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TITLE: THE STORY OF CREATION AS TOLD BY THEOLOGY AND BY SCIENCE
AUTHOR: T. S. ACKLAND
EBOOK: E04954 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

THE STORY OF CREATION AS TOLD BY THEOLOGY AND BY SCIENCE.

BY T. S. ACKLAND, M.A.,

FORMERLY FELLOW OF CLARE COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; VICAR OF WOLD NEWTON,
YORKSHIRE.

"SIRS, YE ARE BRETHREN: WHY DO YE WRONG ONE TO ANOTHER?"

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.   THE CASE STATED
CHAPTER II.  DIFFICULTIES IN GEOLOGY
CHAPTER III. DIFFICULTIES IN ASTRONOMY
CHAPTER IV.  DIFFICULTIES IN PHYSIOLOGY
CHAPTER V.   SCIENCE A HELP TO INTERPRETATION

CHAPTER I.

THE CASE STATED.

The History of the Creation with which the Bible commences, is not
a mere incidental appendage to God's Revelation, but constitutes
the foundation on which the whole of that Revelation is based.
Setting forth as it does the relation in which man stands to God
as his Maker, and to the world which God formed for his abode, it
forms a necessary introduction to all that God has seen fit to
reveal to us with reference to His dispensations of Providence and
of Grace.

It is, however, not uncommonly asserted that this history cannot
be reconciled with a vast number of facts which modern science has
revealed to us, and with theories based on observed facts, and
recommended by the unquestioned ability of the men by whom they
have been brought forward. At first sight there does seem to be
some ground for this assertion. Geology, for instance, makes us
acquainted with strata of rock of various kinds, arranged in exact
order, and of an aggregate thickness of many miles, which are
filled with the remains of a wonderful series of plants and
animals, these remains not being promiscuously collected, but
arranged in an unvarying order. It seems impossible that all these
plants and animals could have lived and died, and been imbedded in
the rocks in this exact succession, in six of our ordinary days.
Astronomy directs our attention to changes now going on in the
starry heavens which occupy ages in their development, and points
to traces in the constitution of our own world which seem to
indicate that it was formed by analogous means. Physiology reveals
to us the fact that the different varieties of plants and animals
now in existence are not separated from each other by well defined
lines of demarcation, but shade into each other by almost
imperceptible gradations; and geological researches show that
while the existing species of animals are the representatives of
those which lived and died at a period in which we can find no
traces of man, they are not identical with them, but that either
the old species must have died out, and been replaced by a fresh
creation, or a considerable change must have taken place in the
course of ages. These facts are held to be incompatible with the
account of creation given by Moses, and hence it is inferred that
a record, which appears to be so widely at variance with admitted
facts, cannot be entitled to the authority which is claimed for
it, as a fundamental portion of a Revelation made by the Creator
Himself.

This difficulty is sometimes met by the assertion that the Bible
was not given to us to teach us Science, but to convey to us
certain information which was essential to our moral welfare, and
which we could not obtain by any other means; that these
discrepancies do not in any way interfere with that portion of
those truths which is involved in the History of Creation, but
that, however the narrative may be viewed as far as regards its
details, the facts that God is the Creator of all things visible
and invisible, that He is a Being of infinite Wisdom, Power, and
Love, and that He has placed man in a peculiar relation to
Himself, remain unaffected. On this ground it is often urged that
we may pass over scientific inaccuracies as matters of no great
importance.

Theologians are by no means agreed as to the nature and limits of
that inspiration by which Holy Scripture was written. There are
many who think that in matters purely incidental to its main
object, and lying within the reach of human faculties, the sacred
writers were left to the ordinary sources of information, and that
many alleged difficulties may be removed by this view.

But whatever may be thought of the application of this hypothesis
to some parts of the Bible, there are others to which it is
plainly inapplicable, and of these the narrative of the Creation
is evidently one. No theory of limited inspiration can be admitted
to explain any supposed inaccuracies in that narrative. It cannot
be liable to those imperfections which are inevitable when men
have to obtain knowledge by the ordinary means, because there were
no ordinary means by which such information could be obtained. The
most carefully preserved records, the oldest traditions could not
extend backwards beyond the moment when the first man awoke to
conscious existence. For every thing beyond that point the only
source of knowledge available was information derived from the
Creator Himself. It may be that a revelation of this character was
made to Adam in the days of his innocence, that it was carefully
handed down to his descendants, and that Moses, under the divine
direction, incorporated it into his history; or it may have been
directly communicated to Moses by special inspiration--that
matters not--but a divine revelation it must have been, or it is
nothing; the dream of a poet, or the theory of a philosopher, if
we can believe that such a philosopher existed at such a time. But
if it be indeed a revelation from the Creator Himself, we cannot
imagine that He could fall into any error, or sanction any
misrepresentation with reference even to the smallest detail of
His own work.

If then there are really any errors in this record--any assertions
which the discoveries of science have proved to be untrue, we
cannot account for them on any theory of limited inspiration. A
single proved error would be fatal to the authority of the whole
narrative. But, on the other hand, we are not justified in
expecting such an account of the Creation as would commend itself
to the scientific intellect of the present day. When we attempt to
form a judgment upon it. We must look not only to its alleged
author, but also to the purposes for which, the circumstances
under which, and the persons to whom it was given. In these we may
expect to meet with many limitations. It was not designed for the
communication of scientific knowledge, it was necessarily conveyed
in human language, and addressed to human intelligence, that
language and that intelligence being, not as they are now, but as
they were, taking the latest possible date that can be assigned to
it, considerably more than three thousand years ago.

This last consideration affects not only the record itself, but
also our facilities for understanding and forming a judgment upon
it. We have to contend with difficulties of interpretation arising
from our inability fully to realize the circumstances under which
it was given, and to place ourselves in the mental position of its
original recipients. Owing to our want of this power it may well
happen, that though we are in possession of vastly increased
knowledge, we may be far more liable to fall into error in some
directions, in the interpretation of it, than those to whom it was
originally addressed.

An additional difficulty arises from the circumstance that our
knowledge, wonderfully as it has been increased of late, is yet
very far from complete, and is probably in many cases still mixed
with error. Hence it may very well happen that where there is
complete harmony between the history and the facts, we may suspect
discord owing to our misunderstanding of the record, or our
misconception of the facts. In order that the harmony may be
recognized in its fulness, there must be a perfect understanding
of the record, and a perfect knowledge of the facts. But from both
of these we are probably at present very far removed.

If a person who was a thorough master of some science undertook to
write a treatise for the purpose of teaching children the
rudiments of that science, we should expect, and the more strongly
if the author were a master of language as well as of science,
that his work should contain indications of a master's hand. We
should expect that while the book conveyed clearly and simply to
the minds of those for whom it was written, the truths which it
was intended to teach, it should also convey to the more educated
reader some intimations of a deeper knowledge on the part of its
author. The choice of a word, the turn of a phrase, the order in
which facts were arranged, the occurrence here and there of a
sentence which an ordinary reader would pass over as unimportant,
would to such a person be indications of trains of thought far
more profound than those which appeared on the surface. And this
recognition would be proportional to two things--the amount of
scientific knowledge possessed by the reader, and his mastery of
the language in which the book was written.

Such, then, are the characteristics which we may expect to find in
the Record of Creation, if it be indeed, as we believe, a
revelation from God, made to men in a very low stage of
intellectual development. In order that we may be able to form a
satisfactory judgment of it, it will be well for us to consider a
little in detail two classes of difficulties. 1. Those which
belong to the Revelation itself, arising from the limitations to
which it was necessarily subject in its delivery. 2. Those which
arise from our imperfect knowledge of the language in which it is
written, and from our inability to place ourselves in the
intellectual position of those to whom it was originally given.

1. When this record was committed to writing, language was in a
very different condition from that in which it is now. We have an
account of the first recorded exercise of the faculty of speech in
Gen. ii. 19. Adam first used it to give names to all the living
creatures as they passed in review before him. In accordance with
this statement it appears, from the researches of philologists,
that language in its earliest state was entirely, or almost
entirely limited to words denoting sensible objects and actions.
It seems probable that these names were derived from radicals
expressing general ideas [Footnote: Max Muller's Lectures on the
Science of Language, First Series Lect. viii. ix.]; but there is
reason to doubt whether these radicals ever had a formal existence
as words--they seem rather to have been the mental stock out of
which words were produced. But the human mind had from the first
powers for the exercise of which this limited vocabulary was
insufficient. Even in the outer world there was much which was the
object of reason and inference rather than of sense, while the
whole world of consciousness was entirely unprovided with the
means of expression. To meet this difficulty words, which

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