should have begun to feel a silent contempt for theology, or to entertain secret thoughts of scepticism? And can any one be surprised if a like dogmatism on the part of the Church in the present day should produce, even in a more aggravated form, the same results?

How often, for example, have men of science been driven into scepticism by the adherence of theologians to the belief that the Bible teaches the age of the world to be only 6000 years, when, in reality, it does no such thing! Again, that it necessitates our holding the Noachian deluge to have been co-extensive with the entire surface of the globe, notwithstanding it may be clearly shown that its language, properly interpreted, compels no such opinion! And again, that we must needs believe from Scripture in the recomposition of our bodies at the general resurrection, out of the identical particles which belonged to them ages before, although, by the chemistry of nature, many of those particles must have become absorbed into a succession of other bodies also! The reiteration of such statements as these, as though they were the necessary teachings of the Bible, has produced much needless antagonism to Revelation.

I know that some men of science object to these theological modifications of old interpretation as illegitimate and unconscientious, especially in such a case as that of the non-universality of the Noachian deluge, the language concerning which they maintain to be utterly incapable of any such

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change. This is an assertion which is very easily made. The answer to it, however, is both easy and indisputable. For many years before the era of modern geology, and long before any apparent necessity arose for this change of interpretation from the progress of science, both Bishop Stillingfleet, A.D. 1662, in his Origines Sacra, and Matthew Poole, A.D. 1680, in his Annotations, alike maintained the probability of it.

But even if it had been otherwise, why should not the improved knowledge of our present age permit us to reconsider traditional views of the meaning of ancient authors? Indeed, why do I ask the question, when it is already allowed in secular literature? Is not every student of Herodotus, for example, well aware how certain passages in his writings, which used to be interpreted in one way, have now come to be looked at in quite a different light, through our comparatively recent explorations of Egypt and Assyria? By this means some of his passages which were formerly obscure have at last become intelligible. Others, though apparently plain before, we discover to be no less plain still, notwithstanding we find ourselves obliged to interpret them differently. Well, then, if we possess this right to alter old interpretations of the words of classic authors, without impeaching the veracity of their writings, why may we not have the same liberty in regard to the Sacred writers? Inspiration has nothing to do with the question. It is a simple affair of grammatical investigation and of literary

criticism, to both of which processes the Bible is necessarily subject quite as much as any other book.

The propriety, for example, of our interpreting the Hebrew word "yom," in the first chapter of Genesis, not as a natural day, but as an epoch of extended duration (whether agreeable to the deductions of science or not), is merely a question of criticism. So with the creation of inorganic matter, as described in the 1st verse of that chapter. Whether those grand words, "In the beginning," may not justly be referred to a primeval period of unnamed length, during which all the molecular atoms and physical forces of the universe were originated, and passed through a succession of indefinitely numerous transformations, until the heavenly bodies had been arranged in their present orbits; or whether they oblige us to believe in an immediate and sudden act of creational construction, by which every world in its orbit was perfected at once; these are questions of consideration which may be fairly and honestly discussed. That the latter opinion should have been held by our old interpreters does not at all guarantee its correctness; while the circumstance that modern interpreters have adopted the former opinion, suggests no reason of itself why they should be wrong. In like manner, whether our old traditional belief of there having been six distinct and separate acts of suddenly perfected creation (as apparently related in that chapter), be so imperatively bound up with the text of Scripture,

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that the whole truth of Revelation must stand or fall by the issue; or whether the belief that one slowly and continuously acting series of evolutionary creative movements, marked out into six distinctive groups as they passed from one to the other, may not be an equally just and honest exposition of the chapter;-this is as plain a question for literary and grammatical criticism as anything which belongs to a passage in the Greek text of Herodotus can be.

It does not devolve upon me in this place to discuss the question whether a similar difference of interpretation may exist with reference to the next two chapters of Genesis ; i. e. whether they contain records of actual facts in an historical narrative or records of truth conveyed under a form of sacred allegory. It is quite sufficient to allege that in either case they may have been equally well inspired by the Holy Spirit, and have substantially imparted the same moral teaching. That point must be decided by fair investigation, and by an honest literary criticism of the text. All I want to impress upon men of modern science is, that not every old interpretation of Scripture is necessarily its true meaning. The interpretation is of man, and may be false. The revelation is from God, and must, so far, be true. Hence, if I were speaking to professed Believers, Į should say: "Cease your dogmatic enforcement of mere traditional interpretation; and when science has unmistakably demonstrated that you are wrong, do not denounce her as heretical, because she seems

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to you to differ from the Bible; for it may be neither science nor the Bible which need correction, but only your own mistaken interpretation." Speaking, however, as I now do, to Doubters, I put it rather the other way, saying: "Do not think that Revelation is responsible for all the opinions which a past age more ignorant than our own may have fastened upon it. Do not be alienated from the Word of God, because intolerance and ignorance may have forced it to teach as divinely true what you know to be philosophically false. If the time has arrived when, as in the days of Galileo, we must surrender some of the popular interpretations of Scripture, do not suppose that such a change of interpretation is feigned, or that it necessarily affects the substance of what has been revealed; do not say that Revelation is itself in fault, but confess at once that the mistake may have rather arisen out of man's imperfect conception of its true meaning."

We may now advance a step farther.

CAUTION III.-In reading the Bible it is of the greatest importance to remember that it was written under Divine Inspiration, not to give us an exact outline of science, or a condensed handbook of philosophy, but to provide us with a revelation of moral and spiritual truth for the purpose of our salvation. Consequently, as time goes forward, and fresh researches into the. fields of nature open out new discoveries of physical phenomena, these two spheres of know