New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-03-07
Tho Conflict Of Science and " Revein-
li0n.O

l l10n.V
| Professor Dawson makes an assumption
which vacates his lectures of value as a
! contribution to the controversy in which
he has Joined. In common with many
other champions of the Scriptures, he takes
fur granted that the Bible is one book writ
| ten for one purpose, pervaded with one
| spirit, and expressing single consistent
system of truth. which he claims is IN entire
harmony with the teachings of science in
| every essential particular. But, in fact, the
Bible is no such book. Its earliest contents
were written at least thousand years be-
fore Christ, and perhaps at an earlier Pc
riod and its latest paper, the Gospel at
| tribnted to St. John, is now assigned ny
| the best critics to the middle of the second
century after Christ. 1t begins with an &C
| count of creation, which can be reconciled
! to the teachings of science only by such an
| abuse of language as empties 1t OF
| all definite meanings whatever, ana
| makes words worthless as blank
counters which may signify anything
| anybody chooses to make them; it ends
| with an Apocalypse which has bewildered
commentators for centuries with it's visions
and illusions, its references to what has
been, and its dreams of what is to be. And
between these pictures of q forming and
dissolving earth the Bible holds the most
homogeneous materials, written by different
men, at different periodic, with different
ideas and purposes, and with Olly so much
of unity as belongs to the members of a SIN
gularly homogeneous race, Indeed, it is
written in two different tongues, and no
craft of exegesis has yet been able to har-
monize the skepticism Of Ecclesiasticus
with the lofty and penitential devoutness of
David; nor make the sensuOus song of Sol
onion agree with the sublime purity incul-
Gated by the Gospels; nor reconcile the
curses OF the Psalms with the spirit of
forgiveness which characterizes the Sermon
on the Mount. 1t almost seems as though
Job was written to enforce Spencers doc
trlne of the unknowable by the way in
which it rebukes the presumption of dog
matists who talked as though they had
found out the Almighty and could paint his
portrait.
The variety in the Bible is the charm of
it. 1t is az impossible to splice Joshua into
James as to piece out peach tree with one
of the gigantic ferns from another geOlogl
cal period The criticism of the last three
quarters of a century has demonstrated
beyond a question that the Bible is one of
tho most human and heterogeneous books
in the world-the remains of q literature
bound up in single volume. This fact
does not in the least impair it's value as a
religious book; indeed, il enhances its at
tractiveness, and gives it a hundred holds
on mankind where otherwise it would have
ground on which its apolOgists rest their
claims in their controversy with science.
1t is no such book as they assume
that it is. The most remarkable thing is
that Professor Dawson assails the saranS
and Mill and Spencer and Max
Muller by name, for their ignorance of the
Bible; when bis own treatment of it reveals
the most astonishing want of knowledge of
the book as it stands revealed in the light
of modern critical research, while Max
Mailer has felt of any fancy in it. aud
studied the historic development OF every
root expressed in it's pages to help him in
the construction of the wonderful science
Of language which is throwing such a flood
If light back on the beginnings of our race
and the origins Of civilization. The friends
Of religion make the greatest mistake when
they place themselves in an attitude like
this. True religion and true science have
no quarrel. They will be one when they
abandon the polemic attitude and
cease to hurl arguments and epitbets
1t each other, and join hands in seeking the
ruth and Teverently maintaining the good.
humanity, the Hebrew Scriptures among
he rest. But those who underta Ike TO rep.
'esent Moses as Charles Lvell teaching an
elementary geology, and David as an in
pired Herschel spelling out the diagrams
II the heavens two thousand years before a
telescope dreamed of, and anticipating
he discoveries of modern astronomy, and
Paul as an Illuminated Darwin, and Adam
smith teaching 'the survival of the ti'test'
nd the true secret of the wealth of ma
IONS will find at length that they are in
ebte5 to their imaglnations for the basis Of
his superstructure, and that their ingenious
djustment OF impossible science and IN
written scripture lie as fruitless as the mar
iage of mist and moonbeams in the morn
IJe.