light on the Milky Way and the constitution of nebulss, and, in fact, was the first to give to the human mind any conception of the immensity of the universe. He found that what appeared to be dust on the surface of the firmament, was simply groups of stars so thickly crowded that they could not be distinguished by the naked eye. When Lord Rosse mounted his giant reflector, weighing twelve tons, in his park at Parsonstown, in 1845, within the range of its speculum, he computed that about four hundred millions might be rendered visible, and yet that was only the third great stage in discovery of their innumerable multitude.*

The Milky Way, floating its white banner across the firmament, is a vast host of stars seen edgewise, stretching away into infinite space, and nobody can trace that to its limit; our little solar system

♦As to the number of stars, Herschel computed that in one hotir 116,000 passed over the field of his telescope. Up to the sixth and seventh magnitude, they number 14,000, but beyond that, are coimtless multitudes only revealed by most powerful telescopes, and others that photography reveals, too far off to be seen even by the telescopic eye, and whose rays as they now reach our eye, started on their journey long before we were born, perhaps thousands of years ago.

51 is but an atom in what Mr. Proctor calls, “the luminous sand of the Milky Way.” It is, therefore, literally true that the stars are countless. This is a notable modern discovery, first hinted at by Galileo; yet the Bible anticipated it as far back as the time of Abraham. When God appeared to him and gave him the great covenant promise, he told him that his seed should be ultimately as numerous as the “dust of the earth” and the “stars of the sky.” There must have seemed to Abraham a great difference between the number of the stars and the number of the atoms of dust, yet they are alike countless. God knew these facts when He told hira that his terrestrial seed should be as numerous as the dust, and his celestial seed as numerous as the stars. But it was reserved for remote generations to find that both comparisons are equally apt. So Jeremiah wrote (xxiii.’22), “As the hosts of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured,” — comparing the host of stars to the grains of sand on the sea shore. The language of the Holy Scriptures is thus exactly adapted to facts not then known, but as unfolded by recent astronomical investigation. The enigmatic expressions of the Old Testament waited for a score of centuries for a scientific interpreter.

(2.) The Immensity of space. Of this the ancients had no idea. They supposed the earth to be stationary, and the whole of the celestial bodies to move around it once in every twenty-four hours; and that the “firmament” was a firm or solid sphere as of metal, and the stars, points of light, or lamps, hung in the concave as in a dome; they had no conception of these immeasurable, inconceivable dimensions and distances.

It began to be noted, however, that as some of the stars were fixed, — did not change their relative position, notwithstanding the change of position of the earth in its orbit — they must be at immense distances. The earth being about ninety millions of miles from the sun, has an orbit of some hundred and eighty millions of miles diameter. Even the modern era of the telescope only began to reveal the immensity of space. Some further conception of it is furnished in the fact that the unit of measurement, as to the distances of the stars, is the velocity of light. Light moves 186,000 miles a second; yet even that is too small for a unit of measurement; astronomers have to take for this purpose the distance over which light travels in a year, or over 60,000 times the distance of the earth from the sun. That is the unit of measurement, so it is customary to say that a

Centaurus is four years off as light travels, Arcturus, 25 years off, Polaris, 46 years off, and Canopus, 108.

Yet even this immensity of space is similarly anticipated in the Word of God! For example, Jeremiah says (xxxi: 37), “If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations searched out beneath, I will also cast off the seed of Israel.” He used the boundless immensity of space as the argument for God’s boundless fidelity to His people. When man can measure the heavens above, then will God’s care for Israel as His beloved people find its limit. Here the immeasurable spaces of the heavens are assumed. So, in the 55th chapter of Isaiah, verse 9, it is said, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts;” that is to say, the infinite height of heaven above the earth becomes the symbol of the infinite height of God’s grace above the deserts of man. Again, in Psalm cm: 11, “As the heaven is high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us.” The writer of the 103rd Psalm himself had no conception of what is known by us — that go as far as you will to the east there is still an east, and as far as you will to the west, there is still a west; but God who spoke through him knew that only when you can measure the distance between the remotest east and west can you measure how far away from the forgiven sinner God has removed his sins, — astronomical infinities are brought in to illustrate the infinity of the love and grace of God! There is no accident about that! It is manifestly intelligent design.

(3.) The Universal Law of Motion is a difficult subject to touch upon in a brief space. No discovery of modern times has been, in some respects, more startling. Science constructs a sort of vibratory ladder according to the number of vibrations per second, running from sixteen and a half up to 480,000,000,000 — those of the violet ray of light.

Beginning at the lowest audible note and going up eleven octaves, the limits of sound are reached at 38,000 vibrations to the second. Then, passing an unknown region, electricity is reached with about one hundred million vibrations; then dark heat, about 130 thousand million vibrations; then comes the octave of colour, corresponding to the octave of sound, the red rays with about 400 thousand millions and so on up the spectrum to violet with 480 thousand millions. These vibrations, it is claimed, have been at least approximately reckoned or calculated. Thus not only sound is found to be the result of vibration, but likewise electricity and heat, colour and light. The ear does not detect colour, as it does sound, because the auditory nerve is less sensitive and delicate than the optical. Light really sings, only our ears are not attuned to its melodies and harmonies; we do not hear but see it. But light and sound are closely akin, both of the same nature, both produced by vibrations such as those of the chords of a musical instrument. Bible language singularly anticipates even this discovery. In Job xxxviii 7 we read that “the morning stars sang together,” — “gave forth vibrations,” like a musical instrument, as the Hebrew word literally means. Again, in Psalm Lxv:8, “Thou makest the outgoings of the morning and evening (sunrise and sunset) to give forth vibrations.” The translators rendered it “rejoice,” but the fact is that Nature, like a great orchestra, gives forth vibrations in different notes and chords of colour, which peal into the ears of the Lord God of Hosts; every morning sunrise and every evening sunset are as choral anthems in His ears! and they would be so in ours if our ears were delicate enough, as perhaps they will be, in the body of glory, in the future life, to detect this “music of the spheres.”

The poetic language of Holy Scripture thus again anticipates or forecasts one of the most recent and striking of all raodem discoveries. To such scientific facts is adapted the language of the 19th Psalm, verses 1-3. “The heavens declare (or speak forth) the glory of God. Day uttereth speech unto day, and night showeth knowledge unto night.” “There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard,” etc. The psalmist is describing the sun, moon and stars in the heavens, and their radiations of light, in the language of song and anthem, speech and conversation. God knew from all eternity that light and sound were akin, and it is natural that He should so guide the writers of the Bible that their words should accommodate themselves to all these marvels of scientific fact not to be known for milleniums afterward.

4. The Refraction of Light is another discovery comparatively modern. Ptolemy, the astronomer, is credited with the first intimation of it. Refraction is the bending of the ray out of its direct course as it meets different media of transmission. If the sun’s rays were not thus refracted, only the direct or perpendicular rays would reach the earth, the others glancing off and being reflected into space, so that man would get little benefit; but the atmosphere surrounds the earth in strata or layers, and when the indirect rays encounter these at an angle they are caught and bent round, like the fingers of the hand, and so retained for use. That also seems forecast in the Bible.

In the 38th chapter of Job, verses 12 and 13, “we read: “Hast Thou commanded the morning since Thy days, and caused the dayspring to know his place.” The original suggests the idea of “coming up to his post in time,” which is true to fact, for the diurnal rotation of the earth on its axis is so regular that the day dawn “has not varied the one-thousandth of a second, from the exact time due, for the last two thousand years.” Then follow these words: “That it might take hold of the ends of the earth,” literally bend round like the fingers, and so lay hold — poetic phraseology, but containing within itself all the suggestion of the scientific truth of refraction.

(5.) The Weight of the Atmosphere. The discovery of the law of gravitation has been comparatively recent, but it was supposed, even after this force began to be suspected, that certain substances, such as those that we call etherial and volatile, were not affected by it. Newton demonstrated that its action is universal. Galileo, before him, had found reason to believe the atmosphere to have weight, or gravity, but the thought had never dawned on the mind of the ancients, and no hint of it is found in Plato, Aristotle, or other philosophers of old time. In the Bible it is boldly stated, that it is a part of God’s administration “to make the weight for the winds” (Job xxviii:35), literally, to “balance the winds” — exactly the fact — for by their weight they help to keep in equilibrium the great scales of the universe.* Thus, unknown to the ancients — undreamed of by their wise men — this fact is definitely affirmed in the mystic language of this old poem.

(6.) The Circulation of the blood, discovered by William Harvey, in 1619, is, therefore, a very recent discovery. Certain rudimental facts about this system of circulation every school boy understands, such as that there are practically two hearts, each having two parts; and that the auricles receive the blood from the veins, and the ventricles pulse the blood through the arteries. When the blood, forced out through the arteries, deposits its nutriment, it is drawn back through the veins, to be reinvigorated in the lungs. Thus one part of the heart is of the nature of a fountain or spring; but, there being no pulsation in the veins, the other

*The weight of the atmosphere is found to be 14.73 lbs. to the square inch, and the total weight of the air, 11.67085 trillion lbs., or l-188,000,000th of the entire weight of the globe.

part is a receptacle — a cistern rather than a fountain — a reservoir for the reception of venous blood.

Again, the lung is somewhat like a “pitcher,” and the tube by which air enters it is like the spout of a pitcher. The lung is closely connected with the heart’s cistern, and a great conduit carries the blood from the lung to the auricles.

In Ecclesiastes xii: 6, 7, the substance of this great discovery is hinted mysteriously by Solomon: “Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.” What this means, we are told: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God Who gave it.” These are four poetic descriptions of death. Life is a kind of quadruped, moving on four legs: the energy of the brain, the nervous system — cerebro-spinal and sympathetic; and the lung and heart systems, with their great mysteries of respiration and circulation.

“Or the wheel broken at the cistern.” In the

East to this day are wells where a wheel pumps up

the water through one pipe to discharge it through

another. This is what the heart does, pumping up

the blood through pipes of blue, to propel it

through pipes of red, and long before William

Harvey dreamed of the circulation of the blood, God inspired Solomon to use language which not only suggests the general facts of the heart’s action but hints the two parts of the organ, the “fountain” and the * ‘cistern,” the ventricles and auricles. William Harvey himself might have coveted this inspired description as a poetic statement of the facts he made known to the human race.

(7.) The Universal Law of Rotation. The diurnal rotation of the earth, already referred to, in passing, was not known to the ancients, who thought it a stationary body. Yet we read, for instance, *Tt is turned as clay to the seal, and stands like an embroidered garment.” (Job xxxviii: 14.) The reference is to the cylindrical seal, which revolved somewhat as, in a printing machine, the cylinder that holds the type and the cylinder that holds the paper roll over each other, and so the paper takes the impression of the type, and stands forth in more or less beautiful forms. So the earth is revolved as the clay under the seal, and takes the impression of the light and heat and appears like an embroidered garment. If this be the meaning of this rather obscure figure in Job, it suggests, thousands of years before this was known, the diurnal rotation of the earth. Moreover, all these stars and suns are ijipying. As the earth revolves on its axis every day, and in its orbit around the sun, once in 365 days, so the sun has its own axial rotation and its own orbit of revolution. But it was reserved for modern times to prove that in a similar manner the whole of the visible universe is in motion, all heavenly bodies circling about their respective centers and the universe as a whole through its orbit in incredibly long periods of time. Madler believed he had discovered the universal center, in the star Alcyone, in the little group of seven, called the Pleiades, and suggested that this star might be the throne of God.

In the 38th chapter of Job, we read: “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?” The Pleiades were so called from “pleo,” to sail, because the rising of this constellation brought spring rains, but the Chaldaic word means a “hinge,” a “pivot,” an “axle,” the word meaning what moves itself and moves everything else with it. Here the language is accommodated to the fact of universal rotation and suggests that the Pleiades form at least one of the hinges, pivots or axles for this universal motion.

(8.) The Nature, Properties and uses of Lightning.

For thousands of years lightning was to man

nothing but a disastrous mystery accompanying

violent storms and often doing immense damage.

It was reserved for Benjamin Franklin to follow out the lines of previous experimental investigation, until he proved that lightning could be laid hold of and utilized. His experiment with his kite, bristling with points, which he flew in the thunder storm, showed that this mysterious force, conducted down the string and gathered in the key at the end, passed with a spark and a slight shock into his knuckle; and so was suggested to him the device of the lightning rod, drawing down the wrath of heaven and turning it harmlessly into the earth, so often used in illustration of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in Redemption. To that great discovery, we owe it that, in the twentieth century, lightning has become a motor, a messenger, an illuminator, and is fast becoming also a therapeutic agent for the discovery and remedy of disease.

The discoveries in electricity since Franklin’s day have come with such rapidity that they seem to surpass any previous unveiling of scientific truth. They constitute the wonder of the ages, and no one can tell what the next few years may develop in electrical science.

But the ancients knew nothing about the lightning flash, which seemed capricious and

lawless — it came, they knew not whence, and went, they knew not whither; the lightning suddenly appeared in connection with the storm, then vanished as suddenly as it came; it was impossible to trace it to its dwelling place or determine anything about its philosophy. Man has now found that he can summon the lightning and bid it go on his errands; that he can make it flash intelligence to the earth’s ends; that he can control the artillery of heaven, draw down the volleys of destruction and make them the means of construction — his servants on the earth; that he can cause the lightning, which once destroyed and killed, to heal and make alive, — in fact, totally turning about this most destructive agent of the universe.

Even this is forecast in the Holy Scripture! Look again to the 38th chapter of Job. Here in this old poem arises one of those lofty peaks of inspiration where God seems to set aside human instrumentality, and Himself appears as the speaker:* “Canst thou commission the lightnings that they may come and say to thee, Here we are? Canst thou inspire them with intelligence? Canst

* Compare Mrs. Helen M. Spurrell’s scholarly translation of the Old Testament, published by James Nisbet & Co., London, for which there was so little sale that the edition was sent to the paper-mill, and a copy can be found only in some secondhand book shop. No translation perhaps surpasses it in suggestiveness.

thou give them understanding to obey thy
behests?”*

Other great discoveries are similarly anticipated in Scripture. For example, the correlation and conservation of force.

Such expressions as these are found side by side with others: “He hangeth the earth upon nothing,” when no one had suspected as yet that so balanced are the great correlative forces of the universe, centrifugal and centripetal, that the earth is hung in space upon nothing, and has no foundations; its pillars are set in no sockets, because God has so arranged the invisible and silent working forces that they keep the whole universe in a state of equipoise.

While men are assaulting this Book of God, and speaking in terms, sometimes unmeasured, of what they call its errors and its absurdities, all the material worlds and forces of the universe stand as a great orchestra, pealing forth their anthem to Him, Who, in His infinite love and grace, gave such a revelation of His will to the sons of men! “In His temple doth every whit shout, glory!”t

♦Job xzxviii;35. (Hebrew.) f Psalm xxix;9 (Hebrew).