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PRINCETON, N. J. 



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BLENDING LIGHTS; 



OR, 



THE RELATIONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE, 

ARCHAEOLOGY, AND HISTORY, 

TO THE BIBLE. 



BY REV. WILLIAM FRASER, LL. D. 



REVISED EDITION. 



Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good." 1 Thes. 5 : 21 




AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

I 50 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



Third edition, revised for the American Tract Society by the 
Author, and published by a special arrangement with him. 



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CHAPTER I. 

Tendencies to Error — Subjects to be Studied — Practical Suggestions 5 

CHAPTER II. 

The First Chapter of Genesis — Its Distinguishing Characteristics as a 
History — Origination of Matter — Import of "In the Beginning" 12 

CHAPTER III. 

The First Chapter of Genesis (continued) — The Origin of Light — Its Ex- 
istence before the Sun was made separately Visible — The Origina- 
tion of Life — The Creative Days 47 

CHAPTER IV. 

Unity of the Heavens and the Earth — Unity in the Structure of the Earth, 
and in its Life-forms 68 

CHAPTER V. 

Scripture Allusions coincident with Facts in Natural Science 83 

CHAPTER VI 

The Geologic Fulness of Time when Man appeared 97 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Bible Account of Man's Origin — The Opinion that he was Miracu- 
lously Born — The Theory that he was naturally developed 106 

CHAPTER VIII 

Have there been More Origins than One for the Human Race? — The 
Bible Doctrine in Relation to Recent Theories 134 



4 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Were our First Parents Savages ? — Recent Theories as to the Origin of 
Civilization considered in Relation to Scripture and History 164 

CHAPTER X. 

Were our First Parents Savages ? (continued) — Recent Theories as to the 
Origin of Civilization considered in Relation to the Mental Faculties, 
the Moral Sense, and Religion 192 

CHAPTER XL 

The Antiquity of Man — The Bible Chronology — The Chronology of 
Geologists - - - - 225 

CHAPTER XII. 

Antiquity of Man (continued) — The Chronology of Archaeologists — Infer- 
ences as connected with Geology and History — The Danish Shell- 
Mounds, Swiss Lake Dwellings, and Egyptian Monuments 257 

CHAPTER XIII 

The Bible a Light among Ancient Records — Egyptian, Chaldean, and 
Assyrian Testimonies to the Truth of the Scriptures 290 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Bible History in Relation to Prophecy — The Evidence of Prophecy — The 
Idea of the Supernatural Inseparable from it 341 

CHAPTER XV. 

Recent Theories regarding the Supernatural and the Reign of Law — 
Evidence in Nature of the Supernatural - 369 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Evidence in Christianity of the Supernatural — Results in the History of 
Christianity — Conclusion 401 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

TENDENCIES TO ERROR SUBJECTS TO BE STUDIED PRAC- 
TICAL SUGGESTIONS. 

Let no one, upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied modera- 
tion, think or maintain that a man can search too far, or be too well 
studied in the book of God's Word, or in the book of God's Works — 
divinity or philosophy — but rather let men endeavor an endless progress 
or proficiency in both ; only let them beware' that they apply both to char- 
ity and not to arrogance ; to use, and not to ostentation ; and, again, that 
they do not mingle or confound these learnings together. — bacon. 

Many have lost their early faith in the Bible, and are 
following its guidance with faltering footstep. Between 
them and hitherto accepted truths, the sciences have 
been placing apparently insurmountable obstacles. The 
trustful simplicity with which they once read the sacred 
Record has almost perished. Inferences by the man of 
science, conflicting with interpretations of Scripture by 
the theologian, have rudely shaken their most cherished 
convictions. They are not infidels, they are not skeptics, 
for doubt is distasteful to them ; they long for more defi- 
nite expositions and a firmer faith. 

1* 



6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

In the midst of such discussions as are at present 
keenly sustained, their perplexity is not unnatural, their 
most anxiously-sustained investigations have hitherto 
only multiplied difficulties, and a sense of responsibility 
alone constrains them to linger over conclusions from 
which their judgment recoils. This hesitancy of belief 
may be at the outset disheartening ; yet it may be insep- 
arable from that clearness of insight and that force of 
character, which, in the end, commonly create the stablest 
convictions, and evoke adequate proof to shield them. 
To shun or denounce those who cannot acquiesce in 
what we believe, is inconsistent not only with the lessons 
of philosophy, but with His example who came to "bear 
witness to the truth." 

What is our duty, with the natural sciences on the 
one hand appealing so largely to our reason, and the 
Scriptures on the other hand appealing so constantly to 
our faith ? Obviously, to depreciate neither, but to wel- 
come both the sciences and the Scriptures, to ascertain 
their harmony, to note their differences, and to accept 
the treasures of truth which they may bring. Indiffer- 
ence is inexcusable as is excessive zeal, and apathy as 
antagonism. 

The Bible, free to us as are the fields of science, chal- 
lenges the severest scrutiny. It is the boldest of books, 
and demands the application of every test. As it is the 
most comprehensive history in the world, and gives the 
amplest scope for research, as its earliest records are the 
oldest in existence, and its latest prophecies shed light 
far into the future, as it touches depths and reaches 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 7 

heights which no other book can approach, as it brings 
into closest connection the visible and invisible, natural 
law and supernatural influence, the condition of man and 
the character of God, it is exposed to assaults which no 
other book can bear. 

Systematic and persistent study is required at our 
hand, that we may estimate aright not only the facts and 
arguments brought against the Bible, but those also which 
are adduced in its favor. The task may be arduous, but 
this price is not too great for the settlement of questions 
so momentous ; and if the solution of some of them may 
have to be for a season postponed, ours will be the satis- 
faction which the conscientious improvement of every 
opportunity invariably fosters. 

Different lines of investigation may be profitably fol- 
lowed, but we- may suggest the following as exhaustive, 
or nearly exhaustive, of the most prominent questions 
which modern research has raised. 

As the Bible is confessedly related to the natural sci- 
ences, archaeology, history, and modern civilization, let it 
be placed successively in the midst of their facts, and let 
us see to what extent its statements can bear their light. 

There are many questions which none of us can hon- 
estly avoid ; and while some may remain unsettled, the 
unbiased review of those solutions which have been 
already offered, and which have been generally accepted, 
will be found to confirm Scripture instead of confuting it. 

1. As to Science. — Have astronomy and geology given 
evidence for or against the eternity of the visible uni- 
, verse? Has biology determined the origin of life? 



8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

whence is it ? Have comparative anatomy and physiol- 
ogy, psychology and ethics, established more than one 
origin for the human race ? Are the incidental allusions 
in Scripture contradicted or confirmed by the more re- 
cent discoveries in natural science ? 

2. As to Archceology. — Can the Bible confront prehis- 
toric revelations ? Antiquity is pouring increasing light 
over the oldest records. Ruins, monuments, inscriptions, 
parchments, have been emitting their wondrous testimo- 
nies, parallel with Scripture history. Assyria, Egypt, 
Palestine, Greece, Rome, in their histories, revolutions, 
and domestic episodes, have been interwoven with the 
statements of Scripture as with those of no other book. 
To what purpose has historic criticism dealt with the 
sacred page ? Is the Bible yielding, or is it growing 
brighter in the crucible of archaeology ? 

3. As to Modern History and Civilization. — By its 
claim to uplift and bless the human race, the Bible is 
separated from all other books. It proposes to revolu- 
tionize man's moral history here, and to prepare him for 
a future whose course it in part delineates. Has it failed, 
or is it failing ? Has it been enfeebled by the lapse of 
ages ? Has it become effete amid changes which have 
given intellect new instruments and reason new spheres ? 
Has it lost its former hold of the human mind, and is it 
sinking amid the tumult of bitterly conflicting opinions? 
Has ever tribe been found which it could not raise and 
enlighten ? or has civilization ever outshone, in any land, 
its intellectual and moral splendor? 

4. As to the Supernatural. — If the Bible is the book 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 9 

which it professes to be, and which we hold it is, the or- 
dinary and the extraordinary, the natural and the super- 
natural, must be associated in its character and history. 
What is the warrant which men of science adduce for 
repudiating; the supernatural while they accept the nat- 
ural ? and by what reasoning does the Christian apologist 
attempt to preserve their connection? Is there no valid 
evidence around us in the contrasts of barbarism and civ- 
ilization, as well as in the histories of nations in their 
relation to prophecy ? and are there no facts in the 
strangely revolutionized lives of thousands in the Chris- 
tian church, which proclaim the singular moral force of 
the Word of God ? 

Assuming that many are willing to follow such a 
course of study as we have sketched, either to remove 
doubts which may be lingering in their own mind, or to 
aid some brother in his struggle to win the repose which 
they have gained, we shall, at the outset, offer some sug- 
gestions as to the spirit and the method by which their 
investigations should be characterized. It is of much 
importance to know, in the first place, what is, and what 
is not yet, within our reach. 

1. We are not entitled to assume the possibility, in 
the present state of our knowledge, of demonstrating a 
perfect agreement between science and Scripture, or 
rather between the inferences of the philosopher and the 
interpretations of the theologian. Much remains to be 
ascertained before that result can be realized. The nat- 
ural sciences are confessedly incomplete ; some of them 
are only in their infancy, and can teach us little. Many 



io BLENDING LIGHTS. 

years may pass before they can be brought into perfect 
accord with the Bible. As the facts of natural science 
have not been all ascertained and classified, as its laws 
have not been all recognized, and as the inferences of to- 
day may be modified by the discoveries of to-morrow, it 
is absurd to be demanding immediate evidence of a per- 
fect agreement between Scripture and science. Appa- 
rent contradictions are, at the present stage, unavoidable. 
There must first be an exact and exhaustive examination 
of all those points at which the Scriptures and the sci- 
ences touch each other ; for so long as a single fact or a 
single law remains unknown, some important or essential 
truth, intimately related to the Bible, may be concealed. 

While the natural sciences continue incomplete, nat- 
ural theology must necessarily have an imperfect foun- 
dation. As confessedly dependent on what is incomplete, 
natural theology can have neither the comprehensiveness 
nor the definiteness which characterizes supernatural the- 
ology, as dependent on what is now complete and unva- 
rying. We cannot force the legitimate yet somewhat 
incoherent teachings of the one book — the works of 
God — of which but a few leaves have been separated, 
scanned, and paged, into perfect harmony with the teach- 
ings of the other book — the W T ord of God — whose reve- 
lation of truth has been finished, accredited, and closed. 

2. It bec6mes us to wait patiently, while we work 
persistently, for the solution of difficulties which may be 
continuing to press upon us. The experience of the past 
is an encouragement for the future. The sciences have 
again and again become their own interpreter, and reject- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. n 

ed erroneous inferences. Many examples might be 
given, but one or two may in the meantime suffice. 
Human skeletons were found in what seemed old lime- 
stone, on the northeast coast of the mainland of Guada- 
loupe ; and after bold attacks on the Bible, which were 
met by some very weak and irregular defences, it was 
ascertained that the whole was a mistake — that the lime- 
stone was of very recent formation, that the skeletons 
were of well-known Indian tribes, and agitation ceased. 
A similar commotion was raised when the supposed im- 
prints of human feet on limestone had been figured and 
described in the " American Journal of Science," and 
Christians met strange infidel hypotheses by very feeble 
assertions, until Dr. Dale Owen proved the imprints to 
have been sculptured by an Indian tribe. Thereafter, 
for a season, the scientific inquirer and the theological 
student prosecuted their respective investigations in 
peace. 

There are important lessons for us in these, and in 
many similar facts. Christian apologists have often egre- 
giously erred, not only in hastily accepting statements 
regarding supposed facts, but in admitting the validity of 
the reasoning which has been eagerly founded on them, 
and in making a fruitless attempt to twist Scripture into 
harmony with what science itself has subsequently dis- 
owned. Facts ill-observed, and afterwards misstated, 
have drawn many of our best and most candid students 
into unnecessary collision with Biblical critics ; and, after 
much heat in controversy, and the waste on both sides 
of much intellectual energy, the obstacle lying between 



i2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

them has unexpectedly vanished in the fuller light of sci- 
ence. The evil to be deplored is, that after the errors 
have disappeared their influence remains. The imprint 
often lingers long after the counterfeit die has been 
broken. 

3. There is a constant tendency on the part of dis- 
coverers to invest new facts with a fictitious interest, 
and those who are hostile to the Bible eagerly parade 
them for the discomfiture of Christians. Every fact is 
to be welcomed, but it is to be treasured only that it may 
be adjusted to other facts, and become in part the foun- 
dation of a new truth. Isolated and unexplained facts 
have been too often unceremoniously dragged into court 
to give testimony against some Scripture statement, and 
have been too easily held sufficient to push aside those 
accumulated evidences to its truth which history or 
science, or both, had indisputably established. It is not, 
indeed, surprising that the faith of many has failed, when 
they have observed the too ready acquiescence of prom- 
inent Christian writers in theories which necessitate the 
abandonment of some of the impregnable fortresses that 
have been raised by exact scholarship around those por- 
tions of Scripture which had been longest exposed to the 
fiercest assaults. Were this method common, no perma- 
nent foundation could be laid, and progress in any science 
would be impossible. Is it not absurd to be displacing 
corner-stones, and disowning, at random, first principles ? 
No system of philosophy, no science — not even mathe- 
matical, the exactest and in one sense the most perma- 
nent of. all the sciences — could have any weight or make 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 13 

the least progress, if subjected to such changes in both 
its principles and their applications, as have marked the 
history of Bible assaults, concessions, and defences. 
When facts which are utterly inexplicable are presented, 
we should retain the fact in science and also the relative 
statement in Scripture, assured that in clue time the 
needed solution will come to harmonize them. 

4. To accept or offer apologies for the Bible indicates 
weakness. It has, of late, become common on the part of 
those who are alarmed by the temporary triumphs which 
scientific investigation has given the avowed enemies of the 
Bible, to demand that its propositions be altogether dissoci- 
ated from both science and philosophy, on the plea that 
the Bible was not given to teach either the one or the other. 
The proposal is plausible, but it is really unnecessary ; 
for although not given to teach physical science, the Bi- 
ble cannot contradict either its facts or its legitimate 
inferences. The Word of God cannot be regarded as 
by any possibility contradicting the lessons of his works. 
Like every other book, the Bible must bear all the light 
that can fall on its pages ; and it must not only stand 
the tests of criticism and history, but vindicate all its 
claims as the " more sure Word of Prophecy." Other- 
wise, appeals for leniency are profitless. True, in its 
highest connections, the Bible is unapproachable by oth- 
er books ; it is easily distinguishable from them ; yet in 
its human relations it must submit to all the ordinary 
appliances of scholarship. No apologies can justify a 
single error in either its science or its history, and its 

propositions are obviously inadmissible if they contradict 

2 



i 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

human reason ; they may be above, but they cannot be 
opposed to it. 

5. Akin to an easy escape from difficulties, through 
apologies for the Bible, is the tendency to glide into con- 
clusions directly hostile. The prevailing activity of the 
age is so unfavorable to leisurely investigations, as to 
facilitate the subtle advances of error. While many 
writers of the present day are as preeminently gifted, 
and as distinguished in the different departments of 
learning, as those of any preceding age, and while their 
reasonings and their conclusions are borne by the daily 
or the serial press to every man's door, multitudes 
think and decide by substitute. They want leisure, and 
they trust to others. Rapidity of locomotion, the chief 
physical feature of our time, betokens also its intellectual 
tendencies. Men read cursorily and -decide rapidly. 
The daily newspaper is making book-study rarer than 
hitherto. Sustained study is felt in ten thousand in- 
stances to be distasteful or difficult. The subtle influ- 
ence of the daily newspaper is telling on our thoughtful- 
ness. We really seem to be approaching the fulfilment 
of Lamartine's prediction, " Before this century shall 
have run out, journalism will be the whole press, the 
whole of human thought. Thought will not have had time 
to ripen — to accommodate itself into the form of a book. 
The book will arrive too late ; the only book possible 
soon, will be a newspaper." 

As one result of this process, truth and error are 
often imperceptibly commingled. So swift is the transi- 
tion from one fact and inference to another, that truth 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 15 

and error, like different colors blent into one by rapid 
motion, become so much alike, that few can separate 
them. Thus with every advance of truth, error is wafted 
forward. The seeds of future tares and wheat are being 
profusely scattered. It cannot be denied, that while to 
almost every man's door are daily wafted accurate rec- 
ords of passing history, of the discoveries of science, of 
the triumphs of art, and of the generalizations of philoso- 
phy, the same messengers no less sedulously exhibit, 
now faintly and now in the strongest light, every difficul- 
ty connected with the Bible, both real and imaginary, the 
boldest objections of historic criticism, the theories of 
speculative philosophy, the apparent contradictions of 
science and Scripture, and the saddening conflicts of 
professing Christians. The constant diffusion of such 
influences tells in the long run, not only on less active 
minds, but on the most energetic, and it renders easier 
of acceptance every erroneous conclusion. 

But this incessant activity is a symptom of health. 
It augurs good. Rightly directed, it may strengthen 
character while it develops mental power, and gives a 
more exquisite appreciation of the just and true. But 
remember that everything depends on this rightness of 
direction ; and to secure this, unfailing caution is required. 
The wind and tide which, rightly used, hasten the voya- 
ger to his harbor, may, if unheeded, strand him on an 
unexpected shore ; and so those subtle forces, and those 
under-currents, which should have aided in guiding us to 
a satisfying intellectual and moral repose, may, through 
the thoughtlessness or the indolence that at the outset 



1 6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

disregarded a slight divergence from the truth, almost 
but not altogether imperceptible, destroy our happiness 
through the shipwreck and the ultimate abandonment of 
our Christian faith. 

6. Another common tendency in the wrong direction 
claims attention. It manifests itself in repugnance to 
controversy or discussion in every form. Many shrink 
from controversy as unseemly, and seek escape in either 
solitude or study. While peace is in itself desirable, it 
is not always attainable. We cannot escape conflict by 
letting go the Bible ; nor can we traverse any of the 
fields of science without entanglement in the intellectual 
struggles of disputants whose reasonings have sometimes 
but little of the calmness of philosophy. Nor is this to 
be regretted. The repose of meditation is not so bra- 
cing as the discipline of occasional contest for the truth. 

There are other advantages. The attrition of discus- 
sion often reveals and beautifies truths which would 
otherwise have remained unrecognized. Apathy or 
silence may shelter error without preserving truth. 
Intellectual indolence, bad for the world, is still worse 
for the 'church. The highest life is demanded by the 
Bible, and, therefore, also the greatest activity. From 
intellectual walfare, the sciences and the Scriptures have 
nothing to lose, but everything to gain. On Christian 
or skeptic, on prophet true or false, the Bible never 
enforces silence. It seals no thinker's lip. " The prophet 
that hath a dream, let him tell a dream ; and he that 
hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What 
is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord." Jer.- 23:28. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 17 

In the field of thought, nothing save the chaff perishes. 
Lost truths spring up again ; and, beneath their spreading 
branches, vitiated reasoning, unsound criticism, and 
erroneous conclusions, ultimately decay as briers beneath 
the spreading oak. 

There are those also who deplore discussion only 
because it raises questions hostile to the Scriptures, and 
alarms the weak. This anxiety, though laudable, is 
fruitless. Vital questions are already discussed on all 
hands, and in every variety of aspect. There are dis- 
advantages, but they are generally inseparable from the 
progress of truth. It will be admitted on both sides, 
that while the extension of exact knowledge contracts 
the sphere of superstition, it enlarges at the same time 
the sphere of skepticism. Superstition may be displaced 
without Christianity becoming its substitute ; there may 
be a high and an attractive civilization, based on science 
and its applications, which, in acknowledging the intel- 
lectual and moral supremacy of the Bible, and nothing 
more, may for a season destroy credulity, only to give 
fuller scope to No-Belief, and to evoke ultimately an 
opposition to the Bible hitherto repressed or unknown. 
For such results we must be prepared ; they are collateral, 
not essential or direct. They are, in fact, the price 
which we pay for our intellectual freedom. We are 
neither to falter nor hesitate because the increasing light, 
which is dissipating ignorance and extending the bound- 
aries of truth, is at the same time indirectly opening to 
Error a wider field for the distribution of her forces, 
revealing new weapons for her armory, and enabling 

2* 



1 8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

her to seize, and for a season to retain, positions hitherto 
unknown and unassailed. In the history of the physical 
sciences, and of archaeological discovery, Error has often 
rushed to the battlements of Truth, and, seizing some 
detached or imaginary facts, has wielded them against 
the Bible, until the sciences have themselves expelled 
her and repudiated her reasoning. Such agitation is 
not to be deplored : it conduces to stability, it evokes 
more good than evil, and not unfreqently has it happen- 
ed that the superstition which long benumbed the 
church, and the infidelity which aroused her, have yield- 
ed to the unexpected sway of some Bible truth, when a 
more definite meaning has been given to some natural 
law or providential dispensation. 

The character of the Bible is misunderstood by those 
who suppose that its safety lies in keeping it as far as 
possible from the rigorous investigations and the exact 
conclusions of science or philosophy. Such a method is 
indefensible. To pursue truth in one department implies, 
or should imply, not only a love of truth in every depart- 
ment, but also a resolute purpose to discover and dislodge 
every error. Which of the sciences, as preserved from 
controversy, is entitled to cast the first stone at any of 
the others or their students ? " Philosophy and litera- 
ture," says Lord Kinloch, in an admirable work, "while 
professing to pursue truth in the composure of unruffled 
seclusion, and to be desirous of having it elicited by the 
healthy excitement of friendly debate, will protest against 
the dishonor of soiling their hands, or disarranging their 
robes in the turmoil of heated controversy ; and least of 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 19 

all will they consent to be defiled with the mire or 
exposed to the perils of religious strife. This plea is 
false in fact, as it is futile in philosophy. It is in fact 
false : for literary and philosophical controversies have 
been neither few in number nor wanting in a. keen and 
rancorous spirit. And, admitting that religious conten- 
tions have been still more rancorous and embittered, it 
is only what might reasonably be expected, on account 
of the higher interests at stake. The plea is, moreover, 
worthless on philosophicial principles : for it eviscerates 
the distinction between truth and error of all meaning 
and value. Better not to admit the distinction at all, 
than, having admitted it in one instance, deny it in 
another ; or, what is worse, depreciate its significance 
even to thought, and that too in the most important of 
its applications. All argument and all effort are for ever 
at an end, unless truth — yea, all truth — be precious ; so 
precious, that in the legitimate pursuit of it we may and < 
ought to put forth our utmost strength ; and in defence 
of it, when found, incur the utmost hazard."* 

It is unworthy of any Christian scientist to be dis- 
couraged by apparently insurmountable obstacles. The 
boldest assertions and the most plausible reasonings need 
not disturb the Bible student. Difficulties seemingly 
insuperable have, in the past, suddenly yielded to unex- 
pected discoveries ; and every science, we may rest 
assured, will hereafter gain strength enough and light 
enough to purify its own temple and be its own inter- 
preter. The past may be held to be prophetic of future 
"Christian Errors, Infidel Arguments," p. 97. 



2o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

solutions ; and the sciences will be found not only correct- 
ing the mistakes and the arrogance of many of their 
students, but rebuking the too hasty concessions of 
Christian apologists, and either directly or indirectly 
revealing, at the same time, the impressiveness and the 
majesty of Scripture truth. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS ITS DISTINGUISHING 

CHARACTERISTICS AS A HISTORY ORIGINATION OF 

MATTER IMPORT OF " IN THE BEGINNING." 

The archetype of science is the universe, and it is in the disclosure of 
its successive parts that science advances from step to step; not properly 
by raising any new architecture of its own, but rather unveiling by degrees 
an architecture as old as creation. The laborers in philosophy create 
nothing, but only bring out into exhibition that which was before cre- 
ated. — CHALMERS. 

As an historical record, the first chapter of Genesis is 
without a compeer. It is unapproached. Its first an- 
nouncements distinguish the Bible from all other books. 
Its simplicity, its directness of statement, its boldness oi 
conception, its subdued grandeur, are throughout con- 
spicuous. " The historical events described," says De- 
litzsch, " contain a rich treasury of speculative thoughts 
and poetical glory, but they themselves are free from the 
influence of human invention and human philosophizing." 
The record begins where the investigations of natural 
science cease, and this very peculiarity has drawn upon 
the Bible the fiercest assaults. Every statement has 
been in turn sifted, rejected, and vindicated ; and one of 
the fairest tests which at the very outset we can apply, is 
carefully to compare the Bible account of creation and 
of the preparation of the earth for man, with those paral- 
lel histories by which heathen nations have hitherto been 
guided. 



22 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Reserving for future consideration the mutual rela- 
tions of its more definite statements, let us therefore at 
once place this portion of Scripture history side by side 
with the best accounts which antiquity and modern his- 
tory can furnish. Their incongruities are so apparent as 
to be ludicrous. If we carefully examine the Chaldean, 
the Phoenician, and the Egyptian, as illustrative of an- 
cient cosmogonies, and the varied delineations and be- 
liefs of Northern Europe and India as illustrative of 
accepted records in more recent times, we cannot fail to 
recognize the wonderful preeminence of the Bible. 

I. HEATHEN HISTORIES OF CREATION COMPARED WITH THE 
BIBLE RECORD. 

1. In the Chaldean myth, the "All" is represented as 
consisting of darkness and water, filled with monstrous 
creatures of profound form, and governed by a woman, 
whose name, Homoroka, signifies ocean. This woman 
was cut into two halves by Bel, the supreme deity: the 
one half formed the earth, the other heaven. Bel there- 
after cut off his own head, and from the drops of his blood 
men were formed. 

2. In the Phoenician cosmogony, the beginning of 
the "All" was a dark windy air, a turbid eternal chaos. 
By the union of the spirit with the " All," or universe, 
slime was formed, from which every seed of creation was 
educed. The heavens were made in the form of an egg, 
from which sprang sun, moon, and stars, and constella- 
tions. By the meeting of the earth and the sea, winds 
arose, with clouds and rain, lightning and thunder. The 
noise of the tempests aroused sensitive beings, and 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 23 

henceforth living creatures, male and female, moved in 
the sea and on the earth. 

3. The Egyptians had several myths, the chief of 
which was that the heaven and earth were at first com- 
mingled, but afterwards the elements began to separate. 
" The fiery particles, owing to their levity, rose to the 
upper regions ; the muddy and turbid matter, after it had 
been incorporated with the humid, subsided by its own 
weight. By continued motion, the watery particles sep- 
arated and became the sea, the more solid constituted the 
dry land. Warmed and fecundated by the sun, the earth, 
still soft, produced different kinds of creatures, which, 
according as the fiery, watery, or earthy matter predomi- 
nated in their constitution, became inhabitants of the 
sky, the water, or the land." Similar absurdities prevail 
in the myths of Greece and Etruria* The following 
quotation from the laws of Menu is illustrative of the 
strange beliefs of millions in India at the present day, 
who regard these laws as a revelation from Brahma: 

" This universe existed only in darkness, impercepti- 
ble, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason — undiscovered, 
as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. There, the self- 
existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this 
world discernible with fire-elements and other princi- 
ples, appeared with undiminished glory, dispelling the 
gloom. . . . He having willed to produce various beings 
from his own substance, first, with a thought, created 

* See " Commentary on the Pentateuch," by Keil and Delitzsch, vol. 
I., pp. 38-40; and "Creation and the Fall," by the Rev. D. MacDonald, 
pp. 48-60. 



24 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

the waters, and placed in them a productive seed. The 
seed became an egg, bright as gold, blazing like the lumi- 
nary with a thousand beams, and in that egg he was born 
himself in the form of Brahma, the great forefather of all 
spirits. The waters are called Nara, because thev were 
the offspring of Nara, the supreme spirit ; and as in them 
his first ayana (progress) in the character of Brahma took 
place, he is thence Narayana, he whose place of moving 
was the waters. From that which is the cause, not the 
object, of sense — existing everywhere in substance, not 
existing to our perception, without beginning or end — 
was produced the divine male, famed in all the worlds as 
Brahma. In that egg the great power sat inactive a 
whole year of the creator ; at the close of which, by his 
thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself, and 
from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and 
the earth beneath ; in the midst, he placed the subtle 
ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of 
the waters. He gave being to time ; to the stars also, 
and the planets ; to rivers, oceans, and mountains ; to 
level plains and uneven valleys ; to devotion, speech, 
complacency, desire, and wrath ; and to creation. For 
the sake of distinguishing action, he made a total differ- 
ence between right and wrong. 

" That the human race might be multiplied, he caused 
the Brahman, the Kshatriya, the Vaishya, and the Shudra, 
(the four castes,) to proceed from his mouth, his arm, his 
thigh, and his foot. Having divided his own substance, 
the mighty power became half male and half female, and 
from that female he produced Viraj. Know me, O most 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 25 

excellent Brahman s, to be that person whom the male 
power, Viraj, produced by himself — me, the secondary 
framer of all this visible world."* 

These are merely specimens of what millions have 
believed in bygone ag'es, or are still believing. Ancient 
and modern cosmogonies alike contradict the commonest 
and most elementary truths of physical science. In the 
sacred writings of the Hindoos, there are at the present 
clay statements so ludicrous as to sadden us when we 
reflect that for millions they are the basis of religious 
beliefs. The moon is described as having inherent light, 
and as higher than the sun ; and rational beings have for 
ages been taught and have believed that seven stories of 
the globe rest on the heads of elephants, whose move- 
ments are the cause of terrifying and calamitous earth- 
quakes. And the Mahommedan is taught by his Koran 
to believe that the mountains were created to prevent the 
earth from moving, and to hold it as by anchors and ca- 
bles : "And God hath thrown upon the earth mountains 
firmly rooted, lest it should move with you."f 

While far removed from such incongruities as these, 
the Mosaic record shows also remarkable freedom from 
merely local or national peculiarities. To this fact too 
little importance has been attached. It is especially 

* See "What is Truth ?" an Inquiry concerning the Antiquity and 
Unity of the Human Race, by Rev. E. Burgess, pp. 241, 242. 

t Koran. The Mahommedans supposed that the earth, when first cre- 
ated was smooth and equal, and thereby liable to a circular motion as well 
as the celestial orbs; and that the angels, asking who would be able to 
stand on so tottering a frame, God fixed it next morning by throwing the 
mountains upon it. — sale's koran, vol. 2, pp. 96, 296. 

s 



26 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

worthy of notice that such incidental details as the cli- 
mate, the sky, and the configuration of the land, give to 
a large extent, their own character to locally prevailing 
ideas regarding the whole universe. The Euphrates and 
the Mesopotamian plains influence the Babylonian cos- 
mogony ; the Nile gives character to the Egyptian ; sun- 
ny slopes and contrasting heights determine the Grecian ; 
and valley glpom, forest depths, and wintry storms, the 
Scandinavian. It is easy to trace the physical basis of 
distinct cosmogonies. The bases themselves may vary, 
but their connection with religious beliefs is always uni- 
form. Even national myths about creation have not pre- 
served their original cast. They have varied with the 
history of the people. While the religions tendency of 
the national mind, and the traditional basis as to the 
mere fact of creation, have remained, the form of the 
cosmogony has been completely changed ; it has been so 
moulded as to suit the different physical conformation 
and other varied conditions of the new country in which 
the people have settled. These modifying processes 
Baron Bunsen himself has acknowledged, when he says : 
" Again, the dispersed tribes formed many of their myths 
anew when they settled in their later dwelling places. 
Thus, in the cosmogonic myths of the Icelander, as pre- 
sented to us in the Edda, it is impossible not to perceive 
the influence of the peculiar locality of the North Scan- 
dinavian."* But then, no such process or influence is 
ever traceable in the Bible account. There is nothing 
local ; nothing contingent ; nothing dependent on the 

* Bunsen's " Philosophy of Universal History," vol. I, p. So. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 27 

traditions of any country ; nothing incongruous or ab- 
surd. 

How account for this ? How few have ever made the 
attempt ! How seldom is an explanation sought ! Was 
not Moses brought up in the learning of the Egyptians ? 
I low did he escape its influence ? Was he not for many 
years a wanderer in the Arabian desert, and was he not 
familiar with all the traditions floating in the East and 
the West? If the Bible is no higher than other records, 
is it not strange that not a line appears which indicates 
in the least any such antecedent influence ? Might we 
not reasonably count on the leader and lawgiver of Israel 
showing some disposition to associate Eden, man's birth- 
place, with the land of promise, which he longed to reach, 
and which he saw in the distance as Israel's future home ? 
Yet, in this remarkable history, not one of these defects 
appears. Vast in its outline, it is yet so scrupulously 
strict in its minuter details, that it may be read without 
dubiety, not only in the midst of the exactest records of 
antiquity, but in the light of those modern discoveries in 
physical science which bear most directly on its state- 
ments. In reliableness and in consistency, it stands 
alone. The myths of heathenism regarding the origin 
of the world can be easily separated from it. They are 
all rebuked by its accuracy. While it contains every 
element of truth which imparts to them any coherency 
which they possess, it gives no place to their grotesque 
and deformed traditions. 

Whence this singularly exact and most impressive 
record ? In the midst of that intellectual and supersti- 



28 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

tious chaos which, according to some theorists, antiquity 
at first presented, how arose this bright, solid, and won- 
drously harmonious system ? Traditions could not aid 
Moses. They only darkened while they multiplied the 
elements of confusion. Had he really, as some suppose, 
the sagacity to select, and the skill to combine, separate 
truths as to creation, while he cast aside the errors or the 
refuse of ages ? Before we can answer that question, we 
require to pass in review the grotesque beliefs and prac- 
tices of all the surrounding nations at the time in which 
he lived, the ignorance of the people, the defective schol- 
arship of the priests, and the absence of attainments in 
natural science ; and we must inquire into the mere pos- 
sibility of Moses or of any other man, however refined in 
feeling and profound in thoughtfulness, producing of him- 
self such a history as shines in the first chapter of Gen- 
esis. The production of such a record as that out of the 
materials then existing, may be held as beyond the capa- 
bility of any unaided human intellect. We do not reason 
here regarding the inspiration of the record ; we are 
dealing only with the superiority of the Bible record over 
all others, as presumptive evidence that it is worthy not 
only of careful study, but of our unhesitating acceptance. 
It does not avail, for the settlement of this question, 
to say that the singular excellence of the Bible account 
of creation is due to the comparatively pure and correct 
views of the Divine Being which were held by the He- 
brews ; for there is this prior question, How came the 
Hebrews to have these correct views ? With their 
acknowledged tendency to idolatry and to other heathen 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 29 

practices, how is it that they preserved this Historic gem 
in undimmed lustre ? If this history is indeed to be 
regarded as no more than a mere deduction from differ- 
ent traditions by a philosophic thinker, it is certainly a 
solitary result in the region of human effort. It has no 
parallel. In exactness, in splendor, in magnitude, and in 
far-reaching insight, there can be found no similar result 
in the history of the most cultivated nations of either 
ancient or modern times. 

Passing from this portion of Bible history, as distinct 
from the most widely-received cosmogonies, let us exam- 
ine its constituent sections in their mutual relations. 
Can they be adjusted to one another ? And can they be 
satisfactorily harmonized with the facts of science ? 

II. A BEGINNING. 

* 

In the very first verse we have an announcement 
which distances all that natural science can reach or 
reveal : " In the beginning, God created the heaven and 
the earth." The doctrine of creation confronts us. The 
origination of matter, as against its eternal existence, is 
proclaimed. God is directly connected with the universe. 
As already indicated, the last position which natural sci- 
ence can reach, and which limits natural theology, is the 
starting-point of Biblical or systematic theology. It 
begins where the others end. It gives no shelter to 
pantheism or atheism. Both are alike repudiated. God 
is not set forth as a mere power moving within the mys- 
terious haze of infinity, and having no more relation to 
this world and its inhabitants than the cold gaze of a 

3* 



30 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

distant star. There is neither hesitancy nor ambiguity. 
By this positive exclusion of eternity from the existence 
of the universe, and by repelling- the idea of accidental 
creation, the fact of a beginning is raised in the Bible 
not only above all the entangling speculations of recent 
philosophy, but above the boldest reasonings of modern 
skepticism. This is, indeed, in some instances, frankly 
admitted by those who have pushed the discoveries of 
science to their present limit. They tell us that however 
much farther they may hereafter proceed, they have no 
hope of gaining the least insight into that origination of 
matter of which the Scriptures speak. This point they 
regard as beyond the aim of the sciences, for each is 
restricted to its own facts and laws, and is necessarily 
silent in reference to history antecedent to itself. " To 
ascend tq the origin of things," says Sir John Herschel, 
"and speculate on creation, is not the business of the 
natural philosopher."* 

Men of lesser capacity, though of equal sincerity, pro- 
fess to despise the Bible declaration as to a beginning ; 
but their scorn is unavailing, for their reasoning and 
inferences are rapidly yielding to the pressure of the 
very sciences which they most revere and serve. His- 
torically, the changed tone of skepticism is encouraging, 
Spurning the subjection of their reason to revelation, and 
pitying the " weakness " of those who disliked their arro- 
gance and rejected their dogmas, skeptics demanded 
proof of a beginning, and evidence for the probability of 
a close or change in the future. 

* Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy, p. 38. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 31 

But accomplished Christian apologists found it vain 
to reason with those who eagerly paid servile homage to 
Plato, while they ridiculed Moses, and who carried the 
principles which Newton enunciated beyond their legiti- 
mate application. They were constrained to be silent, 
because as yet the sciences gave them no argument by 
which to meet the objections of their opponents. But 
the most recent findings of natural philosophy have stri- 
kingly vindicated the Scriptures, and have so cast dis- 
credit on the boasted assumptions of an imperfect science, 
that almost no man of acknowledged eminence can now 
be found to vindicate the eternity of the present cosmi- 
cal dispensation ; and skeptical theorists have to content 
themselves by boldly asserting that creation, or a begin- 
ning by the will of a Creator, is altogether inconceivable. 

Some of the highest authorities in physical science, 
prosecuting their investigation without the slightest ref- 
erence to Scripture statements, have given them direct 
confirmation, and have set aside the assertion of " incon- 
ceivableness." " The doctrine of a resisting medium 
leads us toward a point which the nebular hypothesis 
assumes — a beginning of the present order of things. 
There must have been a commencement of the motions 
now going on in the solar system. Since these motions, 
when once begun, would be deranged and destroyed in a 
period which, however large, is yet finite, it is obvious 
we cannot carry their origin indefinitely backwards in 
the range of past duration. The argument is indeed 
forced upon our minds, whatever view we take of the 
past history of the world. Some have endeavored to 



3 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

evade its force by maintaining that the world, as it now 
exists, has existed from eternity. . . . But we may observe 
that the doctrine of a resisting medium, once established, 
makes this imagination untenable, compels us to go back 
to the origin, not only of the present course of the world, 
not only of the earth, but of the solar system itself ; and 
thus sets us forth upon that path of research into the 
series of past causation, where we obtain no answer of 
which the meaning corresponds to our questions, till we 
rest in the conclusion of a most provident and most pow- 
erful creating intelligence."* 

And the following results, stated by Sir William 
Thomson, are, by their definiteness, very encouraging to 
the Bible student, confirming the declarations of the 
Scriptures, regarding not only the commencement, but 
the close, of the present cosmical dispensation. 

" I. There is at present, in the material world, a uni- 
versal tendency to the dissipation of mechanical energy. 

"2. Any restoration of mechanical energy, without 
more than equivalent dissipation, is impossible to inani- 
mate material processes, and is probably never effected 
by means of organized matter, either endowed with vege- 
table life or subjected to the will of an animated crea- 
ture. 

" 3. Within a finite period of time past, the earth 
must have been, and within a finite period of time to 
come, the earth must again be, unfit for habitation of 
man as at present constituted, unless operations have 
been or are to be performed, which are impossible un- 

* Bridgewater Treatise> by Dr. Whewell, p. 206. Edition, 1S33. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. S3 

der the laws to which the known operations going on at 
present in the material world are subject."* 

That statement is itself a valuable contribution to 
Biblical apologetics. Inexorable fact and demonstration 
have not only dissipated perpetually recurrent theories 
in reference to the eternity of the present material sys- 
tem, but furnished presumptive evidence of a new and 
higher order of existences. These remarkable conclu- 
sions not only confirm the Bible declaration as to a com- 
mencement, but with prophetic directness they sustain 
its delineations of change and dissolution, and of the 
establishment of " new heavens and a new earth." 

III. A CLOSE. 

The reasoning which has established a " beginning," 
has also so distinctly demonstrated a close, that although, 
historically, we should reserve for a future stage our brief 
discussion of the subject, yet, logically, we have suffi- 
cient warrant for noticing it here. The commencement 
and the close are so linked together in our cosmical his- 
tory, that what affects the one influences the other. 
Accordingly, while astronomy has given testimony to 
the truth of the Scriptures, geology has been no less de- 
cided a witness to both a beginning and a close. In 
subjecting the assumptions of geological theorists to the 
tests of natural philosophy, Sir William Thomson has 
given a salutary check to unregulated speculation, and 
has freed the question of time from some unnecessarily 
distracting elements. 

* Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1852. 



34 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Apart from his special line of investigation, geolo- 
gists have come to the same conclusion with him regard- 
ing a commencement ; the difference between them and 
him is in the length of time backward to that commence- 
ment. " There is not," say Lyell, " an existing stratum 
in the body of the earth which geology has laid bare, 
which cannot be traced back to a time when it was not ; 
and there is not an existing species of plants, or animals, 
which cannot be referred to a time when it had no place 
in the world. Their beginnings are discoverable in suc- 
ceeding cycles of time. It can be demonstrated that man 
also had a beginning, and all the species contemporary 
with him, and that, therefore, the present state of the 
organized world has not been sustained from eternity." 
"It is beyond dispute, and is proved by the physical re- 
searches of the earth, that these, the visible forms ot 
organic life, had a beginning in time."* These conclu- 
sions are incontrovertible ; the difficulties which many 
have felt have arisen from the unwarrantable extension of 
time for the dawn of life-forms, and for their develop- 
ment. Millions of millions of years have been claimed 
for certain theories as to the beginning and the progress 
of life ; and, apart altogether from the Bible record, the 
question was ever forcing itself on the unprejudiced stu- 
dent, how determine whether the earth, in these bygone 
ages, could possibly be the home of life ? What evidence 
is there that the physical conditions of the earth were 
such that it could sustain plants and animals in even 
Jieir most rudimentary forms ? With a view to the set- 

* " Sedgwick's Discourse," p. 17. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 35 

tlement of this question, Sir William Thomson has rigid- 
ly applied to the gradual cooling of the globe and its 
motions, the principles of natural philosophy. In a very 
suggestive paper on " Geological Time," in which he 
has considered the retardation of the earth's rotation, he 
has made the following striking statement : " But if you 
go back to ten thousand million years ago — which I be- 
lieve will not satisfy some geologists — the earth must 
have been rotating more than twice as fast as at present ; 
and if it had been solid then, it must be now something 
totally different from what it is. Now, here is a direct 
opposition between physical astronomy and modern geol- 
ogy, as represented by a very large, very influential, 
and, I may also add, in many respects philosophical and 
sound body of geological investigators, constituting per- 
haps a majority of British geologists. It is quite certain 
that a" great mistake has been made — that British popu- 
lar geology, at the present time, is in direct opposition 
to the principles of natural philosophy. Without going 
into details, I may say it is no matter whether the 
earth's lost time is twenty-two seconds, or considerably 
more or less than twenty seconds in a century, the prin- 
ciple is the same. There cannot be uniformity. The earth 
is filled with evidence that it has not been going on for 
ever in the present state, and that there is a process of 
events towards a state infinitely different from the 

PRESENT."* 

That is a remarkable finding. It corroborates proph- 
ecy. In delineating the close of the present system, the 

* "Geological Time," p. 16. 



3 6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Bible has done what no other book has ever attempted. 
That " there is a process of events towards a state infi- 
nitely different from the present," is a conclusion of the 
greatest interest to us ; and it encourages those to hold 
their position firmly who refuse to accept, as pictorial, 
or as figures of speech, the direct and literally historical 
statements of Scripture regarding the dissolution of the 
present order of our system. We cannot modify them 
without deservedly incurring serious reproach. 

It is not long since every passage in the Bible refer- 
ring to the dissolution of the present economy, was ex- 
posed to the ridicule of a merciless skepticism ; and 
Bible expositors abandoned truths which they should 
have held fast and defended. While there are descrip- 
tions in which the terms "heaven and earth" refer only 
to dispensational changes, and while some prophecies 
tell of revolutions in the Jewish nation, and of the intro- 
duction of Christianity, there still remains so much that 
is neither figurative nor symbolical, that doubt is inad- 
missible. Let us note some of those prophetic descrip- 
tions which are definitely historical and forbid modifica- 
tion. " Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth ; 
and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall 
perish, but thou shalt endure ; yea, all of them shall wax 
old like a garment : as a vesture shalt thou change them, 
and they shall be changed." Psa. 102 : 25, 26. In strains 
lofty as the Psalmist's Isaiah unfolds the future : " And 
all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens 
shall be rolled together as a scroll." Isa. 34:4. " Lift 
up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



37 



beneath ; for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and 
the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell 
therein shall die in like manner ; but my salvation shall be 
for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished." 
Isa. 51:6. Although such passages as these, taken sepa- 
rately, cannot be the basis of any very decided conclu- 
sion literally, yet collectively, and especially when asso- 
ciated with New Testament teachings, they do possess 
legitimate significance and weight. The saying of Jesus 
implied future change when he said, " Heaven and earth 
shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." 
Matt. 24:35. And have we not all been familiar from 
childhood with the overawing declarations of St. Peter 
and St. John : " But the day of the Lord will come as a 
thief in the night ; in the which the heavens shall pass 
away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are 
therein, shall be burned up. Seeing then that all these 
things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought 
ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness !" 2 Pet. 
3 : 10. In the no less sublime description of the Apo- 
calyptic Seer, the fact of a universal change is assumed : 
"And I saw a new heaven and a new earth : for the first 
heaven and the first earth were passed away ; and there 
was no more sea." Rev. 21:1. 

If these and similar descriptions do not foreshadow 
a vast physical revolution, language is meaningless. 
There is no ambiguity to shroud mistakes. As literal, 
these delineations must be rejected or accepted. There 

is no middle course nor neutral ground. Science, there- 
at 



38 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

fore, if not silent, must confirm or confute them. And 
science, as we have already seen, in the conclusion of 
Sir William Thomson, is giving them singular confirma- 
tion. The oft-repeated assertion of olden skepticism, 
" All things continue as they were from the beginning of 
the creation," 2 Pet. 3 : 14, has been swept aside. 

New testimonies to the same truths have of late been 
multiplied. The heavens themselves, apparently the 
stablest of all existences, show very marvellous changes. 
Stars long known have been lost ; they have disappeared 
in the abysses of space, and their name alone remains. 
No longer ago than May, 1 866, the splendors of an appa- 
rently new star in the constellation Corona Borealis ar- 
rested the attention of astronomical students. Anxiously 
watched by competent observers in separate localities, 
its changes were accurately noted and compared. There 
could be no exaggeration nor illusion. In Birmingham, 
Manchester, Tuam, Rochester, London, Brussels, Canada 
West, telescopes were, without concert, turned to it, and 
keen eyes were riveted on every unexpected phase. It 
rose in its magnificent brilliancy ; it slowly waned ; it 
disappeared ; it has perished, "as lesser things perished 
before." Hath God smitten it? By what terrible ca- 
tastrophe has it been overwhelmed? The light which 
burst forth many ages ago, has come in its course to us 
only now, to remind us that the heavens are in the hands 
of a Mighty Ruler, whose will is sovereign, and who 
alone is unchangeable. 

The astronomer royal has expressed his belief in 
the burning of that distant world. Inflammable gases, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 39 

combining, it has been supposed, gave to it the appear- 
ance by which observers were dazzled and impressed. 
But without accepting or even recording conjectures 
about the details of the conflagration, it is enough for 
our argument that a change of such magnitude has 
taken place, and that it is one of a series. It proves that 
the heavens are not so adjusted as to be eternally and 
exactly in the same state, and that as much instability is 
now known to exist as to constitute presumptive evidence 
on behalf of St. Peter's declaration. The eternal con- 
servation of the universe, in its present connections, can 
no longer be held as a fundamental truth in science. 
It is a fundamental error. The possibility of the earth 
being consumed by fire is not disputed. The conflagra- 
tion of distant worlds is an unquestioned fact ; and it 
needs but a slight alteration in the position of the earth, 
in its shape, in the direction of its axis, or in the velocity 
of its motion, to give an entirely hew character to the 
globe. A delicate alteration in the atmosphere alone, 
might instantly render the earth uninhabitable. " Under 
a thinner air, the torrid zone might be wrapped in eternal 
snow ; under a denser air, and with different refracting 
powers, the earth and all that is therein might be burned 
up. * 

In a vast economy regulated by law, there may be, 
as astronomical science teaches, a tendency to dissolution, 
slow but sure, which will produce, through the confusion 
and overthrow of existing adjustments, such amazing 
results literally as the Bible has foretold. 

" Reign of Law," by the Duke of Argyll, p. 53. 



4 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

The globe is carrying" within itself volcanic forces 
sufficient to dislocate and overwhelm its inhabited crust, 
if only the balance of pressure and upheaval be in the 
least degree destroyed ; and chemistry has long attested 
the facility of a universal overthrow and conflagration. 
The subtlest and most delicate combinations are invested 
with such tremendous power,, that they require but 
slight modification to insure a literal fulfilment of the 
apostolic prophecy regarding the heavens passing away 
"with a great noise," and the earth and its works being 
"burnt up." There is to be "dissolution," not annihila- 
tion ; there is to be a new economy, a new heaven and a 
new earth. The sublime announcements of St. Peter 
and of the Apocalyptic Seer, so long accepted by many 
apologists as invested with merely poetic drapery, and so 
long sneered at as sensational by rigorous physicists, 
have been rescued from misinterpretation. The state- 
ment that there "shall be no more sea," can only be 
ridiculed by those who are ignorant of the truths which 
the natural sciences have already evolved and vindicated. 

These possibilities might, of course, be accepted with- 
out a very strong probability of any actual changes 
beyond what are now transpiring, and they constitute 
only presumptive evidence on the side of Scripture ; but, 
in Sir William Thomson's demonstration of an inevit- 
able change which will render this earth unfit for man's 
existence, unless there be new operations, which are 
impossible without the interposition of a power not now 
manifested, we have an unimpeachable warrant for the 
literal interposition of St. Peter's delineation of the close 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 41 

of the history of our world as now constituted. It has a 
weight and an emphasis which no strictly theological or 
critical disquisition can ever possess ; and is it not most 
encouraging to find the deductions of natural philosophy 
becoming thus the expositors and vindicators of reveal- 
ed truth, as they fully aver all that the Bible has an- 
nounced regarding not only the past, but the future 
history of the globe ? To those who have passed through 
the jungle-like speculations and propositions of the olden 
atheists, regarding an "infinite series," and the more 
recent metaphysical reasonings prosecuted to prove the 
eternity of the present system of organic and inorganic 
beings, it must be an unspeakable relief on coming forth 
beneath the clear sky of definite truths, to find the 
Bible and natural philosophy blending their lights "as 
suns upon each other shining." That the universe is 
not eternal, may be held now to be incontrovertible. 
Creation has been ; and questions as to the date of the 
beginning are of comparatively subordinate interest. 
There is, however, one other subject so closely connected 
with this part of our inquiry, that it must be examined. 
It is — 

IV. THE IMPORT OF '" IN THE BEGINNING." 

Is this the beginning of all beginnings ? or is it the 
beginning of the formation of the heaven and the earth 
out of materials which had already been in existence ? 
Some eminent Jewish commentators deny that this is the 
beginning of all beginnings ; they exclude from this sen- 
tence the idea of origination, and they limit the state- 

4* 



42 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ment to the forming or shaping of materials.* They 
found their conclusion on the assumption that the " in 
the beginning " is, as grammarians express it, in the con- 
struct state, and that thus it is limited by something of 
which it is the beginning. They do not admit that the 
Hebrew word Bara expresses the originating of all crea- 
tion ; and the question ultimately turns on the greater or 
less comparative importance which we attach to the first 
creation of matter, and to the first adjustment of its forms 
or the first impulse of its laws. The relative value of 
creating matter and of ordering its structure and func- 
tions, is an interesting yet not a very profitable subject 
of discussion. Professor Tayler Lewis makes the crea- 
tion of matter the lesser work. " Taken as a fact," he 
says, " it is the lowest in the scale of the Divine works, if 
we may be allowed to make any comparisons among them. 
It is simply an exercise of the Divine strength. On the 
other hand, the giving form to matter, which is so clearly 
revealed as the true creative stage, is the work of the 
Divine Wisdom, and might be supposed worthy of God, 
as an exercise of his infinite intelligence, even if it had 
no other than an artistic end. The carrying these forms 
into the region of the moral, or the impressing moral 
designs upon them — in other words, building the world 
as the abode of life, and the residence of moral and spir- 
itual beings capable of witnessing and declaring the 
glory of the Creator — is the work of Divine Love. In 
revising this scale of dignities, the actually lower comes to 

* See Professor Tayler Lewis on the Essential Ideas of Creation, in 
"Lange's Commentary on Genesis," pp. 126-130. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 43 

be regarded as the higher and the greater, merely because 
it is the more remote from us."* There is considerable 
force in this reasoning, as against those who seek to dis- 
place God from the creative formation or the evolution 
of the heaven and the earth, but it has little interest for 
the sincere Bible student, because, between the creation 
of matter and its harmonious and productive evolutions, 
we find it hard to establish values. Attributes that are 
infinite — power, wisdom, love — have to be associated 
with both, and in their light all distinctions are lost. 
To describe the building of the world as merely prepara- 
tory to its being made the abode of moral and spiritual 
existences, does not elucidate the subject nor lessen dif- 
ficulties, because the very presence of these moral beings 
betokens of itself prior creative action. While conflict- 
ing criticisms have been pressed on us as to the special 
import of the term bara, create, the greater weight of 
scholarship is, I think, on the side of its expressing the 
origination of this universe — that is, the beginning of all 
beginnings, the creation out of nothing. "To the idea 
of a creation out of nothing," says Havernick, "no an- 
cient cosmogony has ever risen, neither in the myths nor 
the philosophemes of the ancient world. By the peculi- 
arity that the Biblical cosmogony has, for its fundamental 
idea, a creation from nothing, it is placed in a category 
distinct from all other myths. .Hence, recently, there 
appears above all things a disposition to deny that this 
is contained in the history of creation, but certainly with- 
out success." In the commencement of the Gospel by 
* "Lange's Commentary on Genesis," p. 129. 



44 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

St. John, we have proof that this is the beginning of all 
beginnings, when it is said, " In the beginning was the 
Word: the same was in the beginning with God: all 
things were made by him." 

A subsidiary yet substantial argument for the begin- 
ning in Genesis being the commencement of beginnings, 
lies in the special use of the term bara as expressive of 
a creative act. It is remarkable that this term is in 
Scripture invariably applied to God, and never to any 
created being. God was known by the Israelites as 
Bore\ Creator. Creation is a divine act — something per- 
formed indisputably by God alone ; and the question has 
lately been limited to creation out of nothing, or a crea- 
tion of something new out of what before existed. It is 
admitted that Yatzar, he formed, and Asah, he made, 
may be used as applicable to men ; and that Bara, he 
created, is alone applicable to God ; but it is said that it 
does not necessarily express creation out of nothing. 
Scholars do not now insist on this exclusive meaning. 
They do not assert that it never has such a meaning ; yet 
it is the only Hebrew term which expresses this idea, 
and we have to look to the context and to the connec- 
tions of the term rather than to the term itself, to deter- 
mine conclusively which view should be taken. " But 
that in the first verse," says Gesenius in his Thesaurus, 
" the first creation of the world out of nothing, and in a 
rude and unformed state, and in the remainder of the 
first chapter the elaboration and disposition of the re- 
cently created mass are set forth, is proved by the con- 
nections of things in the whole of this chapter ;" and he 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 45 

adduces, in support of this opinion, the conclusions of. 
Jewish Rabbis. 

We are perplexed by finding that so distinguished a 
writer as Max Mtiller refuses the conclusions of such 
scholars as Gesenius, at least on the grounds on which 
they rest them, and approvingly quotes those who regard 
bara as properly meaning to create out of preexisting 
materials ; but let it be observed that he does not posi- 
tively preclude its meaning in any circumstances to cre- 
ate out of nothing.* As bara, in its most recondite appli- 
cation, can refer only once to creation as originating 
matter, and afterwards, of course, only to what is evolved 
as new from existing things, its special meaning must be 
determined by its connections. The peculiar description, 
In the beginning, gives emphasis also to the created which 
follows, as separating what has begun to be from the Cre- 
ator who is eternal ; and it may be held as establishing 
historically the idea of an absolute beginning in time. 
Creation can only be understood aright as connected with 
the will of a personal God. Apart from God, creation 
by law is utterly unintelligible. Origination, or immedi- 
ate creation, and development or forming in mediate cre- 
ation, cannot be studied satisfactorily without reference 
to the will, the wisdom, and the power of the everlasting 
Ruler. 

But it would be unwise to dogmatize regarding the 

* "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. I., p. 135. — Interesting 
statistical details regarding the use and meaning of the terms which are 
translated create, form, and make, are given by Archdeacon Pratt in his 
most admirable work, "Scripture and Science not at Variance" pp. 47, 48. 
Sixth edition. 



46 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

absoluteness of this beginning as the first of all begin- 
nings. In the measureless past, in which millions on 
millions of ages have sunk and have been lost, as pebbles 
in the ocean, there may have been other universes before 
ours, which have historically run their course, fulfilled 
their ends, and perished. Brought out of nothing, they 
may have again been reduced to nothing. The fact is 
conceivable, though not the process, unless we assume 
the eternity of matter ; or that when God has created a 
world out of nothing, he has done what he cannot undo. 
Universes may have come, run their course, and gone. 
Their histories may be Creation-seasons. Nor can we 
speak absolutely of ours being the beginning of all be- 
ginnings ; because in other spheres of measureless space, 
which no telescope can ever reach, there may be other 
universes with earlier beginnings than ours. It is enough 
for us to know that this, our universe, our heaven and 
earth, was created by God ; and that the first statement 
in Genesis proclaims the beginning of all beginnings 
connected with the history of our globe. And we do no 
violence to reason when we assume that He who made 
one world in space, made all worlds in space ; that He 
who made one world in time, made all worlds in time ; 
and that He who gave matter its forms, gave it also its 
origination, or that which is the ground of all its forms* 

* See "Lange's Commentary on Genesis." 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 47 



CHAPTER III. 

THE FIRST CHAPTER OF GENESIS THE ORIGIN OF LIGHT 

ITS EXISTENCE BEFORE THE SUN WAS MADE SEPARATE- 
LY VISIBLE — THE ORIGINATION OF LIFE — THE CREA- 
TIVE DAYS. 

It is not for the refutation of objectors merely, and for the conviction 
of doubters, that it is worth while to study the two volumes — that of 
nature and that of revelation — which Providence has opened before us, 
but because it is both profitable and gratifying to a well-constituted 
mind to trace in each of them the evident handwriting of Him, the 
Divine author of both. — archbishop whately. 

I. THE ORIGINATION OF LIGHT. 

The grandeur and impressiveness of the description 
in the Bible of the origin of light, and of the introduction 
of the sun and moon, it is almost impossible to exagger- 
ate. In his treatise on the . Sublime, the Roman poet 
Longinus has quoted, with the highest admiration, " Let 
there be light, and there was light." Familiar as we are 
with the description, it is necessary to repeat it. "And 
God saw the light that it was good ; and God divided the 
light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, 
and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and 
the morning were the first clay. . . . And God said, Let 
there be lights in the firmament of heaven to divide the 
day from the night ; and let them be for signs, and for 
seasons, and for days, and years ; and let them be for 
lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the 



4 S BLENDING LIGHTS. 

earth : and it was so. And God made two great lights : 
the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to 
rule the night ; he made the stars also. And God set 
them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light upon 
the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, 
land to divide the light from the darkness ; and God saw 
that it was good. And the evening and the morning 
were the fourth day." 

The sublimity of this brief description has often been 
lost amid the sneers of the infidel and the atheist. " How 
could there be light before the sun ?" was one of the tri- 
umphant questions which Voltaire and his followers 
rarely failed to press upon the Bible student. There 
was no escape from the difficulty ; for nothing could be 
clearer than the fact that the Bible did commit itself to 
the statement that light existed before the sun appeared. 
It does not say, observe, before the sun-mass or sun-ele- 
ments existed ; but it does assert that there was light 
before the sun shone forth in its visible and appointed 
relation to this world. The statement was too explicit 
and too direct to admit of any satisfactory explanation 
beyond what the fair reading of the description itself 
allowed : namely, that there was light before the sun was 
visible ; and this supposition — for the state of science 
admitted of nothing more — was invariably denounced as 
a weak, if not a mischievous, theological invention. Many 
scorned it as a superstitious belief, or the paltry resource 
of controversial despair. 

But the mystery has been receding as discovery has 
advanced. That there may be light without the visible 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 49 

sun, is now admitted ; and it is not going farther than 
the facts warrant, to suppose that light of old did thus 
exist ; not, perhaps, as absolutely separable from the sun, 
but as closely connected with its history. What was 
hidden is made manifest, as explanatory facts are being 
placed together. The sun-mass is itself dark, and around 
it is a wondrous sphere of light that is perpetually exhib- 
iting phenomena which it does not lie within our plan to 
describe minutely. It is enough to remark that there 
have been discovered circles or spheres of light widening 
as they recede from the central mass, which ages ago 
have apparently been so wide as to bring our globe within 
their compass. When it was said, " Let there be light," 
there was not so much a new creation as the evolution of 
a new fact, or rather the presentation of a new condition 
of things, in the already created heaven and earth. 
Originally darkness reigned, and then light was sum- 
moned into existence. " God commanded the light to 
shine out of darkness" (2 Cor. 4:6) wrote St. Paul in ob- 
vious reference to this passage. The light appears to 
have been so diffused as to bring to our earth, through 
subsequent ages, such supplies as may have been best 
adapted to whatever plant or animal life may have then 
existed. This view is sustained by recent inferences to 
which observation of the sun has led, and which may 
render unnecessary the common supposition, that while 
the sun existed in its present form, with all its present 
forces, its light was too much lost in the vapors which 
hovered over the earth to admit of its being visible, as it 
is now. That vapors obscured the light, may be proba- 

5 



5 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ble ; but the light, it would seem, 'was diffused under 
conditions different from those which now obtain, until 
the fourth day, when the sun was made separately visi- 
ble.* As light, or rather a luminous substance, appears 
to have been diffused beyond the orbit of our earth, there 
must, therefore, have been a period without darkness. 
But when the circumference of the envelope or luminous 
substance was contracted within the orbit of the earth, 
there was darkness alternating with the light — that is, 
of course, supposing the earth then as now revolved on 
its axis. .This would give the first day, evening and 
morning ; evening, because the first contraction of the 
light within the earth's path gave such darkness as may 
have subsisted us. " And God divided the light from the 
darkness." Other changes followed, by which the waters, 
the land, and the atmosphere were separated ; and when 
these had been completed, there appeared vegetation in 
varied forms. The light, in all likelihood, while passing 
into its present conditions, shone through vapors which 
also gradually changed, until the sun and moon appeared 
in fulfilment of the Divine purpose; the one to rule the 

* Mr. Proctor, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society, 
in summing up the more striking results obtained by the observations of 
the late Solar Eclipse, has confirmed this inference : " The observation 
made by Liais would tend to show that, as has been long suspected, the 
zodiacal light is sunlight reflected from cosmical matter travelling contin- 
ually round the sun, for we could not expect the solar dark lines to ap- 
pear in so faint a spectrum. If this is the case, the radiated corona can- 
not but be regarded as only the innermost part — the core, so to speak — 
of the zodiacal region. Hence, we should be led to recognize the exist- 
ence OF ENVELOPE AFTER envelope around the sun, until even the vast 
distance at which our earth travels is reached or overpast." " The late Solar 
Eclipse," by Richard A. Proctor, B. A. Good Words, June. 1S72, pp. 423. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 51 

day, the other to rule the night. The chief difficulty lies 
in ascertaining the probable extent of the light and its 
characteristics in that long cosmical history, of which as 
yet only glimpses have been obtained ; but these glimpses 
are so much in harmony with the sacred page, that the 
arrogant charges of ignorance, once so freely made, have 
almost ceased. 

One or two facts may be mentioned, as confirming 
the more recent elucidation of this Scripture statement. 
Humboldt, in describing the beauty of the zodiacal light, 
has said: " The zodiacal light, which rises in a pyramidal 
form, and constantly contributes by its mild radiance to 
the external beauty of the tropical nights, is either a vast 
nebulous ring, rotating between the Earth and Mars, or, 
less probably, the exterior stratum of the solar atmo- 
sphere."* " For the last three or four nights, between 
io° and 14 of north latitude, the zodiacal light has ap- 
peared with a magnificence which I have never before 
seen. Long narrow clouds scattered over the lovely 
azure of the sky, appeared low down in the horizon, as 
if in front of a golden curtain, while bright varied tints 
played from time to time on the higher clouds ; it seemed 
a second sunset. Towards that side of the heavens, the 
diffused light appeared almost equal to that of the moon 
in her first quarter." Not less striking is his description 
in another passage, of a cloud well known to astrono- 
mers, passing over' the heavens luminously and with 
great rapidity. " The light of the stars being thus utterly 
shut out," he says, " one might suppose that surrounding 

* Cosmos, vol. 1, p. 69. 



52 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

objects would become, if possible, more indistinct. But 
no : what was formerly invisible can now be clearly seen ; 
not because of lights from the earth being reflected back 
by a cloud, for very often there are none ; but in virtue 
of the light of the cloud itself, which, however faint, is yet 
a similitude of the dazzling light of the sun. The exist- 
ence of this illuminating power, though apparently in its 
debilitude, we discover also, in appearance at least, among 
other orbs." 

While these facts prove the existence of light without 
the sun being visible, it may be urged that the light 
spoken of in Genesis not only made day and night, but 
it must have been sufficient to sustain life. To suppose 
that it was adequate for this end involves no violent hy- 
pothesis, for neither plant nor animal life is spoken of 
until there has been a separation of land and water. In 
the earlier and more recent geological ages, the heat was 
doubtless greater than it is now ; and this, taken in con- 
nection with a surrounding vaporous atmosphere, and 
with such light as existed, may have conduced to the de- 
velopment of whatever plant-forms then prevailed. Dif- 
ficulty in entertaining this view has been greatly lessened 
by the fact, that not only plant but animal life may be 
sustained under such conditions of feeble light, great 
pressure, and intense heat, as were not long ago deemed 
incredible. 

A critical examination of the phraseology of the Bi- 
ble regarding the light, confirms this view. The lan- 
guage is precise, discriminative, and significant. Moses 
uses one word for light in the third and fourth verses, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 53 

and another word in the fourteenth and fifteenth. In 
the first instance, when he speaks of light essentially as 
light, or as a mere existence, he uses the term Or ; but in 
the second instance, when he refers rather to one of its prac- 
tical purposes, he uses the term Maor — the instrument 
or the visible source of light to our earth and its system. 
It is "to give light upon the earth," v. 15. That seems to 
be worth noting. It is not a haphazard but a deliberate 
distinction, for there is a similar discrimination of terms 
between the " created" of the first verse, and the " made" 
of the sixteenth verse. " In the beginning God created 
the heaven and the earth," but " God made two great 
lights." In the one we have " dara," create; in the 
other, ascih, he made or fashioned or appointed, of mate- 
rials or objects already created or existent, the sun to be 
a light-bearer ; and so also the moon, which is known 
not to have light either in itself or immediately surround- 
ing it. The Creator adopted and employed for this pur- 
pose the sun and the moon, and may have introduced, 
for the first time, such relations as now exist between 
them and our atmosphere. Adopting the latitude of inter- 
pretation which is warranted by the use of distinct terms, 
bara and asdk, we suggest another view. When, after 
the deluge, God " set his bow in the cloud to be a token 
that the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy 
the earth," it is not necessarily an inference that the 
rainbow had never before appeared. As all the physical 
conditions on which it depends had existed during man's 
history, it may have often been visible ; and, assuming 
that it was so, it only received a new historical connec- 



54 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

tion when it was made a "token" of the Covenant. In 
the same manner the sun and moon and stars may have 
been visible long before they were appointed to be " for 
signs and for seasons," and to fulfil a new historical rela- 
tion to man, as they ever afterwards rule his day and 
night. 

Such critical statements cannot be pushed aside as an 
ingenious attempt, by theologians, to save the Scripture 
record from the consequences of scientific research. We 
are net ashamed of them. They have been recently con- 
firmed, almost to the very letter, by the remarkable con- 
clusions of Sir William Thomson as to historical changes 
in the constitution of the sun. He has demonstrated 
that the light which is emanating from that central body, 
could not have always been coming from it ; because, for 
ages, the condition of the sun-mass did not admit of it. 
At a comparatively recent period, historically, the sun 
began to shed its splendor through space under its pres- 
ent aspects. Science has thus already dispelled, to a 
large extent, the difficulties which beset the literal inter- 
pretation as to light, and has checked intolerant infidel- 
ity. What has been achieved is specially encouraging to 
those who have accepted the Bible as their guide. It is 
of the utmost value. No more striking confirmation of 
the scientific accuracy of the Scripture record has of late 
been given, than that afforded by recent investigations 
of the present condition and past history of the sun. 
While the creation of the sun, with the earth and the 
other heavenly bodies, is intimated in the first verse, it is 
not until ages had elapsed that the sun itself, as a distinct 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 55 

light-giving body, was adapted to our globe, and after- 
wards connected with the history of the human race. 
Surely these remarkable confirmations which natural phi- 
losophy, with unintentional directness, is bringing to the 
Word of God, may well evoke our gratitude and deepen 
our sense of responsibility. 

II. THE ORIGINATION OF LIFE 

is another fact which science, as well as Scripture, has 
connected with the hand of the great Creator. 

It is after the introduction of light, after the separa- 
tion of the land from the water, and after the globe had 
received its encircling atmosphere, that life was intro- 
duced. Geology confirms this. It has been clearly 
proved that life, in the geological history of the globe, so 
far from being of eternal duration, has had a compara- 
tively recent origin. Reliable testimony is abundant, 
and might be largely adduced. " The infinite series of 
the atheists of former times," says Hugh Miller, "can 
have no place in modern science : all organic existences, 
recent or extinct, vegetable or animal, have had their 
beginning ; there was a time when they were not."* The 
inference of the geologist has been confirmed by the 
demonstration of the natural philosopher. Sir William 
Thomson has dissipated all speculation regarding an 
" infinite series " of life-forms, by proving, as we have 
already stated, that they could not extend over "millions 
of millions of years," because, assuming that the heat 
has been uniformly conducted out of the earth, as it is 

* " Testimony of the Rocks," p. 197. 



5 6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

now, it must have been so intense, within a comparatively 
limited period, as to be capable of melting a mass of rock 
equal to the bulk of the whole earth. 

Life has its secrets. Its beginning is with God. He 
is the self-existent Life. He is the Lord and giver of 
life. His uncreated life passeth knowledge. It is vain 
to inquire when did life, as separate from him, begin to 
be ? and what its forms, angelic or archangelic ? We 
stand helpless before insoluble problems. We are shad- 
owed by inscrutable mystery. Alike in its lowest and 
highest forms, life is in Scripture connected with God's 
hand. Vital force is not the result of inorganic matter. 
It controls matter ; it subordinates its element to its own 
expansion and growth. By its action, chemical and me- 
chanical forces are modified or suspended. In the labor- 
atory of nature, no one has ever detected the evolution 
of life from either inorganic or dead matter. Professor 
Huxley has ingeniously made what he calls protoplasm 
" the formal basis of life. It is the clay of the potter," 
he says, " which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains 
clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the 
commonest brick or sun-dried clod ; thus it becomes clear 
that living powers are cognate, and that all living forms 
are fundamentally of one character."* But this explana- 
tion cannot be accepted as removing difficulties regarding 
the origin or " basis of life." Protoplasm is not uniform ; 
it is not chemically one. It varies in different plants 
and animals. " For the protoplasm of the worm, we must 
go to the worm ; and for that of the toadstool, to the 
* "Physical Basis of Life — Lay Sermons," p. 129. Third edition. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 57 

toadstool. In fact, if all living beings came from proto- 
plasm, it is quite as certain that but for living beings 
protoplasm would disappear."* Thus, the difficulty is 
not solved, nor even lessened ; and the questions still 
come to be answered, whence protoplasm ? whence its 
varieties ? and whence Life? Nor is the difficulty- 
removed by the "cell" system, on which some German 
histologists have rested with so much confidence. Ad- 
mitting that cells maybe self-complete organisms, moving, 
growing, reproducing themselves ; and also that " brain 
cells only generate brain cells — and bone, bone cells ;" 
we come no nearer the origin of life. If cells can come 
only from cells, whence the first cell or the first series ? 
In Dr. Bastian's recent elaborate work, an attempt has 
been made to show the " Beginning of Life ;" but in such 
a way, arid to such an extent, that his principles, if valid, 
should have completely altered ere now the whole com- 
plexion of the LiFE-history and condition of our globe. 
M. Pasteur, whose name is honored wherever exactness 
in scientific research is valued, by a series of experiments, 
of which Professor Huxley has said, " They appear to me 
now, as they did seven years ago, to be models of accurate 
experimentation and logical reasoning," has proved that 
there is no evidence whatever that living organisms can 
come forth by spontaneous generation from unorganized 
matter. At the recent meeting of the British Associa- 
tion in Edinburgh, it was an accepted truth that "life 
can come only from life." Darwin himself has admitted 
this when he traces the commencement of all animated 

* " As Regards Protoplasm," by Dr. Stirling. 



5 8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ences to the Creator having breathed life into two 

or three simple forms. The now almost universal ac- 
knowledgment that life has its origin from God alone, is 
another triumph of science on the side of Scripture. 

In the Bible, the '.. record of creation has a 

scientific basis ; but so great is its prevailing simplicity 
of statement, that we are apt to overlook the tact. In- 
stead of commencing' his record with the introduction of 
Man as the being most prominent and the most influen- 
tial — as the being-, indeed, whom unguided reason most 
naturally would have first introduced — Moses tells us 
that the .'. rms of life commenced to exist — plants 

first, animals next. This is as it ought to be. Plants 
drawing their nourishment from inorganic substances, 
we] e first created ; and. as animals could live only on 
plants or animals, they were next introduced. "And 
God said. Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb 
yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after his 
kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth : and it was 
so." Then follows, in the succession of life, the origina- 
:' animals in the sea and on the land. Vegetable 
forms on the carefully-prepared mate- 

rials in the soil and the water ; they manufacture food 
for themselves, and. storing it up in their own fabric, 
they proA de support for the succeeding animals. The 
>rd thus harmonizes with that which science has 
shown to be necessary. Whence all this accuracy? Can 
is ly be the outcome of chance ? 

r significant reference in the eleventh 
and twelfth verses to one of the distinguishing charac:cr- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 59 

istics of botanical science, which may be legitimately 
acknowledged. "And God said, Let the earth bring 
forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree 
yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon 
the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth 
grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree 
yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind : 
and God saw that it was good." The brief description is 
repeated with emphasis, as if it were intended to be no- 
ticed. Its aptness, as related to botanical science, will be. 
acknowledged even by those who refuse to admit other- 
wise its importance. While the Linnasan system of 
classification according to distinctions in the flower, was 
useful, it was felt to be inadequate, and in some degree 
unscientific. Botanists strove to establish a more natu- 
ral method, and they have succeeded by making the char- 
acter of the seeds and other affinities of structure the 
basis of classification. This was found to be so satisfac- 
tory, that not long ago it was regarded as another trophy 
of science. It was, indeed, a new height gained, or rather 
an old one reached ; for Moses was seated there with 
that very principle written on his scroll, more than three 
thousand years ago. His distinctions are the same ; 
plants are classified by him according to their "seed" 
and "kind" or structure; he intimates a basis which is 
sufficient for every natural division, by whatever route it 
may be reached, whether by the elementary, the nutri- 
tive, or the reproductive function, and to which the labors 
of Jussieu, De Candolle, Endlicher, Lindley, and others, 
have added nothing essentially new. 



6o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

III. THE CREATIVE DAYS. 

It is almost impossible, in studying the first chapter 
of Genesis, to escape the bewildering confusion which 
conflicting interpretations as to the days have created. 
While on the other questions, Christian students and 
skeptics or infidels are ranged on opposite sides, the dif- 
ferences on this question are chiefly among Christian 
interpreters themselves. As they expound and defend 
their respective opinions, they at first foster the prevail- 
ing confusion ; but this is generally done with so much 
of genial interest in one another's solution of acknowl- 
edged difficulties, that the conflict has, at last, lost much 
of its keenness. The view that satisfies one is not ac- 
ceptable to another ; some regard the days in one light, 
some prefer a different interpretation, and others accept 
a modification of both. We are not in circumstances to 
insist rigorously on any one of the ordinary interpreta- 
tions ; all that we regard as at present incumbent on us 
is to explain what seems to us most consistent with the 
tenor of Scripture and the teaching of science. While 
doing this, we shall state some of the views with which 
accomplished Christian students of science have been 
satisfied. Their differences of interpretation are not to 
be held as expressing antagonism to the Bible. It is 
unfair and illogical to conclude from the existence of 
these differences that all of them are erroneous, and to 
assume, because of them, " that the Mosaic account itself 
is untrue." Opponents commonly " pass by the several 
points in which the interpreters concur, viz., that the 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 61 

account in Genesis is true ; that it was communicated to 
the writer by inspiration, that it teaches that matter is 
not eternal, that God created matter in the beginning ; 
that the beginning may have been, and probably was, 
countless ages ago; that the document describes a crea 
tion which was distributed over six portions ; that man 
was created out of the dust in the sixth period ; that the 
Sabbath was instituted for the benefit of man in com- 
memoration of this work."* And they eagerly press 
attention on the points about which they differ ; but 
they "are points which affect the explicitness of the nar- 
rative, not its truth." 

Those theories have not found much acceptance 
which have attempted to explain the statements as to 
days, by visions or by the drapery only of poetic diction. 
The first chapter of Genesis is so explicit and so direct, 
that it is difficult to understand how its literal character 
can remain unobserved. Those who regard the days as 
either periods or natural days, accept the literal or his- 
torical character of the chapter, and differ only as to the 
length of the time in which the specified changes took 
place. 

It is scarcely necessary to add that the Bible does 
not give any evidence as to the date of the beginning. 
"The writings of Moses do not fix the antiquity of the 
globe," said Chalmers, when geology was yet in its in- 
fancy. He held that between the first verse, announcing 
a beginning, and what follows as to the work of the days, 
there was a period immeasurable by us, in which all the 

* "Scripture and Science not at Variance." Sixth edition, p. 54. 
6 



62 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

changes were evolved which rendered the globe habita- 
ble by man. This long unmeasured interval is admitted 
by both classes of interpreters. The writer who has 
given greatest defin'iteness to the opinion that the days 
were not natural days, but clays embracing many thou- 
sands of years, is Hugh Miller ; and the most powerful 
advocate of the days as days of ordinary length, is Arch- 
deacon Pratt. Hugh Miller assumes that each day not 
only represented an age of enormous duration, but gave 
scope for the growth and life of all those animals and 
plants with which, as fossils, the strata of the globe are 
stored. He identifies with the third, fifth, and sixth days 
respectively, " the period of plants, the period of great sea 
monsters and creeping things, and the period of cattle and 
beasts of the earth." And these days he connects with 
geologic history — that is, with what has been commonly 
designated the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary forma- 
tions. The work of the fourth day, or the introduction 
of the sun and moon, he leaves undiscussed, as not lying 
properly within the sphere of the geologist. In this his 
theory has failed. It does not meet all the facts of the 
case ; and, with regard also to the Sabbath as a period, 
there are difficulties which have not yet been overcome. 
But apart from these anomalies, the theory cannot be 
satisfactorily harmonized with the facts of geology ; at 
least, so great latitude of interpretation has to be adopt- 
ed with a view to their satisfactory adjustment, that it is 
a much simpler, and also a much safer, course to accept 
the days as natural or ordinary. There have been, ac- 
cording to M. D'Orbigny, so many distinct breaks or 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 63 

changes, that they cannot be harmonized with the six 
Mosaic days. This is, of course, denied by evolutionists, 
whose system displaces every theory or interpretation, 
whether referring to periods or days ; but although breaks 
and intervals remain, those who have accepted the period- 
interpretation have reasons for their conclusion which it 
is not our desire to ignore or repudiate. As that theory 
may present, to their judgment, the most satisfactory 
solution, it is their duty to retain it, while they watch 
with interest the progress of scientific investigation, and 
the bearing of its results on their conclusion. 

Modifications of this theory have appeared from time 
to time ; and we are not without hope that the day will 
come when science may constrain all classes to accept a 
common conclusion. " The seven days of creation," says 
a recent writer, " are neither seven literal days, of twenty- 
four hours each, nor yet seven definite historical periods, 
the events of which are literally recorded ; but as the 
seven seals, trumpets, and vials of St. John's Revelation, 
represented the history of the future by a typical repre- 
sentation of each of its grand divisions, without any of 
them being chronologically defined, so do the seven days 
of the Mosaic economy represent, in a dramatic and typi- 
cal form, the successive changes which took place at cre- 
ation, each grand feature being boldly sketched out in one 
scenic representation characteristic of that period."* This 
supposition may to many prove the most satisfactory. 

The view which Dr. Chalmers propounded has, in its 
broad outline, the charm of simplicity and the advantage 

* " Primeval Man Unveiled." p 44. 



64 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

of placing the historical statement in the same light in 
which the others are received. " The first verse," he says, 
" describes the primary act of creation, and leaves us to 
place it as far back as we may ; and the first half of the 
second verse describes the state of the earth at the point 
of time anterior to the detailed operations of this chap- 
ter." On this supposition, an immense interval elapsed 
between the beginning and the establishment of the pres- 
ent condition of the globe, and during that interval all 
the processes have transpired with whose results geolo- 
gists are now conversant. 

The six days' creative acts may constitute those 
changes only which immediately preceded man's appear- 
ance. The description in the first chapter of Genesis had 
reference specially to man. The light, the atmosphere, 
the plants, the animals, are introduced in obvious rela- 
tion to him ; and it is but natural to suppose that those 
changes only would be mentioned which had the closest 
historical connection with him. The facts of geology 
warrant the inference that in immediate connection with 
the time of man's appearance, plants and animals were 
introduced, not before existing, which were specially 
adapted to his wants. The paraphrase by Archdeacon 
Pratt, (p. 49,) omitting his supposition as to the process 
by which light was introduced, is in harmony with the 
opinion which we have long held, and often fully ex- 
plained ; and his brief summary is, on the whole, an 
admirable statement of the view which we think most 
honors the historical directness of the Scriptures, and 
best meets the requirements of science. It is an expan- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 65 

sion of Dr. Chalmers' suggestion, and is based on the 
wider range of facts which, since his time, scientific 
inquiry has produced. In the long interval between the 
first creation of the heaven and the earth, and the prep- 
aration of the earth for man, races of plants and animals 
lived, died, and became fossilized ; but because man is 
not specially concerned with these long historical pro- 
cesses, the Scriptures are silent regarding them."* 

"While questions regarding details may be urged 
which, in the present stage of scientific inquiry, cannot 
be satisfactorily answered, recent discoveries in geology 
and applications in natural philosophy, taken in connec- 
tion with advances in Biblical scholarship, warrant our 
anticipating such a combination of results as may soon 
shed light through what is still obscure. Meanwhile, we 
may suggest the probability that, while in the six natural 
days the preparation of the earth for man was consum- 
mated through a series of divinely-instituted adjustments, 
these transactions are the outcome or crown of processes 
which had been transpiring through long antecedent 
periods — but an outcome only through the mediately 
creative power of God. The six days' work, therefore, 
may be representative of those changes and advances 
which constitute the previous history of our globe as the 
intended abode of man. Revelation, in closing the Bible, 
unfolds the future ; Genesis, in its commencement, re- 
veals the distant past. The Bible sheds light in both 
directions, until it fades in mystery ; but the same princi- 
ples of interpretation can be legitimately applied whether 

* "Scripture and Science not at Variance," pp. 77, 78. 
6* 



66 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

we look into the future or into the past. We may assume, 
therefore, that as one prophetic description sometimes 
serves to cover widely separated future events, so the one 
historical description in Genesis may embrace events in 
the past lying widely apart. In Ezekiel's description of 
the coming destruction of Tyre, for instance, we have 
events brought together which were in part fulfilled in 
the siege of Nebuchadnezzar, and in part two hundred 
and fifty years afterwards, by Alexander the Great ; yet 
no such distinction in time is perceptible in the narrative 
itself. In like manner, the description, in the first chap- 
ter of Genesis, while setting forth those transactions, 
which had most direct reference to man, may also em- 
brace those other transactions which, although separated 
by intervening ages, yet pointed to the same result. 

And the six literal days may themselves be represen- 
tative, as Principal McCosh supposes, " of six epochs, 
just as our Lord's prediction of the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem has throughout a reference to the final day." Taking 
this view, he indicates that the transaction recorded in 
the opening of Genesis may not be a mere vision, but a 
"reality which retains the natural days, as after the type 
of the natural epochs, and keeps the seventh day as a true 
day, and yet a prefiguration of the Sabbath of rest which 
remaineth for the people of God."* 

It is unnecessary to prosecute this subject farther; 
enough has been stated to show that the questions which 
have been raised may be differently answered, without 

* See an Instructive Note in "The Supernatural in Relation to the 
Natural," pp. 343, 344. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 67 

displacing the Bible. Inferences may vary with the shift- 
ing results of science. Holding fast the Bible with the 
one hand, we may grasp all that science brings to us with 
the other, and retain it until we find for it an appropriate 
place. There is nothing to repel the Christian in the 
records of science. He can, therefore, afford to wait for 
more light; while, in the meantime, he rejects none of 
those supports which are within his reach. Temporary 
in their character, they may guide to. what is permanent. 
If there is one lesson more than another which the prog- 
ress of the sciences is teaching us, it is that of caution 
and the necessity of repressing dogmatic tendencies ; 
and if there is one benefit more than another which the 
history of this discussion is conferring, it is that of great- 
er confidence in the truth of the Bible. 



70 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

vague and shadowy or incongruous, but are so definite 
as to meet the generalizations of astronomy. Ideas were 
not uncommon at one time regarding the measurable- 
ness of the heavens and the numbering of the stars ; but 
in the Bible this arrogance found only rebuke, as it ever 
assigned to Deity alone the prerogative of measuring 
space and counting the stars. " Look now toward heaven, 
and tell the stars if thou be able to number them." Gen. 
15:5. " He telleth the number of the stars ; he calleth 
them by their names." Psa. 147:4. "To whom then 
will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy 
One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath 
created these things, that bringeth out their host by num- 
ber ; he calleth them all by names, by the greatness of 
his might, for that he is strong in power; not one fail- 
eth." Isa. 40:25, 26. "Is not God in the height of 
heaven ? and behold the height of the stars, how high 
they are!" Job 22:12. "For by him were all things 
created that are in heaven and that are in the earth, vis- 
ible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, 
or principalities, or powers ; all things were created by 
him and for him ; and he is before all things, and by him 
all things consist." Col. 1:16. These and similar sub- 
lime passages we can hold firmly in the light of modern 
discoveries ; they sustain all that has yet transpired on 
the side of science, and astronomy cannot dissociate 
itself from these great revealed truths. 

The idea of unity is strengthened by the impressive 
conclusion of M. Maedler, that this visible universe of 
suns and their systems is moving around some grand 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 71 

centre, in a ceaseless, aild, to us, mysterious march. 
Guided by analogy, Herschel reached this inference ; 
and, since that time, definite reasoning has confirmed it. 
M. Maedler's conclusion that the star, Alcyone, one of 
the Pleiades, the well-known seven stars, represents the 
common centre of the cosmical system, has in its sup- 
port such concurrent approval that it may be accepted. 
While admitting the soundness of the inference that 
there is such a centre, some doubt whether it has yet 
been ascertained, and, like the late Sir David Brewster, 
suppose that the centre may be dark, and of course not 
visible ; but whether Alcyone be the real centre or not, 
does not affect the conclusion as to unity. That there is 
a centre somewhere, is admitted ; and long ages ago, be- 
fore the light of astronomy dawned on this fact, it was in 
dim vision revealed to Job. It was unfolded to him as a 
truth, the full import of which possibly he did not com- 
prehend, and he repeats it in the question, " Canst thou 
bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands 
of Orion?" Job 38:31. The profound significance of 
this long-hidden or mysterious question, has, of late years, 
attracted attention as strangely prophetic of a truth which, 
at last, the once distant future has begun to unveil. That 
Job had penetrated the secrets of the heavenly mechan- 
ism, we do not affirm : but his expressions clearly sustain 
that truth as to a grand centre, which has only of late 
been accepted. May we not legitimately suppose that 
the glorious Being who hath not only framed the heavens 
in all their vastness, but hath also given delicate struc- 
ture to an insect's wing and enriched the lily with its beau- 



72 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ty and its fragrance, would give with equal condescension, 
to subserve ultimately a moral purpose, a prophetic series 
of truths in the economy of the universe ? Accepting 
prophecy as valid in relation to the human race, is it en- 
tirely improbable that He who has given glimpses of 
unforeseen changes in distant centuries of national his- 
tories, would vouchsafe some gleam of those facts or laws 
in the amplitude of space and the multitude of systems, 
which progressive science should ages afterwards fully 
interpret ? As He has given the greater, we may surely 
anticipate the bestowment of the lesser; as He has re- 
vealed distant secrets in the moral universe which we 
readily accept, may we not assume the probability of 
his giving glimpses of realities also in the material uni- 
verse ? 

Not only is the language of Job very definite, but its 
precision is beginning to be recognized as in harmony 
with scientific discovery. The more we learn of the 
mechanism of the heavens, the more significant does 
Job's inquiry become. For many centuries, mystery so 
shrouded the question " Canst thou bind the sweet influ- 
ences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion ?" that men 
concluded it was meaningless. It is now intelligible. 
The word rendered Pleiades — Chimali, in the original, 
while held by some to represent a " heap," or " group," 
is said by others to mean literally a hinge, that around 
which other bodies turn or move. " The sweet influ- 
ences " are " the ties," or the strong forces of Chimah ; 
and the phrase legitimately suggests the idea of a con- 
trolling power which connects with this centre the circling 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 73 

march of the universe. " Truly, there are glories in the 
Bible on which the eye of man has not gazed sufficiently 
long to admire them ; and there are difficulties, the depth 
and inwardness of which require a measure of the same 
qualities in himself. There are notes struck on places, 
which, like some discoveries of science, have sounded 
before their time, and only after many days have been 
caught up and found a response on earth. There are 
germs of truth which, after a thousand years, have yet 
taken root in the world." And are not Job's questions 
chords struck long before their time, and only now is 
the responsive note beginning to be rightly heard and 
understood ! 

Still grander and more imposing is the conception of 
the universe to which recent discoveries have led us. Its 
immeasurableness is overwhelming. The naming of the 
stars is not within the compass of human effort. It is 
the prerogative of the Creator alone to comprehend " the 
All." While the astronomer who neglects the guidance 
of the Bible is powerless amid the mysteries of number- 
less stars, the student who accepts its teaching, while he 
traverses space, is humble, and adores the mighty One 
by whom all is upheld and controlled. He finds in stars 
rising above stars, and spreading beyond all that the tel- 
escope can reach, but one stupendous illustration of the 
Bible announcement as to the unity of all that is visible 
or faintly shadowed. Both the works and the Word of 
God are revealing to us, by their blending rays, the grand 
truth, that the magnificent array of worlds which has 
fallen within the sweep of human scrutiny, may after all 

7 



74 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

be to the whole of God's material creation but as a leaf 
to the forest or a grain of sand to the globe. Vaster sys- 
tems lie beyond, differing from one another, in all proba- 
bility, not only in mass and form, but in nature. Much 
as astronomers have measured, it is as nothing to what 
can be but dimly seen by them, or lies altogether hidden 
from their view. System rises beyond system, until sur- 
vey fails. Vast as are the dimensions of our solar sys- 
tem, it almost disappears in the seeming illimitableness 
of other sun-systems. After we have struggled to mas- 
ter their magnitudes and survey the space which they 
occupy, we are confounded and paralyzed by the still 
greater task to conceive what " the All " must be, when 
we find that the whole system of starsof which our sun 
is part is only a small fragment in the far-sweeping frame 
of which the star system consists. Truly, apart from 
the Bible, there is no grander nor more impressive sub- 
ject of study than the immensity and the structure of the 
heavens, as unfolded in the occasional expositions of as- 
tronomers during the last hundred years, or rather since 
Wright of Durham, in 1750, enunciated his theory of 
the construction of the universe. There is discoverable 
a oneness, or unity, through all this stupendous vast- 
ness, which is inexpressibly overawing. Its contempla- 
tion compels stillness ; it renders mind motionless. Meas- 
ureless, exhaustless — to us incomprehensibly infinite, yet 
harmonious — the universe overpowers the imagination 
itself, until, guided by the Bible, we turn in our helpless- 
ness to the Creator and Preserver of all as the Lord God 
omnipotent reigning, and are satisfied by finding that 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 75 

our ignorance is lost in the fulness of his infinite wis" 
dom. Entranced by harmony of universal movement 
and overawed by measureless extent, overburdened 
thought can find appropriate outlet only in the language 
of the angels' song, " Great and marvellous are thy works, 
Lord God Almighty, in wisdom hast thou made them 
all." Rev. 15:3. 

II. UNITY IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE GLOBE, AND IN ITS 
LIFE-FORMS. 

The unity visible in the mechanism of the heavens is 
no less distinctly recognizable in the mechanism of the 
earth. What astronomy is revealing in one department, 
geology is revealing in the other. While the facts of 
astronomy lie in the area of immeasurable space, and 
the facts of geology in the area of yet indefinite ages, 
purpose has always indubitably appeared in both. Strata 
separated by long periods are yet bound together by an 
evident design, which, prevailing alike in gentle and in 
tumultuating movements, includes islands and continents, 
and is ever apparent in crystallization, in mineral aggre- 
gation, in fusion by heat, in processes of cooling, and in 
the storage of the globe in relation to the wants of man. 
The gold, the silver, the iron, the slate, the coal, the 
limestone, the salt, and other metals and minerals, all 
presuppose in their allocation and disposition a guiding 
power, and point anticipatively to a period of uses. They 
are prophetic of man's appearance. His advent at least 
is their explanation. Man's presence, with a bodily struc- 
ture to seize these materials, and an intellect to develop 



76 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

and combine their applications in arts and manufactures 
shows not only a beautiful harmony in the whole fabric, 
but how little have the earth and man been dependent 
for their present constitution and connection on the 
chance movements of blind force. 

As this part of the subject will fall to be more fully 
considered when we examine the preparation of the earth 
for man, we may Omit further reference to it here. 

The unity visible in the structure of the globe, is no 
less conspicuously manifest in the life-forms which are 
represented by the fossils of succeeding ages, and by 
now existing plants and animals. 

Widely-separajte rock formations distinctly show con- 
tinuity of life-forrins. Though disconnected by descent, 
they are one in typical outline. There is such similarity 
in general structure, that the idea of plan cannot be dis- 
countenanced without a violation of the common princi- 
ples of observation and inference. Each life-age has 
been prophetic of that- which is to follow. Animals of 
advanced structure in the one age, give place to animals 
of still higher form and greater beauty in the next, but 
not always of greater delicacy and intricacy in their ana- 
tomical framework, nor more subtle in the play of life- 
forces, but having new adaptations to climatic and 
other conditions. This progression has culminated in 
man. 

Agassiz, while acknowledging that there is evidently 
an advance from lower to higher animal forms — that there 
is increasing closeness of structure to those now existing, 
and that especially among vertebrates there is a growing 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 77 

likeness to man — yet denies that these connections are, 
in any degree, the consequence of parental descent. 
" The link," he says, " by which they are connected, is of 
a higher and immaterial nature, and their connection is 
to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose 
aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the 
successive changes which geology has pointed out, and 
in creating successively all the different types of animals 
which have passed away, was to introduce man upon the 
surface of the earth. Man is the end towards which all 
the animal creation has tended, from the first appearance 
of the first Palaeozoic fishes."* 

Cuvier and Hugh Miller may be held as representing 
the same conclusions, though based on a lesser area of 
fact and observation, and Professor Owen has strikingly 
enforced them. It is indeed difficult to conceive of 
the utter absence of purpose in the mind of the Deity, 
and that man was never foreshadowed in the animal 
structures of succeeding ages. Although we cannot dis- 
cern and describe the process by which natural laws- or 
secondary causes have educed the results which appear, 
we may rest assured that a presiding Intelligence direct- 
ed them all. " But if, without derogation of the Divine 
power," says Professor Owen, " we may conceive of the 
existence of such ministers, and personify them by the 
term ' Nature,' we learn from the past history of our 
globe that she has advanced with slow and stately steps, 
guided by the archetypal hght amid the wreck of worlds, 
from the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea under 
* Agassiz and Gould's "Comparative Physiology," p. 417. 
7* 



78 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

its old ichythyic vestment, until it became arrayed in the 
glorious garb of the human form."* 

The same system that gives symmetry, gracefulness, 
and beauty to the cedar, the vine, and the rose, built 
up in olden eras the gigantic tree-ferns. The earliest 
shells that have been found protected their inmates like 
species now living ; and the first spiral shells discovered 
were shaped by the same mathematical principles by 
which, in our seas, molluscs are at the present day regu- 
lating their dwellings. The vertebral columns of fishes, 
birds, and quadrupeds, and even the teeih of extinct ani- 
mals, are all constructed on a definite plan or model. In 
both animal and vegetable physiology there are revealed 
those minute mechanisms which no less strikingly attest 
unity of plan. So abundant are the details and so mani- 
fold the microscopic marvels which here meet us, that we 
become bewildered by what is numberless, as in astrono- 
my we are overawed by vastness. Those who have made 
the greatest discoveries, and who still prosecute exact 
researches, should be the readiest to say with Dr. Car- 
penter, " And when the physiologist is inclined to dwell 
unduly upon his capacity for penetrating the secrets of 
nature, it may be salutary for him to reflect that, even 
when he has attained the farthest limit of science, by 
advancing to those general principles which tend to place 
it on an elevation which others have already reached, he 
yet knows nothing of those wondrous operations which 
are the essential parts of every one of those complicated 
functions by which the life of the body is sustained, 
* Professor Owen's " Discourse on Limbs," p. 86. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 79 

Why one cell should absorb, why another that seems ex- 
actly to resemble it should assimilate, why a third should 
secrete, why a fourth should prepare the productive 
germs, and why of two germs that seem exactly similar, 
one should be developed into the meanest zoophite and 
another into the complex fabric of man — are questions 
that physiology is not likely ever to answer."* While 
freely admitting that mysteries, which will probably for 
ever baffle human intellect, shroud many exquisitely 
beautiful processes, we see enough to constrain us to 
acknowledge a community of structural arrangement, 
and to accept the doctrine of an all-pervading unity in 
life -fabrics. 

Permeating these, are heat, light, electricity, magnet- 
ism, as correlated forces; and the discovery that these 
different physical forces are mutually convertible — that 
they can pass into one another — or, in other words, that 
all force is the same force — has placed in an entirely new 
light the unity of the globe. These forces are so simple, 
yet so powerful in their combinations, and are so univer- 
sal in their diffusion, as they connect the inorganic and 
organic fabrics, that the doctrine of unity is rising with 
a magnificence which surpasses that even of endless 
worlds in harmony, because they bear us on more directly 
to the mind of God. "And even if we cannot certainly 
identify force in all its forms with the direct energies of 
one omnipresent and all-pervading Will, it is at least in 
the highest degree unphilosophical to assume the con- 
trary, to speak or to think as if the forces of nature were 

* " Animal Physiology," p. 592. Bohn's Edition. 



80 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

either independent of or even separate from the Creator's 
power."* 

While welcoming evidence of the correlation of forces, 
and while admitting, to a certain extent, that matter and 
force are inseparable, and that they have some intimate 
connection with the animal frame, we deny that they 
either sustain or subordinate mental force, or that they 
are "the all" of spiritual life. There are facts in mental 
history which a purely materialistic philosophy can never 
explain. One of these is a belief in the immortality of 
the soul. Another is that we are free agents, and are 
morally responsible for our actions ; and intimately con- 
nected with these two is the idea of a God almighty and 
omnipresent. Matter and force, however inseparable, 
cannot in their very nature produce such moral results 
as these. Vital force is essentially different from purely 
physical force. " It is one thing to admit that the vital 
and active energies of the living being are carried on by 
means of the forces of inorganic nature, and another 
thing to assert that any mere combination of these forces 
produces life."f Vital properties are superadded ; they 
are not permanent. They are removed at death, and do 
not reappear. " The material properties belong to the 
matter, whether living or dead," says Dr. Beale, "but 
where are the vital properties in the dead material ? If 
physicists and chemists would only restore to life that 
which is dead, we should all believe in the doctrine they 

* "Reign of Law," by the Duke of Argyll, p. 122. 
t See a very able article in the "British and Foreign Evangelical 
Review," July, 1S72, by Professor J. R. Leebody. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. Si 

teach."* As we are not discussing materialism, we fol- 
low its conclusions no farther. We accept almost all 
that it teaches physiologically regarding the connections 
of the organic and inorganic, and the exposition which 
it gives of the unity of our globe and of its life-forms; 
but we refuse to stop here, because there is a psychologi- 
cal or spiritual sphere in which the phenomena of matter 
and force are comparatively subordinate. Psychology 
has its own laws, and recognizes a higher than a mate- 
rialistic government. We rise from the lower unity to 
that which is wider, more lasting, and more sublime. In 
the intimate connection of the material with the intel- 
lectual and spiritual — of the outer world with the " world 
within " — there is a unity of profounder interest than 
that which the physical universe alone exhibits, and that 
interest is intensified when we separate ourselves alto- 
gether from what is external, and expatiate with freedom 
in the domain of the invisible. As we ascend from the 
lowest instinct in animals to reason and faith in man, we 
infer the legitimacy of still higher advances. We cannot 
stop with man as the terminating link in the series of 
rational and accountable intelligences ; we cannot admit 
that his horizon is the limit of moral agency in the uni- 
verse. Analogy, as our guide, gives to us an upward 
impulse which we cannot check without doing violence 
alike to the expositions of science and Scripture. What 
is dim to reason, Revelation makes distinct. The Bible 
guides us with steady step into the invisible, and it de- 
scribes existences in it with as much historical definite- 

* " Protoplasm, or Life, Matter, and Mind," p. 27. 



82 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ness as when it places before us facts which lie within 
the easy apprehension of the senses. "Thrones, domin- 
ions, principalities, and powers" are described as distinct 
representatives of spiritual intelligences, or celestial dig- 
nities, or the higher and highest essences of the universe ; 
order reigns there, unity prevails, as with one mind they 
obey God. A system of beings is revealed to us, vast, 
mysterious, yet harmonious, of which science can take no 
cognizance. The sun is not its centre, nor is Alcyone. 
The Pleiades do not reflect its splendor, nor can as- 
tronomers define its outline or estimate its glories. Its 
"thrones and dominions" rise illimitably until they ap- 
proach the omnipotent Adonai, in whom and by whom 
and for whom they all consist. 

When astronomy, geology, chemistry, physiology, and 
other correlated sciences, are thus associated with what 
the Bible reveals in the unseen, we may safely rest in the 
light of that Word which reveals a glorious Being, who 
sees the end from the beginning, and who has in match- 
less wisdom first instituted the design to which every 
fact, and law, and event has been throughout conformed, 
and has given to all his works a unity consonant with 
that of his own attributes. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 83 



CHAPTER V. 

SCRIPTURE ALLUSIONS COINCIDENT WITH FACTS IN NATU- 
RAL SCIENCE. 

The Bible frequently makes allusions to the laws of nature, their 
operations and effects. But such allusions are often so wrapped in the 
folds of the peculiar and graceful drapery with which its language is 
occasionally clothed, that the meaning, though peeping out from its thin 
covering all the while, yet lies in some sense concealed until the lights 
and revelations of science are thrown upon it ; then it bursts out and 
strikes us with exquisite force and beauty. — lieutenant maury. 

There are allusions in the Bible, written centuries 
before astronomy had given a glimpse of the structure of 
the universe, or geology had revealed the evolutions of 
the globe, or chemistry any of its constituent elements, 
which have only of late become intelligible and been 
recognized as perfectly exact. The coincidences of Bible 
statements with facts in natural science are so remarka- 
ble, and comparatively so numerous, that, when combined, 
they constitute a powerful argument for the reliableness 
of the whole book. Although the Bible does not teach 
science, it cannot be admitted to contradict its discover- 
ies. The coincidence in some instances may seem to be 
remote or fanciful, but it is not on that account to be 
rejected. New discoveries may remove doubt and reveal 
long-hidden connections. 

We have already noticed (1) the long-mysterious 
questions in the Book of Job regarding the Pleiades, as 



8 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

enriched with unexpected lustre by the light of modern 
astronomy ; and (2) the statements in the first chapter of 
Genesis regarding the distinctive facts in the natural 
history of "the grass," "the herb," and "the fruit-tree," 
as reaching that which botanists have made the basis of 
a truly scientific classification. Without further advert- 
ing to these allusions, we submit the following coinci- 
dences : 

3. "And God said, Let there be a firmament in the 
midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from 
the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided 
the waters which were under the firmament from the 
waters which were above the firmament." Gen. 1:6, 7. 
This harmonizes with what is known of the processes of 
evaporation to which the clouds are subject as they float 
above us — lakes of water in the azure vault. The firma- 
ment sustains the waters collected in its scattered clouds, 
and separates them from those resting on the surface of 
the earth. Take, in connection with this, what Solomon 
has written, "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea 
is not full ; unto the place from whence the rivers come, 
thither they return again," Eccles. 1:7; and we may 
fairly press the question, Can any brief description more 
exactly set forth what has been ascertained as to the 
settled course of evaporation ? 

4. The passage in Ecclesiastes regarding the separa- 
tion of particles of water from the rivers and the sea, has 
an intensified significance when placed beside that other 
statement in Job regarding the weight of the atmosphere : 
" For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth un- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 85 

der the whole heaven ; to make the weight for the winds ; 
and he weigheth the waters by measure." Job 28 : 24, 
25. This reference to the "weight of the winds" dimly 
indicates that simple yet beautiful arrangement in the 
atmosphere which the experiments of natural philosophy 
have made known, and of which the barometer is a sim- 
ple illustration. In the still atmosphere there slumbers 
amazing power; it has a weight, or substantiality, by 
which it upholds the clouds or the waters ; and there is 
in its movements a force which is appalling when in tem- 
pest it rushes hither and thither, distributing desolation 
and death. In that silent process by which the clouds 
are uplifted, there is put forth in a single year a weight 
or an amount of force that is almost incredible ; it has 
been calculated by Arago as greater than the united 
strength of all the nations of the earth if put forth for 
twenty thousand years. And can any history of rivers 
be more definite and succinct than that which is given 
in Ecclesiastes, when they are represented as hasting 
to the sea from the hills and the clouds, and as again 
returning to renew their course ? 

5. In his very interesting and instructive work, " The 
Physical Geography of the Sea," Lieutenant Maury has 
vividly described the currents in the atmosphere from 
the equator to the poles, and from the poles to the equa- 
tor — the one current ranging along a lower level, the 
other on a higher, and both exchanging their heights at 
the equator and the tropics — like overlapping belts on 
higher and lower wheels in a factory — while at the north 
and south poles they move from right to left and left to 

8 



86 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

right respectively, around a circular mass of air, and are 
steady in their course as the Gulf Stream.* Unlike the 
trade winds, they know no rest. Their circuit is cease- 
less ; and no one can examine the facts which have been 
ascertained and the principles which they represent, with- 
out delighting in the new meaning which lights up that 
Scripture sentence, so long unintelligible, "The wind 
goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the 
north: it wJiirletJi about continually; and the wind re- 
turneth again according to his circuits." Eccles. i : 6. 
This, is truly an accurate generalization, and may well 
arrest the attention of those who believe that every line of 
the Bible has been long since exhausted of all its truth. 

6. There is an allusion, in the account which has been 
given of the triumph by the Israelites over the Amorites, 
the accuracy of which can be aright appreciated only by 
those who bear in mind how limited was the astronomi- 
cal knowledge of that period, and who set aside the phys- 
ical difficulties of the narrative by which its light is 
partly hidden : " Then spake Joshua to the Lord, in the 
day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the 
children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, 
stand thou still upon Gibeon ; and thou, Moon, in the 
valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon 
stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon 
their enemies." Joshua 10:12, 13. 

It is of course well known now, that the sun and 
moon are so closely associated that the staying of the 
one implies the staying of the other ; but who, at that 

* See Chapter on the Atmosphere. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 87 

time, contemplated such a combination ? Not till after 
long ages was their connection revealed by astronomy. 
While in other books called " sacred," the strangest mis- 
takes are made as to the sun and the moon, their exact 
relation is in this early narrative distinctly acknowledged. 
The sun, it is true, is related to other planets in our sys- 
tem ; but in this incident the earth is the stand-point, 
and therefore appropriately are the moon and the earth 
conjoined. The sun visibly arrested in the heavens, 
was all that was essential for the leader of the Israelites ; 
yet the collateral fact is announced — the moon staying 
in the valley of Ajalon. This clear association of facts 
which were for ages- secluded from observation and 
experience, gives presumptive evidence for the Divine 
inspiration of the Scriptures. It is common to urge on 
our attention the physical difficulties which the narrative 
represents ; but is there no obstacle to the ridicule with 
which skepticism has treated this record, in the in- 
sight which this combination shows ? Even admitting 
that the writer did not quite comprehend the truth which 
he set forth, or that his imagination, not his intellect, 
was the origin and medium of its expression, how ac- 
count for the fulness and the exactness of the statement 
itself ? And is it not in thorough accordance with other 
allusions to what lay beyond the reach of the age in which 
he lived ? As to the miracle itself, there are many dif- 
ficulties, it must be acknowledged when an exhaustive 
exposition is attempted. In its full acceptation, it in- 
volves the temporary arrestment of great physical laws ; 
and, therefore, explanations have been offered to the effect 



88 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

that the standing still was not real, but apparent, through a 
continuance of light protracted by some of the ordinary 
processes of refraction. Literally and absolutely, there 
could be no arrestment, because the sun does not travel. 
Prolongation of light was all that was necessary to com- 
plete the victory. The tempest of hail, and probably of 
meteoric stones, which is described, favors the supposi- 
tion of the great astronomer, Kepler : " They will not un- 
derstand," he says, " that the only thing which Joshua 
prayed for was that the mountains might not intercept 
the sun from him. Besides, it had been very unreason- 
able at that time to think of astronomy, or of the errors 
of sight ; for if any one had told him that the sun could 
not really move in the valley of Ajalon, but only in re- 
lation to sense, would not Joshua have answered that his 
one desire was that the day might be prolonged, so it 
were by any means whatever ?" 

Dean Stanley, in his well-known and deservedly- 
valued work, " Lectures on the Jewish Church," while 
taking a similar view, is apparently inclined to admit a 
poetical coloring beyond what the narrative warrants. 
"These words in the book of Joshua," he says, "were 
doubtless intended to express that, in some manner, in 
answer to Joshua's earnest prayer, the day was prolonged 
till the victory was achieved. How, or in what way, we 
are not told : and if we take the words in the popular 
and poetical sense in which, from their style, it is clear 
that they are used, there is no occasion for inquiry. 
That some such general sense is what was understood in 
the ancient Jewish church itself, is evident from the 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 89 

slight emphasis laid upon the incident by Josephus, and 
the Samaritan book of Joshua ; and from the absence of 
any subsequent allusion to it (unless, indeed, in a similar 
poetic strain) in the Old or New Testament." He ad- 
verts to Habakkuk 3:11, and makes the following apt 
quotations from Josephus, in a note : " He then heard 
that God was helping him, by the signs of thunder, light- 
ning, and unusual hailstones ; and that the day was in- 
creased lest the night should check the zeal of the He- 
brews. That the length of the day did then increase, 
and was longer than usual, is told in the books laid 
up in the temple."* The Samaritan book of Joshua says 
'that "the day was prolonged at his prayer," and the 
opinion of Dr. Chalmers is to the same effect, but is 
stated with a fuller and firmer reference to the literal 
aspect of the narrative. "The shower of hailstones," he 
says, " was miraculous ; and, in regard to the much-con- 
troverted miracle of the sun and moon standing still, I 
have no doubt it was so to the effect of the sun-dial be- 
ing stationary, which leaves room for the speculation that 
it may have been by atmospherical refraction, or in other 
ways. I am not so staggered by this narrative as to feel 
dependent on the usual explanations. I accept of it in 
the popular and effective sense, having no doubt that to 
all intents and purposes of that day's history, the sun 
and moon did stand still, the one resting over Gibeon, 
the other in the valley of Ajalon."f Even assuming 
that the storm was in full accord with the laws of nature, 

* " Lectures on the Jewish church," pp„ 245, 246. 
t "Daily Scripture Readings," vol. 1, p. 395. 
8* 



90 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

there is in the hail, in the meteoric stones, in the gloom, 
in the refraction of the light, (probable, at least,) and in 
appearance of the moon, taken along with the contest 
in the elements, and with the prayer of Joshua, such a 
combination of facts as places the whole narrative for 
moral purposes under the direct guidance of the Great 
Governor of the universe. In short, there is in the nar- 
rative nothing to weaken the force of the evidence for 
the truth of Scripture which has been presented to us in 
the unexpected union of sun and moon in Joshua's peti- 
tion, when ordinarily the sun alone was necessary for the 
miracle. In one of a very able course of lectures on 
Christianity and Skepticism, the Rev. Dr. Tyler, while he 
has himself " no difficulty in accepting" what is stated 
as simple matter of fact, and " true in the fullest and 
most literal sense, when interpreted according to the 
common laws of language," offers the following summary 
of Keil's suggestions on the passage : " And the Bible 
always describes natural phenomena as they appear, and 
in the language of the people, not according to the doc- 
trine or the language of physical science. But this pas- 
sage is expressly cited from a book of poems, the book 
of Joshua. The language also is metrical, and admits of 
being arranged in the form of verses. It has the parallel- 
ism and the other characteristic marks of Hebrew poe- 
try ; and, irrespective of their theological opinions, crit- 
ics now generally agree to read it as a poetical quotation. 
It must, therefore, be interpreted, not as prose, but as 
poetry ; not as a part of the narrative by the sacred his- 
torian, but as a fragment from some Hebrew bard, cited 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 91 

by way of embellishment. And so interpreted, it means, 
perhaps, no more than this : So long did the day seem 
to those who were engaged in the conflict, and so com- 
plete was the destruction of the enemies of Israel, that, 
in the strong language of a bold and contemporary poet, 
it might be said the sun and moon stood still in the 
heavens, and the day was prolonged far beyond its usual 
duration, till the confederate host was utterly extinguished. 
So, in the song of Deborah, it is said that ' the stars in 
their courses fought against Sisera,' upon which no one 
would think of putting any other than a poetical inter- 
pretation. And when Isaiah prayed to the Lord in the 
name of his people, ' Oh ! that thou wouldest rend the 
heavens and come down, that the mountains might 
flow down at thy presence !' or when David sings, ' In 
my distress I called upon the Lord, ... he heard my 
voice out of his temple, ... he bowed the heavens also 
and came down, ... he- sent from above, and took me ; 
he drew me out of many waters ;' who is there who ever 
thinks of understanding these words literally, as deno- 
ting an actual rending the heavens, or a desire that God 
would actually descend from heaven and stretch out his 
hand to draw David out of the waters ?" 

But Keil, in his Commentary, is even more explicit 
and decided than the summary by Dr. Tyler at first 
sight indicates. " We do not hesitate," he says, " to believe 
in such a miracle in its fullest extent, whenever this is the 
meaning obtained from a literal interpretation of the words, 
or when it can be exegetically proved to be the only ad- 
missible and necessary one. For even though, in the 



92 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

whole of the world's history, no other such miracle may 
ever have occurred, yet in the fact that it only happened 
once, there is just as little to disturb our faith as are ob- 
jections founded upon the invariable order with which 
the heavenly bodies revolve according to the eternal laws 
implanted in them by the Author of Nature. These 
laws, in our opinion, are nothing more than terms by 
which men are accustomed to designate certain manifes- 
tations of the creative power of God, the nature of which 
no mortal has explored ; and we can therefore believe 
that the Creator, in his omnipotence, would depart from 
the so-called laws of nature, whenever in his inscrutable 
wisdom he saw that it was necessary for the salvation of 
men, for whose redemption he did not even spare his 
own Son." He proceeds to state that the physical diffi- 
culties in the way of accepting this narrative, and the fact 
that no account of it is met with in the annals of other 
nations, would not in the least excite any doubts in his 
mind of its historical veracity : yet he has come to the 
conclusion which we have already set forth. 

Even if Keil's view be adopted as the most satisfac- 
tory, we hold that the narrative or quotation is so adjust- 
ed in its terms as to be placed for our guidance in an 
unerring Bible ; and the connection of the sun and the 
moon is so divested of all that is incompatible with fact, 
that what is recorded harmonizes exactly with the astro- 
nomical conditions. For our own part, we prefer the 
inference that the day was prolonged by extraordinary 
conditions of the atmosphere, and by the refraction of 
the light, or by some other such cause, producing sta- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 93 

tionariness for a time in the sun-dial. Be the explana- 
tory facts what they may, the result was miraculous, and 
in answer to Joshua's prayer. 

There are other incidental allusions which, while they 
seem to be poetical, and fit only to be explained by its 
imagery, or to be regarded as of practical value chiefly 
in giving pleasure, may yet be discovered to be substan- 
tially matter of fact, and to be connected, as by romance, 
with some of the most wonderful operations of nature. 
What has already happened in some instances, may be 
applicable in many. It will be admitted that there is, 
possibly, much more in many passages than figurative 
language, and that, without any undue stretch of the 
ordinary laws of criticism, they may yet shed light on 
some law or fact in science. Difficulties which Christian 
apologists have endeavored to remove under the allega- 
tion that the language is poetical, have already evanished 
in the light of ascertained results. 

7. The earth, long acknowledged by many to be flat 
and square, or circular, and often made the subject of 
absurd expositions, was very accurately and very beauti- 
fully described by Job, in that olden record, " He stretch- 
eth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the 
earth upon nothing. He bindeth up the waters in his 
thick clouds ; and the cloud is not rent under them." 
Job 26 : 7, 8. Sir Isaac Newton could not have more 
succinctly stated' the position of the earth, nor could any 
of our meteorologists give fitter outline of our cloud sys- 
tem than this and similar descriptions embody. Again, 
taken in connection with that vivid delineation of the 



94 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

close of the present dispensation by St. Peter, to which 
reference has been already made, the following statement 
by Job indicates the condition of the earth's centre. 
Whether or not he perceived its force, it certainly har- 
monizes with the most recent findings of science: "As 
for the earth, out of it cometh bread; and under it is 
turned up as it were fire." Job 28 : 5. Further, the 
agencies affecting the whole surface of the earth and giv- 
ing character to its scenery, while explaining its history, 
are vividly set forth by Job, when he says, " And surely 
the mountain falling cometh to naught, (or fadeth,) and 
the rock is removed out of his place. The waters wear 
the stones ; thou washest away the things which grow 
out of the dust of the earth." Job 14 : 18, 19. The very 
processes which modern geologists are engaged in keenly 
discussing, as accounting for the variety of our Scottish 
scenery, are specified in the language of the patriarch. 
Comprehensively, these delineations in Scripture may 
possibly represent universal geologic movements. 

8. But still further, while the changes proceeding on 
the land-surface, in relation to its mountains, valleys, and 
rivers, are incidentally noticed in such general terms as 
any geologist might employ, the character of the great 
ocean itself is found to be in strict conformity to the com- 
mand of God, that " the water bring forth abundantly the 
moving creature that hath life." But this was not done 
until a separation had been made between the sea and 
land, as on the third day, and that river-system had been 
established which is related to the saltness of the sea, 
the maintenance of much of its life, and the processes of 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 95 

evaporation necessary both for sea and land. The theo- 
ries as to the origin of the sea's saltness we need not 
here discuss ; it is enough that the constitution which 
the Creator has given to the ocean fits it for abundant 
life. Historically, the record in Genesis is true. The 
wisdom and goodness of the Great Ruler are visible in 
every process, and the prolific ocean now quivers with 
life. The abundance of the living is one of the greatest 
"wonders of the deep," which the microscope has re- 
vealed in its own almost boundless domain. 

9. There are various other passages whose meaning 
has of late become more distinct in the light of science ; 
as, for example, Leviticus 17: 11, which recent physio- 
logical inquiries have illustrated ; and also Job 14 : 7-9, 
and Job 28 : 1-6, in which we have what have been 
regarded as the oldest and most instructive notices of 
Natural History in existence ; but it is scarcely neces- 
sary to press them into this general argument. 

Although these allusions in the Word of God, as 
coinciding with facts in his works, may not be regarded 
by many as conveying any very decided evidence of a 
positive kind for the harmony of both ; yet it will be 
admitted they are of special subsidiary value when con- 
trasted with those uninspired histories of the world which 
have been given forth in succeeding ages and in different 
lands, not one of whose general outlines can, for an in- 
stant, bear the application of those crucial tests which 
even the allusions of Scripture not only sustain but wel- 
come, as often, if not always, more fully eliciting their 
meaning. 



96 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Let it be understood, that it is only on this ground 
we have submitted these considerations for acceptance ; 
and that we do not regard them as constituting more 
than incidental or subordinate proof. While we freely 
acknowledge that the Scriptures represent facts in those 
aspects which are most familiar to ordinary observation, 
and not in their more recondite or exactly scientific rela- 
tions, we may legitimately reason that these references 
or allusions are indicative of the accuracy and value of 
the Bible, when we find it covering at once the results of 
common experience and the more recent discoveries of 
science. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 97 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE GEOLOGIC FULNESS OF TIME WHEN MAN APPEARED. 

It is surely no incredible thing, that He who, in the dispensation of the 
human period, spake by type and symbol, and who, when He walked the 
earth in the flesh, taught in parable and allegory, should have also spoken 
in the Geologic ages by prophetic figures, embodied in the form and struc- 
ture of animals. — HUGH MILLER. 

In the distant past, not a trace of man's presence nas 
been found. He is " of yesterday." While the stone 
volume has preserved for us the slight impressions of 
the Annelid and the foot-trail of perished Molluscs in the 
soft mud over which they crawled ; while it has restored 
to us in perfect shape the delicately-constructed many- 
lensed eye of the Trilobite, and has kept exact record of 
the death struggles of fishes on the sands of olden seas ; 
while it has delineated on carboniferous columns fern- 
leaves exquisitely delicate in structure as the finest spe- 
cies of modern times ; and while the rain-drops of long 
bygone ages have left imprints which reveal to us the 
course which even the wind followed ; not a trace of man 
is visible. Only at the close does he appear ; science 
finds him where the Scriptures placed him, and sees in 
him the crown which continuous type had long fore- 
shadowed. 

Not only are there advances in animal structure which 
are prophetic of man's higher organization, but, through 

9 



9 8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

what at one time seemed utterly confused and meaning- 
less, there is abundant evidence of definite purpose in 
storing the earth with those plants and animals which 
are best fitted to meet man's necessities. He was not 
introduced to a barren region or an empty home. There 
clearly appears, about the time of his taking his place on 
the earth, such a series of adjustments for his use and 
comfort, as cannot be even plausibly connected with the 
chance struggles of natural selection. The plants and 
animals which are discoverable only in comparatively 
recent periods, are so numerous and so fully suited to the 
wants of man, that we cannot find an explanation of this 
harmony of production apart from Purpose in relation to 
him. Plants, fishes, quadrupeds, and even the delicate 
distribution of colors, furnish evidence which is by far 
too commonly overlooked. We can do little more than 
allude to some of the leading facts which have been 
brought within the easy reach of every inquirer. Agas- 
siz and Hugh Miller have given special prominence to 
the proof of a gradual preparation of the earth for man. 

I. As to Plants. — Not until we enter on the Tertiary 
period do we find flowers, amid which man might have 
profitably labored as a dresser of gardens, a tiller of 
fields, or a keeper of flocks and herds. Not, indeed, until 
late in this period, is there any appearance of several 
orders and families of plants which are useful to man, 
and which contribute largely to his pleasure. Among 
these orders we may mention that of the Rosacea;, to 
which gardeners invariably look with unfailing interest. 
It includes the apple, the pear, the cherry, the plum, the 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 99 

peach, the apricot, the nectarine, the raspberry, the straw- 
berry ; nor ought we to omit reference to those delight- 
giving and useful flowers, roses and potentillas, the his- 
tory of which commenced with that of Man.* 

It is no less remarkable that the true grasses — a' still 
more important order — including the grain-giving plants, 
oats, barley, wheat, and others, which sustain "at least 
two-thirds of the human speeies," and which also, " in 
their humble varieties, form the staple food of the gi'azing 
animals," do not appear until close on the human period. 
There are other plants also which add to man's comfort 
or gratify his senses, which are not found in the fossil 
state — lavender, mint, thyme, hyssop, basil, rosemary, 
marjoram. They have apparently been introduced to 
prepare for man their varied fragrance and virtues. 

2. As to Fishes. — And not until this recent period did 
the sea become the home of fishes that could prove nutri- 
tious or tasteful to man. A review of the various changes 
which have appeared at different periods in the history 
of fishes, leads to this inference; Professor Owen has 
distinctly stated " that those species, such as the nutri- 
tious cod, the savory herring, the rich-flavored salmon, 
and the succulent turbot," displaced immediately before 
man's advent those species which were coarse and un- 
suitable food ; and that then and subsequently they be- 
came very abundant. 

3. As to Quadrupeds. — While we admit the weakness 
of merely negative statements in establishing any fact, 
there is yet so much that is forcible in the absence from 

* See "Testimony of the Rocks," p. 48. 



ioo BLENDING LIGHTS. 

the fossil state of many of those life-forms which now 
surround man, that we are justifiable in explicitly refer- 
ring to it as probable evidence. No geologist denies 
that the gigantic forms of mammalian life, by which the 
Miocene and Pliocene period were distinguished, ceased 
near the time of man's appearance ; and that only a few 
of those larger animals remained which were not incon- 
sistent with his safety and comfort. Nor will any hesi- 
tate to admit that, as new plants then appeared, so also 
quadrupeds not known before took the place of those 
which had passed away. Among them the sheep is con- 
spicuous, not only for its own qualities, but for the extent; 
to which it has ever ministered to the various wants of 
man. Hugh Miller, with evident delight, describes the 
peculiar adaptation of this favorite animal to the necessi- 
ties of a large proportion of the human race, as " that 
soft and harmless creature that clothes civilized man 
everywhere in the colder latitudes with its fleece — that 
feeds him with its flesh — that gives its bowels to be spun 
into the catgut with which he refits his musical instru- 
ments — whose horns he has learned to fashion into a 
thousand useful trinkets — and whose skin, converted 
into parchment, served to convey to later times the think- 
ing of the first full blow of the human intellect across 
the dreary gulf of the middle ages." While some refuse 
to acknowledge the importance of the contemporaneous 
connection with man of such plants and animals as we 
have specified, no theistic evolutionist of note for attain- 
ments in science hesitates to admit that they were at 
least indirectly preparatory to man's advent. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 101 

4. As to Color. — There is distinct evidence of prepa- 
ration for man in the distribution and adjustments of 
color, which alone must interest every student of the Bi- 
ble and the natural sciences. The very appearance of all 
things has been adapted to the human constitution. This 
important fact has been commonly overlooked. The no- 
tion had long prevailed that there was no law in the dis- 
tribution of colors ; but this error has been corrected. 
The subject has been elaborately discussed by Dr. Dickie 
and President M'Cosh, who have shown that there is, in 
flowers, a permanent relation between form and color, 
and an unfailing harmony in the distribution of colors in 
the same plant. 

True, it cannot yet be demonstrated that these rela- 
tions rest on a scientific basis, so as to connect the ad- 
justments in colors with aesthetic tendencies or laws in 
the human mind ; yet the evidence warrants the conclu- 
sion that there has been a gradual evolution of forms and 
colors until those results have been educed most pleasing 
to the eye, and of which there is no manifestation until 
about the time when man was created. 

Assuming that in successive geologic periods plants 
have been formed according to the same law — an assump- 
tion fairly warranted by facts — Dr. Dickie has inferred 
that the association of colors will be similar — that is, 
they will harmonize with the forms of the plants. Ac- 
cordingly, the prevailing colors in any geologic period 
may be determined by the prevailing forms of its vegeta- 
ble life. In the earlier geological periods — when ferns 
were the chief forms — green, purple, and russet, gave 

9* 



io2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

the landscape a sombre character; and in a subsequent 
stage, when cone-bearing plants rose everywhere, the 
general dulness was but little lessened. Not until the 
beginning of the chalk formation, is there a very evi- 
dent advance towards existing forms and colors. Not, 
indeed, until the latest period — that nearest to man — do 
we find the flowers which most enhance our pleasures, 
invested with their fascinating hues, and so arranged as 
to exhibit those principles of science which schools of 
art are struggling to represent. " In a skilful piece of 
art, the more prominent figures are made to rise out of 
colors which attract no notice. It is the same in the 
beautiful canvas which is spread out before us in earth 
and sky. The ground-colors of nature, if not all neutral, 
are at least all soft and retiring. How grateful should 
we be that the sky is not usually dressed in red ; that 
the clouds are not painted crimson ; that the carpet of 
grass on which we tread is not yellow, and the trees are 
not decked with orange leaves ! The soil in most places 
is a sort of brown ; the mature trunks of trees commonly 
take some kind of neutral hue ; the true color of the sky 
is a soft blue, except when covered with gray clouds ; 
and the foliage of vegetation is a refreshing green. It 
is out from the midst of these that the more regular and 
elegant forms, and the gayer colors of nature, come forth 
to arrest the attention, to excite and dazzle us, not only 
by their own splendor, but by comparison and contrast."* 
Pains must be taken by art-students to determine 
what colors should be in juxtaposition, and what kept at a 
* * Typical Forms and Special Ends," pp. 152, 153. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 103 

distance from each other. In the manufacture of our 
finest fabrics, and in staining glass for windows, no one 
neglects those rules which are prescribed by science and 
sanctioned by experience ; but it is only recently in the 
history of our civilization that we have discovered those 
principles according to which colors in nature have been 
associated from the beginning. The colors suit us. They 
meet our taste ; they delighted us in childhood and they 
please us in our advancing years. Not a flower in the 
field or the forest, not a colored shell in sea or river, that 
fails to illustrate or exemplify permanent principles. 
Even the commonest of all our early favorites shows the 
beautiful distribution of colors with as much exactness as 
the cell of the honey-bee or the whorl of the shell its 
mechanical lines. 

How is it that the plants, the land animals, and the 
fishes, most conducive to man's well-being, only first 
exist when he comes in view ? how is it that the miner- 
als, the metals, the coals, the salt, all the things he needs, 
are stored within his reach ? how is it that not until near 
the human period, the colors in nature are so harmonized 
alike in their gayer and their most subdued aspects, as 
most to give him delight ? and how has man become so 
constituted as to be in such delicate relation to all around 
him ? Surely there is benevolent purpose in all this. 

In his well-known work on " The Origin of Species," 
Mr. Darwin asks us to believe that these beautiful adap- 
tations are not in the least due to design, but to the slow 
operations and decisions of natural selection, if indeed 
there can be decision without design. The very colors 



104 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

which man most admires are, according to this school of 
theorists, in no way representative of purpose. That the 
sky is blue and not scarlet, that the leaves of the land- 
scape are not yellow and the soil not crimson, are the 
chance evolutions of this mysterious something, which 
has neither intelligence nor beginning of days. The 
mere suggestion that all this wealth of beauty in varied 
colors, and proportion in form, and gracefulness of move- 
ment, and the tint of the atmosphere, are in any respect 
an end and not accidental, Mr. Darwin resentfully re- 
jects. They are with him no part of a plan, nor are they 
intended to please. It is really difficult to believe in the 
possibility of such convictions as are seriously asserted. 
" Some naturalists," he says, " believe that very many 
structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of 
men, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would 
be absolutely fatal to my theory."* It comes to this, 
that the theory which we are asked to accept instead of 
that record in the first chapter of Genesis, is one which 
gives beauty without an end, laws without an author, 
works without a maker, and coordination without design. f 
He excludes from creation the idea of intended beauty. 
Man's history began, he knows not how, millions of mill- 
ions of years ago, in that first germ of life out of which 
have been developed all plants and animals, by those 
processes, complicated and undefinable, which transpired, 
until, at last, he rose on the theatre of life, its crown and 
glory, "fearfully made" in body and still more mysteri- 
ously framed in spirit. 
* "Origin of Species," p. 219. t See Phillips' "Life on Earth," p. 63. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 105 

With what majestic comprehensiveness and precision 
must natural selection have guided all processes and 
struggles, when the lowest lichen or simplest spore has 
risen to be the apple tree, the peach, the plum, the nec- 
tarine, the wheat, the thyme, and the other grains and 
herbs necessary for man just before he came; with what 
precision have the lowest worms risen to be the fishes, 
the birds, and the quadrupeds he most needed ; and with 
what astonishing parallel exactness have the chemical 
processes kept pace with all other movements in earth, 
and sea, and sky, when, in the use of the soil, in the 
structure of plants, in their form, in their foliage, in their 
flowers, there issued at last the distribution of those very 
forms and colors which not only most conduce to man's 
comfort, but most gratify his taste ! In separate spheres 
and without connection — in the inorganic masses of the 
globe — in plant and animal life — in the atmosphere and 
in the heavens — through long, fitful, imperfect, and fre- 
quently unfinished processes — natural selection has thus 
been at work, and without a purpose, or design, or end in 
any shape, has given to the world its present wondrous 
structure, and to all life its present subtle characters ! 
Does not this whole theory draw excessively on our im- 
agination, and raise difficulties incomparably greater than 
all those which Rationalism has conjured up against the 
miracles of the Bible ? 

To these questions we shall more fully direct atten- 
tion at a subsequent stage. 



io6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BIBLE ACCOUNT OF MAN'S ORIGIN THE OPINION THAT 

HE WAS MIRACULOUSLY BORN THE THEORY THAT HE 

WAS NATURALLY DEVELOPED. 

What man holds of matter does not make up his personality. Man is 
not an organism, he is an intelligence served by organs ; they are his — 

not he. — SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON. 

Having examined the geological evidence, showing 
the preparation of the earth for the human race, let us 
next inquire into 

i. man's origin. 

Whence is man ? Was he miraculously born of some 
creature nearly human, as some Christian apologists are 
disposed to believe ? Was he evolved from some germ 
of life originated untold ages ago, as some naturalists 
have endeavored to demonstrate ? or was he miraculously 
made of the dust of the earth, as the Scriptures have dis- 
tinctly affirmed ? While we have been taught to accept 
what the Scriptures have declared on this subject, we are 
not at liberty to disregard those difficulties which have 
weighed with others, nor the solutions which have satis- 
fied them. Let us examine those accounts of man's 
origin which are at present most engaging attention. 

i. The Bible Account. — It has, at least, the merit of 
explicitness, and is thoroughly intelligible. " And God 
said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness ; 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 107 

and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and 
over the fowl of the air, and over all the cattle, and over 
every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth. So 
God created man in his own image: in the image of God 
created he him ; make and female created he them/' 
Gen. 1 : 26, 27. "And the Lord God formed man of the 
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 
breath of life ; and man became a living soul." Gen. 
2:7. If these passages teach any truth with greater em- 
phasis than another, it is that, by the creative act of God, 
man was made perfect in relation to bodily vigor and 
intellectual capacity. Of the mode by which there arose 
out of dust a body fearfully and wonderfully made, noth- 
ing is told us ; but the fact is distinctly stated. A higher 
being had appeared, connected with the earth and largely 
dependent on it, and yet not originated by it. The pe- 
culiarities of the record are specially noteworthy. 

First, it is said, "Let us make man." To no other 
creative act is there the same introduction. Man's ap- 
pearance is thus separated from all that had gone before. 
It is made the occasion of a fuller revelation of truth ; 
for a glimpse is given of the great doctrine of more than 
one person in the Godhead. The doctrine of the Trinity 
begins thus early to be unfolded. 

The second peculiarity is in the statement, " Let us 
make man in our image, after [or according to] our like- 
ness." Ingenious and subtle distinctions have been fre- 
quently drawn between the descriptive terms, " in our 
image" and "after our likeness;" but we prefer the 
opinion of the older theologians, who regard both as com- 



108 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

bined to give intensity to the same thought. " Image 
and likeness," says Dr. Hodge, " means an image which 
is like." God gave to the body a perfect organization, 
breathed natural life into it, and imparted to "man" his 
"own image." This combination of the terms "image" 
and " likeness " seems intended to express man's person- 
ality, and his resemblance to the infinite and uncreated 
in every way possible with a being finite and created.* 
Man, accordingly, though at an immeasurable distance 
from the Infinite I Am, has knowledge, wisdom, power, 
and therefore dominion over all that has been placed 
within the sphere of his influence. As he was intellec- 
tual and could knozv, as he was moral and could love, he 
had a sway which no other creature on earth can wield. 
With these forces combined, he went forth controlling all 
the resources of nature which were placed within his 
reach ; and in possessing this spirit, he could be right- 
fully regarded as the lord of this lower world and as the 
representative of Deity. In further exposition of his 
character, it is said, " God made man upright." Intel- 
lectually and morally he was perfect, his powers were 
rightly balanced, his energies were consistently directed, 
and holiness made lustrous all his history. The New 
Testament sheds fuller light on the inner aspects of his 
character now, through two parallel statements by the 
apostle, descriptive of the believer; the one, having "put 
on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after tht 

* For a full discussion of this subject, see " Creation and the Fall,' 
by the Rev. D. MacDonald, Excursus I. ; "Man, the Image of God," and 
" Systematic Theology," by Dr. Hodge, vol. 2, pp. 96, 102. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 109 

image of Him that created him," Col. 3: 10; and the 
other, which after God is created in righteousness and 
true holiness," Ephes. "4 : 24. 

Man thus connects two worlds, and therein lies his 
incomparable preeminence ; yet his true superiority arises 
not from his relations to the living creatures that are 
around and beneath him, but from his upward connection 
and his being "in the image" of God the Creator. 

The third peculiarity is the reference to woman as 
made also with the same nature and endowments. In 
the other references to new races in the first narrative, 
there is no allusion to the female. And not only is Eve 
spoken of by Adam as " bone of his bones and flesh of 
his flesh," but she is included in the description as being 
formed in the image of God. The statement is too em- 
phatic to admit of its being explained away : " So God 
created man in his own image, in the image of God crea- 
ted he him ; male and female created he them." Their 
equality is here clearly set forth in their origin, in their 
dependence on God, in their responsibility to him, and in 
their possession of spiritual privileges. No marvel that 
Fichte, the celebrated German, marking these realities, 
and bounding over the barriers of an infidel philosophy, 
wrote with fervor, " Who then educated the first human 
pair ? A Spirit bestowed its care upon them, as is laid 
clown in an ancient and venerable record, which, taken 
altogether, contains the profoundest and the loftiest wis- 
dom, and presents those results to which all philosophy 
must yet return." 

Assuredly, the more closely this singular narrative is 
10 



io8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

bined to give intensity to the same thought. " Image 
and likeness," says Dr. Hodge, " means an image which 
is like." God gave to the body a perfect organization, 
breathed natural life into it, and imparted to "man" his 
"own image!' This combination of the terms "image" 
and " likeness " seems intended to express man's person- 
ality, and his resemblance to the infinite and uncreated 
in every way possible with a being finite and created.* 
Man, accordingly, though at an immeasurable distance 
from the Infinite I Am, has knowledge, wisdom, power, 
and therefore dominion over all that has been placed 
within the sphere of his influence. As he was intellec- 
tual and could know, as he was moral and could love, he 
had a sway which no other creature on earth can wield. 
With these forces combined, he went forth controlling all 
the resources of nature which were placed within his 
reach ; and in possessing this spirit, he could be right- 
fully regarded as the lord of this lower world and as the 
representative of Deity. In further exposition of his 
character, it is said, " God made man upright." Intel- 
lectually and morally he was perfect, his powers were 
rightly balanced, his energies were consistently directed, 
and holiness made lustrous all his history. The New 
Testament sheds fuller light on the inner aspects of his 
character now, through two parallel statements by the 
apostle, descriptive of the believer; the one, having "put 
on the new man, which is renewed in knozvledge after the 

* For a full discussion of this subject, see " Creation and the Fall,' 
by the Rev. D. MacDonald, Excursus I. ; "Man, the Image of God," and 
" Systematic Theology," by Dr. Hodge, vol. 2, pp. 96, 102. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 109 

image of Him that created him," Col. 3: 10; and the 
other, which after God is created in righteousness and 
true holiness," Ephes. 4. : 24. 

Man thus connects two worlds, and therein lies his 
incomparable preeminence ; yet his true superiority arises 
not from his relations to the living creatures that are 
around and beneath him, but from his upward connection 
and his being "in the image" of God the Creator. 

The third peculiarity is the reference to woman as 
made also with the same nature and endowments. In 
the other references to new races in the first narrative, 
there is no allusion to the female. And not only is Eve 
spoken of by Adam as " bone of his bones and flesh of 
his flesh," but she is included in the description as being 
formed in the image of God. The statement is too em- 
phatic to admit of its being explained away : " So God 
created man in his own image, in the image of God crea- 
ted he him ; male and female created he them." Their 
equality is here clearly set forth in their origin, in their 
dependence on God, in their responsibility to him, and in 
their possession of spiritual privileges. No marvel that 
Fichte, the celebrated German, marking these realities, 
and bounding over the barriers of an infidel philosophy, 
wrote with fervor, " Who then educated the first human 
pair ? A Spirit bestowed its care upon them, as is laid 
down in an ancient and venerable record, which, taken 
altogether, contains the profoundest and the loftiest wis- 
dom, and presents those results to which all philosophy 
must yet return." 

Assuredly, the more closely this singular narrative is 
10 



no BLENDING LIGHTS. 

examined, the more deeply impressive does it become, as 
other and seemingly-distant truths are discovered to be 
inwrought with it. The mode of man's introduction is 
perfectly conformable to his lofty personality, as that of 
the lower animals is to their impersonality. And as 
man's history, in this dispensation, begins with the con- 
stitution of his body, with the in-breathing of life, and 
the imparting of God's image, so at the commencement 
of his heavenly history there will again, we are told, be a 
fashioning of his body "like unto Christ's glorious body, 
according to the working whereby he is able even to 
subdue all things unto himself." And the sanctified 
spirit entering that body shall bear his image: "We shall 
be like him, for we shall see him as he is." The first 
stage in man's earthly course is thus typical of that on 
which he shall enter at the resurrection. Connections 
that are illimitable and of surpassing interest here open 
to our view ; but to trace them farther is inconsistent 
with the object of our present exposition. 

2. The opinion that man zvas miraculously bom next 
claims our consideration, as having been of late pressed 
on the attention of the Christian public by some whose 
sincere acceptance of the Bible as the Word of God can- 
not be questioned. They suppose that our first parents 
were not formed at once out of the dust of the ground, 
but that, in some mysterious way, they were "born" as 
human, of some of the lower animals. The translator of 
Lange's Commentary of Genesis seems to entertain this 
opinion. In a foot-note, p. 211, he says : " But this does 
not exclude the idea that the human physical was con- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. in 

nected with the previous nature, or natures, and was 
brought out of them. That is, it was made from the 
earth, in the widest signification of the term." And 
after alluding to the difficulties connected with the idea 
of an outward image or organization, he asks, " What 
difficulty or clanger, then, in giving to the phrase 'from 
the earth ' the widest sense consistent with the idea of 
man's having an earthly as well as a heavenly origin ?" 
As the Duke of Argyll in his admirable work, the Reign 
of Lazv, has given prominence to this interpretation, it is 
necessary to consider its bearing on the general discus- 
sion as to the Bible record. As the reasoning of M. 
Guizot has formed a serious obstacle in the way of this 
opinion, it is desirable to reproduce it here. In answer 
to the question, By what means and by what power has 
the human race commenced on Earth ? he says, "There 
can be but two explanations of man's origin : either he 
has been produced by the proper and innate labor of the 
natural forces of matter ; or he is the work of a super- 
natural power — external to, and superior to, matter. His 
appearance here below requires one of two causes — spon- 
taneous generation or creation." He argues that, as the 
earth could not of itself originate man and woman — the 
human pair entirely formed and full-grown — the only 
other supposition is, apart from supernatural influence, 
that they were originated by spontaneous generation. It 
is only under such a condition that man could have lived 
or perpetuated himself, and have founded the human 
race. " Let us figure to ourselves," he says, " the first- 
born man in a state of early infancy, living, but inert, 



Ti2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

unintelligent, helpless, incapable of supplying his own 
wants, trembling and moaning, with no mother to hear or 
nourish him." Rejecting this supposition, he insists that 
the other origin of the human race alone is admissible, 
and that man's first appearance in this lower world can 
be explained only by the supernatural fact of creation.* 

The Duke of Argyll pronounces this "a common, but 
not a very safe argument;" and adds, "To accept the 
primeval narrative of the Jewish Scriptures as coming 
from authority, and as bringing before us the personal 
agency of the Creator, but without purporting to reveal 
the method of this work — this is one thing. To argue 
that no other origin for the first parents of the human 
race is conceivable than that they were moulded perfect, 
without the instrumentality of means — this is quite an- 
other thing. The various hypotheses of development, of 
which Darwin's theory is only a new and special version, 
whether they are probable or not, are at least advanced 
as affording a possible escape from the puzzle which M. 
Guizot puts. These hypotheses are indeed destitute of 
proof ; and in the form which they have yet assumed, it 
may justly be said that they involve such violations of, 
or departures from, all that we know of the existing order 
of things, as to deprive them of all scientific basis. But 
the close and mysterious relations between the mere ani- 
mal frame of man and that of the lower animals, does 

* " Evidemment. i'autre origine du genre humain est seul admissible, 
seul possible. J a: fait surnaturel de la creation explique seul la premiere 
apparition de i'honime ice-bas." — L'Eglise et la Societe Chretienne en 
1891. A Translation of M. Guizot's work has been published by K. 
Eentley, London. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 113 

render the idea of a common relationship by descent at 
least conceivable. Indeed, in proportion as it seems to 
approach nearer to processes of which we have some 
knowledge, it is, in degree, more conceivable than crea- 
tion without any process — of which we have no knowl- 
edge, and can have no conception.* 

In what respect M. Guizot's argument is unsafe, does 
not readily appear. He directly connects the creation of 
man with the supernatural in that form which the Bible 
seems literally to describe, and by which the argument 
is disentangled from those difficulties which a helpless 
infancy and one of the lower animals as mother present. 
The anxiety of his grace to secure a safe position be- 
tween those who accept the Bible statement as it stands, 
and those who follow Darwin's theory, leads him to enun- 
ciate principles, the legitimate application of which is 
depreciatory of the historical directness of the Scripture 
narrative. In his attempt to bring the supernatural — 
that is to say, the superhuman and the supermaterial — 
"nearer us" than M. Guizot's argument does, or rather 
to find a place for the formation of man, with as few 
physiological difficulties as possible, his grace, as appears 
to us, has quite yielded the key to the Darwinian theo- 
rist. While he accepts the primeval narrative as coming 
from authority, and as revealing the personal agency of 
the Creator, he not only characterizes as a "puzzle" the 
reasoning of M. Guizot, that by the exigencies of life 
the human race must have had a higher beginning than 
in the helplessness of infancy, but he indicates a prefer- 

* *' Reign of Law," pp. 28, 29. 
10* 



ii 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ence for the development hypothesis, as " at least con- 
ceivable" and "as affording a possible escape from the 
puzzle which M. Guizot puts." His grace's interpreta- 
tion of the words " out of the dust of the ground," has 
been expressed as follows : " The narrative of creation is 
given to us in abstract only, and is told in two different 
forms, both having apparently for their main, perhaps 
their exclusive object, the presenting to our conception 
the personal agency of a living God. Yet this narrative 
indicates, however slightly, that room is left for the idea 
of a material process. ' Out of the dust of the ground,' 
that is, out of the ordinary elements of nature, was that 
body formed, which is still upheld and perpetuated by or- 
ganic forces. Nothing which science has discovered, or 
can discover, is capable of traversing that simple narra- 
tive."* " But whatever may have been the method or 
process of creation, it is creation still. If it were proved 
to-morrow that the first man was 'born' from some pre- 
existing form of life, it would still be true that such a 
birth must have been, in every sense of the word, a new 
creation. It would still be as true that God formed him 
' out of the dust of the earth.' as it is true that he has so 
formed every child who is now called to answer the first 
question of all theologies."! His grace prefers the sup- 
position that man was "born" of some animal, as itself 
made of "dust" or earthly elements, because of the close 
relations between the mere animal frame of man and that 
of the lower animals, and because creation with a process 
is more easily conceivable than creation without it. 
* " Reign of Law," p. 27. t Ibid, pp. 29, 30. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 115 

Divine interposition is admitted, or it is not ; if it is, 
much of his grace's reasoning as to the Reign of Law is 
valueless, and the difficulties of the skeptic are not les- 
sened, for he denies altogether the least evidence of the 
supernatural. If it is not, and if this "new creation" is 
nothing more than a special or singular result, evolved 
under the Reign of Law, once and for once only, there 
is not much difference, either historically or morally, be- 
tween the theory which connects man's birth with one 
of the lower animals at a time comparatively recent, or 
places his origin, ages ago, in some germ or simple struc- 
ture. The chief difference between his grace's interpre- 
tation and the theory of Mr. Darwin, which he repudi- 
ates, is not so much in principle as in time and process. 

Insisting on the truth of Scripture as to a personal 
Deity, and as to the creation of man, his grace yet leaves 
it uncertain whether man was born in a state of strength 
and independence sufficient for every claim made on him, 
or in the feebleness of infancy, with a hard and constant 
struggle for existence before him. Nor does he indicate 
whether about the same time or in the same way the 
"mother of all living" was born. We are left to infer 
that there were two born, with suitable nearness in time, 
of some ape, gorilla, or other creature nearly human. 
Judging from his grace's argument in another work, we 
should infer that he supposes both Adam and Eve were 
similarly " born," and that they were endowed at once 
with so much vigor and so much intelligence, that they 
could maintain their supremacy over all existences around 
them, In no other way can we understand his vigorous 



n6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

reasoning against Sir John Lubbock's theory — a theory 
in one respect similar to his own — that the human race 
is descended from some " creature not worthy to be called 
a man." In combating Sir John Lubbock's statements, 
his grace successfully shows that man, with a mind far 
in advance of the animals around him, could not "afford 
to lose bestial proportions of body," and adds : " If the 
change in mental power came simultaneously with the 
change in physical organization, then it was all that we 
can ever know or understand of a new creation. There 
is no ground whatever for supposing that ordinary gen- 
eration has been the agency employed, seeing that no 
efforts similar in kind are ever produced by that agency, 
so far as known to us." This is sufficiently explicit ; 
but if ordinary descent is not the origin of man, if some 
extraordinary power from without the Reign of Law has 
produced this solitary result, there is nothing gained in 
the way of lessening the difficulties which many feel as 
to supernatural action ; and his grace only suggests a 
second mystery to remove the first. His reasoning ap- 
pears to be an unanswerable refutation of his own objec- 
tions to M. Guizot's argument in favor of the ordinary 
interpretation. 

" The unclothed and unprotected condition of the hu- 
man body," he says, " its comparative slowness of foot, 
the absence of teeth adapted for prehension or for de- 
fence, the same want of power for similar purposes in 
the hands and fingers, the bluntness of the sense of 
smell, such as to render it useless for the detection of 
prey which is concealed — all these are features which 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 117 

stand in strict and harmonious relation to the mental 
powers of man. But apart from these, they would place 
him at an immense disadvantage in the struggle for ex- 
istence. This, therefore, is not the direction in which 
the blind forces of natural selection could ever work. 
The creature 'not worthy to be called a man,' to whom 
Sir John Lubbock has referred as the progenitor of man, 
was, ex Jiypothesi, deficient in those mental capacities 
which now distinguish the lowest of the human race. 
To exist at all, this creature must have been more animal 
in its structure ; it must have had bodily powers and 
organs more like those of the beasts. The continual 
improvement and perfection of these would be the direc- 
tion of variation most favorable to the continuation of 
the species. These would not be modified in the di- 
rection of greater weakness without inevitable destruc- 
tion, until first, by the gift of reason and of mental 
capacities of contrivance, there had been established an 
adequate preparation for the change. The loss of speed 
or of climbing power which is involved in the fore-arms 
becoming useless for locomotion, could not be incurred 
with safety until the brain was ready to direct a hand. 
The foot could not be allowed to part with its prone or 
prehensile character, until the powers of reason and re- 
flection had been provided to justify, as it now explains, 
the erect position and the upward gaze. And so through 
all the innumerable modifications of form which are the 
peculiarities of man, and which stand in indissoluble 
union with his capacities of thought. The lowest degree 
of intelligence which is now possessed by the lowest 



n8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

savage, is not more than enough to compensate him for 
the weakness of his frame, or to enable him to maintain 
successfully the struggle for existence."* 

In the light of this forcibly expressed argument 
against Sir John Lubbock's theory of the descent of the 
human race, we are led to infer that his grace means his 
explanation of our first parents being " born," and not 
made, to imply that in this way two beings were formed 
with such strength of body and endowment of mind, at the 
very outset, as to be independent of the difficulties by 
which such a creature as Sir John Lubbock has ima- 
gined, must have been beset. If that is his grace's view, 
it is not only plausible, we admit, but possible, in so far 
as the examination of the narrative in relation to Adam 
is involved — "And the Lord God formed man of the 
dust of the ground ;" but the narrative of Eve's creation 
cannot be brought within its compass without violence 
to the principles of legitimate interpretation : " And the 
Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and 
he slept : and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the 
flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God 
had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her 
unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my 
bones, and flesh of my flesh : she shall be called Woman, 
because she was taken out of Man." Gen. 2 : 21-23. 

We cannot, by any critical process, rid this statement 
of the supernatural ; nor have we the means of abso- 
lutely determining the exact limits of what is figurative 
and what is literal. The process is hidden ; the result is 

* " Primeval Man," pp. 65-68. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 119 

distinct. Christians whose bias of thinking is decidedly- 
philosophical, are liable to be perplexed by merely rela- 
tive difficulties ; and hence their apologetic efforts to 
minimize the supernatural by substituting imaginary con- 
ditions ; as, for example, an already organized living crea- 
ture, instead of the dust, as the elements out of which 
God formed man. In the dust are all the constituent 
elements of man's body ; and the relativity of the mira- 
cle to organized dust in some animal frame, or to dust or 
earth not organized nor living, is of comparatively slight 
importance. The literal narrative is devoid even of 
strangeness to those who see in all creation the work of 
God's hand. When reason is baffled, faith in the Word 
is the Christian's guide. The connection of the created 
with the will of the Creator, is utterly beyond our cogni- 
zance ; so worlds taking their place in space — life begin- 
ning to throb in a germ — Adam and Eve formed, the one 
of the dust of the ground, and the other out of that dust 
organized and living — are equally baffling to reason, but 
equally acceptable to faith. " Through faith %ve under- 
stand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, 
so that things which are seen were not made of things 
which do appear." W T hile faith does not specially con- 
cern itself with one process or mode more than another, 
and retains only the facts revealed, we may freely concede 
to Christian expositors the liberty which they claim in 
giving to the phrase, " the dust of the ground," the widest 
sense consistent with the idea of man's having an earthly 
as well as a heavenly origin ;* but we must question 

* "Lange's Commentary on Genesis," p. 211. 



120 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

every supposition which increases rather than lessens 
difficulties in the fair reading of the Scripture narrative. 
We see no warrant from either science, philosophy, or 
theology, for the well-meant attempt of his grace to re- 
duce the Scripture narrative to a level on which the 
" natural " might more nearly approach the supernatural, 
ind facilitate the acceptance of an absolute Reign of 
Law. 

3. The theory of mans natural development, by denying 
the interposition of the Divine power at the time and in 
the way stated in the Bible, is influencing multitudes, 
and we cannot escape the conflict of opinion which it is 
creating. What we have to do, therefore, is to ascertain 
whether the facts adduced really discredit or confirm the 
Bible. 

The various modifications of this theory which have 
been advocated from time to time, we need not wait to 
discuss. It is enough to consider the form in which it 
has been most recently expounded by Mr. Darwin and 
others. Mr. Darwin's theory assumes that animals have 
descended, at most, from only four or five progenitors, 
and plants from an equal or lesser number ; but analogy 
would lead him farther, namely, to some one prototype. 
Accordingly, he infers that probably all the organic be- 
ings which have ever lived on this earth have descended 
from some one form into which life was first breathed 
by the Creator: "There is grandeur in this view of life, 
with its several powers, having been originally breathed 
by the Creator into a few forms, or into one."* And all 

* "Origin of Species," p. 570; fifth edition, 1S69. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 121 

the changes which have ever been educed are due, he 
tells us, to Natural Selection, a force which, in the histo- 
ry of life, we are to regard as having wrought all those 
wonders which we have hitherto connected with Intel- 
ligence and Purpose. With natural selection for the 
basis of his theory, Mr. Darwin has no further difficulty 
as to the intensity and comprehensiveness of its applica- 
tions. It accounts for everything connected with life 
and its manifestations. While apparently undecided 
as to the origin of life, he is most explicit as to the func- 
tions of natural selection, in steadfastly ruling the mani- 
fold and ceaseless struggles for existence. 

That his theory has been supported by a remarkably 
full and ingenious combination of facts, and that it has 
commended itself to many accomplished naturalists, can- 
not be disputed ; and yet there are in it so many serious 
defects and breaks, that it is astonishing to us to find any 
one accepting it who requires even ordinarily coimected 
proof. 

It requires of us to believe that, without the slightest 
reference to any definite end whatever, sponges, mol- 
lusks, frogs, fishes, monkeys, men, and all other living 
things have, in the turmoil of ages, been assigned, by 
natural selection alone, all their varied proportions and 
spheres. 

It requires of us to believe, against all the evidence 
which confronts us, that there is no design whatever in 
the manifold structure of plants and animals ; and none 
in those bodies of ours, so fearfully and wonderfully 
made. 

11 



122 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

It requires of us to believe that the varied relations 
of all the colors in nature are but the result of mechani- 
cal and chemical combinations, framed by natural selec- 
tion ; that the blue of the sky, the green of the landscape, 
and the neutral tint of nature's- background, are without 
a purpose ; that the splendor of the heavens by night, 
and the music of the grove as birds warble their song 
by day, were never intended to give pleasure, or to con- 
duce to the happiness of any human being. All these 
facts are mere sequences under the sway of natural se- 
lection, which of itself understands nothing and foresees 
nothing. God, we are told in Holy Writ, " hath made 
everything beautiful in his time." Ecclesiastes 3:11. 
But this theory denies the intentional goodness that has 
enrobed the world with that surpassing loveliness on which 
every eye delights to rest. In making these statements, 
we do Mr. Darwin no wrong. He has firmly refused to 
recognize beauty as an end in the history of the globe, 
and goes so far as to state that the admission would 
be destructive of his theory ; even to admit variety as an 
end would be fatal to it. Be it so ; the theory is, in this 
respect, opposed not only to the Bible teachings, but 
to our intuitions, our experience, and our common sense. 

It requires of us to believe that the skill which the 
bee shows in the structure of its cell, the ingenuity of 
the spider in constructing its web, the mechanical fitness 
in the economy of bird-life and the ease with which flight 
is conducted, the graceful movements of fishes in the 
deep and the rapidity with which some can change their 
color, are all nothing more than the mechanical sequen- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 123 

ces of a series of facts ; in a word, they are tne mere un- 
intentional results of some blind force, controlled by an 
unintelligent if not indeed unintelligible power, which, 
after incalculable efforts and failures, finds something 
which it leaves in a permanent state, but of course, with- 
out the remotest reference to that permanent state as an 
end. 

It requires of us to believe that the structure of an- 
imals, their habits, and their relations to climate and 
soil ; that the exquisitely delicate formation of the eye 
and its relation to light and color; and that the adjust- 
ment of the ear to the almost endless variety of sounds ; 
are meaningless results. 

It requires of us to believe that man has been evolved, 
not in conformity with any purpose, but merely amid the 
sequences of events, by insensible degrees, and after in- 
numerable experiments and failures. 

It requires of us to believe that man has been in 
every creature, in every stage, from the primordial sea- 
weed to the mollusk, from the lowest mollusk to the ser- 
pent, from the serpent to the monkey, and from the mon- 
key to the highest ape. 

It requires of us to believe that man has travelled a 
long and aimless journey, and at last not only enjoys the 
highest bodily organization, but has intellect, imagina- 
tion, will, conscience, ennobling aspirations after a higher 
state and a happier home, a sense of right and wrong, 
and an estimate of virtue and vice ; and to rest assured 
that all these have turned up without design, in desul- 
tory flashes, or in some other way from molecular action, 



i24 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

cerebral impulses, or other mysterious agencies. There 
is no other origin admissible ; it must be accepted or re- 
jected. " We must therefore place virtue, in this theory, 
precisely on the same footing with every other attribute 
of every other animal, and account for its existence in 
the same way ; that is, we must say that when the first 
virtuous men, or men with a capacity to appreciate vir- 
tue, were accidentally elaborated, it gave them a decided 
advantage over all then congeners who did not share 
with them in the new quality, -wid sa enabled them to 
keep their place in the struggle for liie, while their 
competitors were exterminated by that rigorous law 
which knows no exception. In one word, fae men en- 
dowed with virtue exterminated all those wi o lacked 
that endowment. 

" If this should be a startling history of the origin of 
moral excellence, and if it should be contradicted by all 
the records of our race, we must nevertheless believe that it 
was so ; for the theory imperatively demands it, ana can- 
not subsist without the supposition."* 

What evidence have we for so sweeping a theoiy? 
We admit, of course, that there is gradation from the 
lowest to the highest forms of both animal and plant 
life, and that identity of plan appears in the structure of 
all the vertebrated animals. The question is, Are they 
all related by descent ? If they are, as Mr. Darwin sup- 
poses, there must be abundant traces of imperfect, half- 
formed, and mutilated creatures cast down in the keen 
struggle of life, and preserved for our instructions in the 

* "Darwinian Theory Examined," pp. 337, 338. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 125 

stone-volume. The test is quite simple, it is the sug- 
gestion of common sense : Are the resolute assertions of 
this theory adequately supported by facts ? Have the 
links which connect the races been discovered ? Have 
the wrecks of countless experiments been found strewn 
over the old surfaces, and embedded in them ? The pre- 
ceding lower and the succeeding higher organizations 
have been found, where are the intermediate and the im- 
mature beings ? Their presence, as witnesses, is indis- 
pensable. Where is there evidence on earth, now, of the 
pigeon passing into the crow or of the wading bird into 
the hawk, of the horse into the cow or of the dog into 
the cat, or vice versa? Granting that the section of 
time in which we live has behind it all the millions of 
years which Darwin's theory demands, we should surely 
find within it some such results as he leads us to antici- 
pate. But it is not so, the links are wanting ; and Mr. 
Darwin, in acknowledging this blank, admits that his 
theory is as yet proofless. He shrouds the origin of life, 
as to its cause, and its early development of forms, in 
impenetrable mystery. He hesitates about the Deity 
in the one, and draws the veil of millions of years over 
the other. Theories are safe practice amid vagueness 
like that. But is his demand of millions of years before 
the Silurian system, with its glimpses of life, admissible ? 
It is boldly made. " If my theory be true," he says, " it 
is indisputable that before the lower Silurian stratum was 
deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably 
far longer, than the whole interval from the Silurian age 
to the present day ; and during these vast, yet quite un- 

11* " 



i26 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

known periods of time, the world swarmed with living 
creatures." He has looked long into these depths of the 
past, yet no witnesses have come to his aid. The silence has 
been unbroken, and he confesses it. " To the question 
why we do not find records of these vast primordial peri- 
ods," he replies, " I can give no answer, the difficulty of 
understanding the absence of vast piles of fossiliferous 
strata, which on my theory no doubt were somewhere ac- 
cumulated before the Silurian epoch, is very great. The 
case, at present, must remain inexplicable, and may be 
truly urged as a valid argument against the views here 
entertained." The modesty of this admission renders 
adverse criticism unpleasant. But without dwelling on 
the absence of facts, we may press the necessity on such 
theorists of having some regard to geological time. For- 
tunately, the question is finding ardent students, and in- 
vestigations as to the cooling of the globe, and other 
relations in its physical condition, are putting an end 
to speculations which assume many millions of years be- 
fore the Silurian era. Theorists like Mr. Darwin err 
egregiously in not inquiring into the possibility of the 
earth's crust having, millions of years ago, those exact 
conditions which they demand. Palaeontologists have 
too often found it convenient to take refuge amid the 
mists of the pasts, when definiteness has been demanded ; 
but the recent investigations of Sir William Thomson, as 
we have already stated, have checked this thoughtless 
extension of indefinite ages, and have brought them to 
recognize in their professedly scientific pursuits the ne- 
cessity of greater precision. As against the ages pre- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 127 

ceding the Silurian period, there is proof that the condi- 
tions of the globe were such as to render the existence 
of life improbable, if not impossible. 

But taking the geological strata which teem with fos- 
sils, we demand proof of gradual descent by natural 
selection ; and Mr. Darwin does not and cannot give it. 
He pleads in excuse the incompleteness of the geologi- 
cal volume ; it "is a history of the world," he says, "im- 
perfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect. Of this 
history, we possess the last volume, relating only to two 
or three centuries. Of this volume, only here and there a 
short chapter has been preserved ; and of each page, only 
here and there a few lines. On this view, the difficulties 
above discussed are greatly diminished or disappear." 

We cannot accept this apology. The most delicate 
structures have been preserved in the stone-volume ; and 
why not, at least, some of those huge intermediate, im- 
mature, or imperfectly-developed animals which must 
have lived and perished under the sway of natural selec- 
tion ? Mr. Darwin does not hesitate to admit that the 
number of the perished links has been vast : " The num- 
ber of intermediate and transitional links between all 
living and extinct species must have been inconceivably 
great. But, assuredly, if this theory be true, such have 
lived upon the earth."* If so, where are they ? How 
have they disappeared ? Has natural selection been 
busy, also, with the materials that should be saved as 
witnesses of the past, ranging from before the Silurian 
period till now ? 

* "Origin of Species," p. 348. 



i2S BLENDING LIGHTS. 

But granting the imperfection of the geological vol- 
ume ; granting, indeed, for argument's sake, all that Mr. 
Darwin demands, what of the diffused life in the present 
period, with its almost endless diversity of form ? The 
results of the past are before us in the living of every 
climate. In every condition, life-forms are subject to 
to the tests of the anatomist, the physiologist, the chem- 
ist, and the metaphysician. The page is wide as the 
world, and every character is distinct. If therefore, the 
theory has in it any elements of truth, they should appear 
in animals, the living representatives of at least some of 
those transitions which may not have been preserved in 
bygone ages, or which, if preserved, have not yet been 
discovered. Surely, creatures at the various intermedi- 
ate stages of blind experimenting should be turning 
up now and again ; for the struggles of life are con- 
tinued, and natural selection is still supreme. That no 
such facts are forthcoming as the interests of truth and 
the ordinary principles of inductive reasoning demand, 
should modify the enthusiasm of theorists, and warrant 
the rejection of their dreams. 

No one pretends that the intermediate or immature 
links are discoverable in existing races. They are sep- 
arated by apparently insuperable barriers to descent. Ar- 
rest is laid visibly on community of species. What is 
inexplicable in the past is equally inexplicable in the 
present. It is quite true that, in Mr. Darwin's theory, 
" the same number of vertebras forming the neck of the 
giraffe and the elephant, at once explains itself on the 
theory of descent with slow and successive modifka- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 129 

tions ;" but is it not equally true that, on the same 
theory, creatures should be discovered budding into the 
giraffe or into the elephant, and that transitional links 
should be found between the ox and the mule, or between 
the dove and the hawk, with the nature and habits in 
part of each, and between all other species, also, that 
are distinct ? Why are there not incipient men and in- 
cipient women, half man and half lower animal, or two 
thirds woman and one-third inferior animal ? Why are 
there no projections now of new and advancing structures 
to be kept and improved on ? 

The theory, however, is not without its hopes. It 
cherishes bright prospects. A prophetic spirit shapes 
its future. If natural selection has done so much from 
the first spore of life, what may it not accomplish in fu- 
ture ages with such a platform as the highly-organized 
beings of the present time ? The theory necessitates the 
incoming of higher structures than man's. Mr. Darwin 
admits this, and forecasts it when he says, "The ultimate 
result will be that each creature will tend to become 
more and more improved in relation to its conditions of 
life. This improvement will, I think, inevitably lead to 
the gradual advancement of the organization of the greater 
number of human beings throughout the zvorld. But here 
we enter on a very intricate subject ; for naturalists have 
not defined to each other's satisfaction what is meant by 
advance in organization. Among the vertebrates, the de- 
gree of intellect and an approach in structure to man, 
clearly come into play."* Man is, as yet, the most ad- 

* "Origin of Species," p. 131. 



i3o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

vanced in organization ; intellect has come into play, but 
nature is not exhausted. Life is on an upward path ; 
and if this theory be true, surely, as intellect has come 
out of non-intellect, or a physical combination, what shall 
be the ultimate product of intellect, and which of them 
shall natural selection preserve ? Without wasting time 
on conjecture, we may ask whether perfection shall be 
reached by a mollusk before it has come to the human 
platform? Is "gradual advancement" to carry all life- 
structures onward to the organized condition which man 
has reached, and shall distinctions cease ? If this gen- 
eral improvement should ever take place, when every 
creature will thus be advanced to the limits of perfecti- 
bility, there will be no more natural selection ; for she 
will have done her work, and, consequently, there will be 
no more struggles for life. Creatures will not be waging 
battle within battle ; in fact, all the destroyers will dis- 
appear, and they will be transformed into some superior 
position " by an advancement of the brain for intellectual 
purposes ; and even the intestine worm will perhaps be 
in a fair way to study logic and propound theories."* 

The theory begins in mystery, and ends in it. It 
dreams of a beginning untold ages ago, it dreams of a 
kind of perfection untold ages hence, and places midway 
a beautiful exposition of many facts which yet leave the 
theory proofless. 

But, in conclusion, the theorists are at war with one 
another. As Ishmaelites, their hand is against every 
man. Each is a law to himself in theorizing. Their 
* "Darwinian Theory Examined," p. 157. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 131 

contendings may well teach us caution. Lamarck set 
those right who preceded him. The author of The Ves- 
tiges of Creation outstripped Lamarck ; and Mr. Darwin 
sets both aside, while he in turn has been severely cen- 
sured by M. Tremaux, and has all his reasoning contro- 
verted in favor of the new theory. Lamarck believed in 
spontaneous generation, Darwin does not. The author 
of The Vestiges expounded a law of development, and 
Mr. Darwin displaces it by natural selection. M. Tre- 
maux has repudiated the origin which Mr. Darwin has 
assumed, and insists on our believing that not water, but 
the soil, is the origin of all life, and therefore of man. 
With him there is no progress ; all creatures have reached 
their resting-place. But man rises or sinks according to 
the more recent or ancient soil he dwells on. Professor 
Huxley is unwilling to abandon his idea that life may 
come from dead matter, and is not disposed to accept of 
Mr. Darwin's explanation of the origin of life by the 
Creator having, at first, breathed it into one or more 
forms. While accepting Mr. Darwin's theory of a com- 
mon descent for man with all other creatures, he not 
only differs from him as to the beginning, but he admits 
that there is no gradual transition from the one to the 
other. He acknowledges that " the structural differences 
between man and even the highest apes, are great and 
significant ;" and yet, because there is no sign of gradual 
transition " between the gorilla and the orang, or the 
orang and the gibbon," he infers that they all had a com- 
mon origin ; whereas, the more natural conclusion from 
the facts would be, that they had separate beginnings. 



i 3 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Mr. Wallace, whose claims are admitted to be equal 
to those of Mr. Darwin as the propounder of the theory 
of the origin of species and as to the powers expressed 
by natural selection, has firmly asserted that, with all 
its resources, natural selection is utterly inadequate to 
account for the origin and structure of the human race. 
" A superior intelligence has guided that development in 
a definite direction and for a special purpose." It is in- 
teresting to observe how completely these two great nat- 
uralists differ from one another. Mr. Wallace argues 
against natural selection as sufficient to explain the 
greatness of man's brain in even the lowest savages, who 
have little more use for it than the lower animals around 
them, whose brain is greatly inferior. These savages, in 
having a brain little inferior to that of the highest type 
of man, possess that which is comparatively of so little 
use to them, that it could not have been obtained in the 
struggle for existence. " They possess," he says, " a 
mental organ beyond their needs. Natural selection 
could only have endowed savage man with a brain a little 
superior to that of an ape ; whereas, he actually possesses 
one very little inferior to that of a philosopher." Mr. 
Wallace also specifies other facts in the natural history 
of man, for which Mr. Darwin's theory utterly fails to 
account. In the structure of the hands and feet, in that 
also of the larynx, giving the power of speech and espe- 
cially of musical sounds, he finds evidence of the inade- 
quacy of natural selection. His references to the human 
body are so pointed, that their effect cannot be slighted 
by unprejudiced inquirers: "The soft, naked, sensitive 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 133 

skin of man, entirely free from the hairy covering which 
is so universal among other mammalia, cannot be ex- 
plained on the theory of natural selection. The habits 
of savages show that they feel the want of this covering, 
which is most completely absent in man exactly where it 
is thickest in other animals. We have no reason what- 
ever to believe that it would have been hurtful or even 
useless to primitive man ; and under these circumstances, 
its complete abolition, shown by its never reverting in 
mixed breeds, is a demonstration of the agency of some 
other power than a law of the survival of the fittest in 
the development of man from the lower animals."* Mr. 
Wallace's discussion of " The Limits of Natural Selec- 
tion, as Applied to Man," is not only interesting in itself, 
but is instructive, as showing us how little is gained by 
abandoning the simple teaching of Scripture for the elab- 
orate and conflicting theories of our ablest and most ac- 
complished naturalists. 

*"The Limits of Natural Selection, as applied to Man," by A. R. 
Wallace, pp. 355, 356. 



12 



i34 BLENDING LIGHTS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HAVE THERE BEEN MORE ORIGINS THAN ONE FOR THE HU- 
MAN RACE? THE BIBLE DOCTRINE IN RELATION TO 

RECENT THEORIES. 

As we go westward, we observe the light color predominate over the 
dark ; and then again, when we come within the influence of damp from 
the sea air, we see the shade deepen into the general blackness of the 
coast population. — dr. Livingstone. 

It is more than two hundred years (1655) since La 
Peyrere, basing his reasoning on the Scriptures, argued 
in favor of a plurality of origins for the human family. 
Taking the history of Cain for his guide, Gen. 4:16, 17, 
he maintained that there was a Non-Adamite race, the 
ancestors of the Gentiles ; and that the Jews alone, of 
whose origin and history the Bible treats, were the de- 
scendants of Adam. La Peyrere was a theologian who 
vindicated as true all that is in the Bible ; " and exhibit- 
ed in his work," says Ouatrefages, " a mixture of com- 
plete faith and free criticism ;" but he found, in that age, 
no listeners. After his time there was a long silence, 
though possibly much thought on the subject, until Vol- 
taire and Rousseau, seizing La Peyrere's arguments, 
wielded them against the Scriptures with the command- 
ing brilliancy of their genius. The contest was soon 
transferred to the United States of America, where the 
reasoning of the French Encyclopaedists was reproduced 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 135 

with all that intensity of feeling and that variety of re- 
source which the interests of the slavery question crea- 
ted. The Christianity and scholarship of America gave 
to the discussion a magnitude and influence which could 
not have been secured for it by the infidelity of France. 
Theologians became, unintentionally, earnest coadjutors 
with infidels and skeptics in the effort to establish a sepa- 
rate origin for the negro race. The question has of late 
lost much of its interest ; because, on the one hand, the 
gigantic system of slavery in America has collapsed, and 
because, on the other, the most commonly accepted theo- 
ries as to development and evolution include, in their 
basis, unity of origin or race. It may be of some advan- 
tage, however, to review briefly the present aspects of the 
question. 

I. THE BIBLE DOCTRINE. 

The Bible doctrine is distinctly stated. In the geo- 
logic fulness of time God " created man, male and fe- 
male ;" " Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she 
was the mother of all living." In the New Testament, 
unity of origin is taught by Jesus Christ himself. He 
reaffirms the Old Testament doctrine. Adam had said 
of Eve, " This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my 
flesh : she shall be called Woman, because she was taken 
out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and 
his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife ; and they shall 
be one flesh." And Jesus, the second Adam, asserting 
the same truth, bound the Old to the New Testament, 
when he said : " But from the beginning of the creation 



136 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

God made them male and female. For this cause shall 
a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his 
wife." Mark 10:6, 7. He abolished distinctions by his 
command, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the gos- 
pel to every creature." Mark 16:15. "Wherefore, as 
by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin ; 
and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sin- 
ned :" Rom. 5:12; God "commandeth all men every- 
where to repent." Acts 17:30. The apostle Paul, in 
the centre of Athens, in the midst of matchless monu- 
ments of human skill, and confronting the learning and 
the pride which exalted the Athenian above every race 
in the world, boldly proclaimed to them the distasteful 
truth, that " God hath made of one blood all nations of 
men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." Acts 
17 : 26. 

While these direct statements are accepted by Agassiz, 
and many others who hold fast and defend the Scriptures, 
they regard them as expressing only what is applicable 
to the Jewish and Caucasian race ; and they, at the same 
time, insist that God created other races in separate 
zoological provinces. Strangely enough, while they ad- 
vocate diversity of origin, they no less earnestly advocate 
unity of species; and thus they satisfy, as they suppose, 
the declaration of the apos.tle, that " all are of one blood." 
The facts on which different theories have been framed 
are so numerous and so varied, that they would require 
the fullest examination, were it not that the controversy 
has of late changed its character. The past has its 
series of testimonies in the skulls of long-buried races 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 13 7 

and the present makes its evidence commensurate with 
the inhabitants of the world. 

Omitting, in the meantime, the first, let us note some 
of the facts in the second series. The world is its basis ; 
the human race is the subject. There is not a continent 
which the merchant or the missionary has not traversed ; 
not a hill-tribe has been left unnoted, nor an island un- 
explored. Vast groups attract attention, and subordinate 
varieties intensify the interest. There are universally- 
accepted race distinctions — as in the Caucasian, with his 
fair skin, dark and curling or flowing hair, and ample 
brow ; in the Mongolian, with his receding forehead, 
obliquely-set eyes, projecting chin, thin long black hair, 
and sallow skin fitting tightly like parchment to the 
cheek-bone ; in the Ethiopian or Negro, with dark skin, 
woolly hair, prominent cheek-bones, and thick lips ; in 
the Malay, with his reddish-brown color, lank black hair, 
square skull, and low forehead ; and in the American, 
with his brown complexion, sunken eye, and swollen 
cheek-bone. Minuter peculiarities are recognizable — 
from the Patagonian, with his commanding figure, in the 
southern projection of one continent, America, to the 
Bosjesman, with his shrunken and shrivelled frame, in 
the southern projection of another continent, Africa ; 
from the diminutive Esquimaux, seated in his ice-built 
home — his crystal palace, with its door of snow — or set- 
ting out in eager hunting or fishing enterprise in a tem- 
perature cold enough to make mercury freeze — to the 
Indian in the steaming jungle of the Carnatic, or the 
African lounging in the shade of rock or sallying forth 

12* 



1 38 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

with light step in easy enjoyment of an atmosphere hot 
enough to make ether boil. We see man subsisting on 
every form of food — from the cooling fruits which the 
tropics provide for the savage, to the scant shell-fish of 
southern and the coarse oil of northern tribes ; and we 
see every mode of life — from the huntsman, penetrating 
the forest or scouring the plain, to the artisan in civil- 
ized communities, toiling dust-covered and scorched with 
furnace-heat amid the ceaseless clank of machinery — and 
from the herdsman, contemplatively following his flocks 
or watching the stars on which Chaldean Shepherds loved 
long ago to gaze, to the philosopher, apart and alone, grap- 
pling with profoundest problems, or the scientific student, 
rejoicing in some discovered application which may ben- 
efit thousands of his fellow-men. These are but glimpses 
of many facts which every one acknowledges, and the 
question to be determined is, Are all these compatible 
with descent from one pair, Adam and Eve ; or must we 
infer diversity of origin in zoological centres ? 

II. THE THEORY OF DIVERSITY OF ORIGIN. 

Skeptics who at one time reasoned in favor of a plu- 
ality of origins in opposition to the Bible, have aban- 
doned their theory, and adopted as its substitute devel- 
opment or evolution from one or more life-germs. We 
have therefore to do only with those who, holding the 
Bible in common with ourselves, defend diversity of 
origin, or a belief in several centres for the human 
family. 

" The circumstance," says Agassiz, " that wherever 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 139 

we find a human race naturally circumscribed, it is con- 
nected in its limitation with what we call, in natural 
history, a zoological and botanical province — that is to 
say, with a natural limitation of a particular association 
of animals and plants — shows most unequivocally the 
intimate relation existing between mankind and the ani- 
mal kingdom, in their adaptation to the physical world. 
The Arctic race of men, covering the treeless region 
near the arctics, in Europe, Asia, and America, is cir- 
cumscribed in the three continents within limits very 
similar to those occupied by that particular combination 
of animals which are peculiar to the same tracts of land 
and sea." 

" The region inhabited by the Mongolian race is also 
a zoological province, covered by a combination of ani- 
mals naturally circumscribed within the same regions. 
The Malay race covers also a natural zoological province. 
New Holland again constitutes a very peculiar zoological 
province, in which we have another particular race of 
men. And it is further remarkable in this connection, 
that the plants and animals now living on the continent 
of Africa south of the Atlas, within the same range 
within which the Negroes are naturally circumscribed, 
have a character differing widely from that of the plants 
and animals of the northern shores of Africa and the 
valley of Egypt ; while the Cape of Good Hope, within 
the limits inhabited by the Hottentots, is characterized 
by a vegetation and a fauna equally peculiar, and differ- 
ing in its features from that over which the African race 
is spread." 



i 4 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

For these reasons, Agassiz infers that " men were 
primarily located in the various parts which they inhabit, 
and that they arose everywhere in those harmonious 
numeric proportions with other living beings, which 
would at once secure their preservation and contribute 
to their welfare. To suppose that all men originated 
from Adam and Eve, is to assume that the order of crea- 
tion has been changed in the course of historical times, 
and to give to the Mosaic record a meaning that it was 
never intended to convey. On that ground, we would 
particularly insist upon the propriety of considering 
Genesis as chiefly relating to the history of the white 
race, with special reference to the history of the Jews."* 

Professor Agassiz takes especial pains, at the same 
time, to make it clear that he regards all the different 
races not only as constituting a common brotherhood, 
but as morally responsible and equally related to the di- 
vine government ; yet we trust it will appear as we ad- 
vance, that there is nothing in the facts or circumstances 
to which he refers, incompatible with the diffusion of the 
whole family of man from a common centre. 

Proof of Diversity of Origin considered. — The chief 
reasons which are urged by Agassiz and others against 
acknowledging descent from Adam and Eve, and in proof 
of more origins than one, are I, variety of color, and 2, 
variety of bodily conformation ; and the question is, Are 
these varieties compatible with the common interpreta- 
tion of the Scripture record ? 

i. The differences in color, as every one admits, are 
* " Christian Examiner," July, 1S50. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 141 

very remarkable ; but it must be borne in mind that 
there are forces at work in climate, in soil, and through 
other agencies, which are, as yet, mysterious in their rela- 
tion to human physiology. The results are visible, but 
the processes on which they depend are concealed ; and 
these results show not only men, but some of the lower 
animals, so completely changing their color, as to remove 
all difficulty regarding the blackness of the Negro or 
Ethiopic race. 

Physiologists hastily assumed that in the negro there 
was a singular network beneath the skin which was the 
source of his blackness, and they made this their warrant 
for separating him specifically from the white race ; but 
more accurate microscopic observation has proved the 
existence in all men of that network — in the white in the 
temperate zone, as well as in the black in the torrid. It 
is in man everywhere, and is susceptible of those subtle 
influences which produce different degrees of color. It 
contributes to man's comfort, and fits him for all cli- 
mates. 

Those Portuguese who have been long settled in 
Africa and the East Indies, have become perfectly black 
in color ; so, also, Greeks and Turks are changing into 
the dusky and sable. 

The Jew, whose invariable identity is everywhere con- 
spicuous, and who is everywhere testifying to the truth 
of Scripture, as an inhabitant of all lands yet with a 
resting-place in none, represents color in all its degrees. 
In the' plains of the Ganges, his skin is jet black ; in 
Syria, he is of a dusky hue ; in Poland, his hair is light 



i + 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

and his complexion ruddy ; on the Malabar coast, in one 
colony — the older — he is black, in the other colony — the 
younger — he is comparatively fair. "For 1800 years," 
says one whose authority none will dispute, " that race 
[the Jews] has been dispersed in different latitudes and 
climates, and they have preserved themselves distinct 
from intermixture with other races of mankind. There 
are some Jews still lingering in the valley of the Jordan, 
who have been oppressed by the successive conquerors 
of Syria for ages — a low race of people — and described 
by trustworthy travellers as being black as any of the 
Ethiopic races. Others of the Jewish people, participa- 
ting in European civilization and dwelling in the north- 
ern nations, show instances of the light complexion, the 
blue eyes and fair hair of the Scandinavian families. The 
condition of the Hebrews since their dispersion has not 
been such as to admit of much admixture by the prose- 
lytism of household slaves. We are thus led to account 
for the differences in color by the influence- of climate, with- 
out having to refer them to original or specific distinc- 
tions."* 

Nor are changes in color limited to man. Whatever 
may be the process, similar results appear among the 
lower animals. In Guinea, every fowl and every dog be- 
comes, like the people, black. In America, the pale horse 
of this country becomes commonly a chestnut brown. 
In the Romagna Campagna, the ox is gray ; in other 
parts of Italy, red. Sheep in Italy are chiefly black ; in 

* Professor Owen. "Lecture before Cambridge University, 1859,^ 
p. 96. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 143 

England, chiefly white. Horses in Corsica become mot- 
tled, and the well-known carriage dog shows also a pe- 
culiar change. 

2. Changes in physical conformation harmonize with 
change in color. Mr. Reade, in his work, " Savage 
Africa," when writing of the races on the Atlantic coast, 
says that the red races change to black when they de- 
scend into the lowlands, and that, while some years ago 
it was rare to see a black Fula or Puelh, it is scarcely 
possible to see any other than blacks without passing far 
into the interior. Associated with the Mandingos, they 
are driving out the negroes, and taking their places on 
the river, and they are themselves so visibly changing 
their features as to be becoming negroes. To change 
their geographical position, is to change their features. 
The red-skinned inhabitants of the mountain terraces of 
Western Africa, descending into the malarious swamps, 
have lost their original character, and have become de- 
graded in both body and mind ; but these negroes are by 
no means representatives of the true African races. " In 
Africa," says the same writer, " there are three grand 
races, as there may be said to be three grand geological 
divisions. 

" The Libyan stock inhabit the primitive and volcanic 
trails. They have a very tawny complexion, Caucasian 
features, and long black hair. 

" On the sandstones will be found an intermediate 
type. They are darker than their parents ; they have 
short and very curly hair ; their lips are thick, and their 
nostrils wide at the base. 



i 4 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

" And finally, in the alluvia, one will find the negroes 
with a black skin, woolly hair, and prognathous develop- 
ment."* 

That soil, climate, and the supply of food determine 
in a large degree the physical conformation of different 
races, is an almost universally accepted truth. Prichard, 
Reade, and Livingstone, as well as others, bear united 
testimony to the deteriorating effects, physically and 
mentally, of mere external circumstances alone. Prich- 
ard has assured us that those races in which the negro 
character appears in its most exaggerated form, and 
which present the most debased and the ugliest blacks, 
are to be found, in most instances, inhabiting swampy 
and unhealthy tracts near the seacoast, where they have 
the barest means of subsistence. They are not only 
social outcasts, but oppressed ; yet, whenever their social 
condition and external surroundings improve, there is 
obviously a corresponding advance in their features and 
general bearing.f Reade is no less emphatic in contend- 
ing that, while the degradation of the negro is altogether 
indisputable, it is only degradation, or disease, or acci- 
dent, and nothing more. And Livingstone, in some of 
his more recent letters, has proved not only that the 
debasement of the negro tribes is exceptional, but that, 
when free, and occupying a fair field, they present some 
of the nobler aspects of the human race.J Testimony 
has been borne by Humboldt to the effects on physical 

* See "What is Truth ?" by Rev. E. Burgess, pp. 397, 398. 
t "Researches," vol. 2, p. 231. 

I See also "Livingstone's Researches in South Africa," chap. 19; and 
" Man and his Migrations," by Latham. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 145 

conformation which the elevated plateau and its rarer 
atmosphere commonly produced. The respiratory organs, 
becoming more active, demand more scope, and the 
result has been that, in the Andes, such a development 
of chest is common as to be almost a deformity.* To 
come nearer home, we have, in the comparatively recent 
history of Ireland, decided evidence of the rapidity with 
which, in changed circumstances, a people may become 
degenerated. In 1641 and 1689, there was a bitter 
struggle between the British and the rebels, which ended 
in the native Irish — stalwart men — being driven from 
the counties Down and Armagh to the bleak districts in 
the west, and in less than two centuries the sad effects 
became painfully visible. The mouth, the chin, the 
cheek-bones, the height, the general appearance, beto- 
kened a sunken condition akin to barbarism. 

The theory of Agassiz is untenable, because it is un- 
necessary for the explanation of changes in even contig- 
uous spheres which can with ease be traced historically, 
and because it fails, also, in reference to the lower ani- 
mals in his zoological provinces, inasmuch as they adapt 
themselves to distant provinces and flourish in them. 
The horses, for example, let loose in South America, have 
not only not deteriorated by their transference to a new 
province, but have improved. Their glossy hair has 
passed into a shaggy fur ; and all their colors, white, 
brown, and red, have disappeared in the one prevailing 
color. The swine introduced have similarly changed. 
The hog of the mountain of the Paranos now resembles 

* See also Darwin's "Descent of Man," vol. i, p. 119. 

13 



i 4 6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

the wild boar once in this country and France. The 
bristles have given place to a thick fur, often crisp ; and 
whatever their first color, they are uniformly black. The 
bodily structure, also, has altered to suit their new con- 
dition ; the snout has become long, the forehead vaulted, 
and the hind legs lengthened. The dog never barks, but 
howls like the wolf; and the structure of the head varies 
from the breadth of the mastiff to the narrowness of the 
greyhound. In other parts of the world, similar modifi- 
cations take place. The African sheep becomes goat- 
like, and assumes hair for wool ; and the Wallachian 
sheep gradually presents perpendicular spiral horns. 

Facts crowd on us ; they would fill volumes. Ani- 
mals in our own land constitute of themselves sufficient 
proof. The horse varies from the gigantic dray-horse of 
our streets to the small Shetland pony, scrambling with 
amazing agility over highland crags ; the clog, from the 
St. Bernard searching for some frozen traveller, to the 
lap-dog nestling in the warmth of the drawing-room ; 
and cattle, from the small highland steer to the huge 
prize oxen of our shows. Unless Britain itself can be 
divided into zoological provinces, the proofs which have 
been stated show so fully the adaptiveness of different 
animals, and the changes in color and conformation to 
which it leads, that we are fully warranted in i-ejecting 
the theory of diversity of origin in distinct zoological 
centres. 

It remains for us to give here an outline of the exten- 
sive evidence which has been adduced in support of the 
Bible doctrine, as held by the opponents of Agassiz. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 147 

3. Proofs in support of Unity of Origin. 

The direct proofs in support of unity of origin are, 
(1) Bodily Structure, (2) Language, (3) Tradition, and 
(4) Mental Endowment. 

(1.) Bodily Structure. — Anatomists and physiologists 
of the highest standing assign to man's bodily structure 
a place distinct from that of all other animals. The fol- 
lowing conclusions have been established, whatever may 
be the variety of the race : 

a. All have the same number of teeth, and of addi- 
tional bones in their body. 

b. They all shed their teeth in the same way, which 
also differ from others in that they are of equal length. 

c. They all have the same upright posture — they walk 
and look upwards. 

d. The head is set in every variety in the same way. 

e. They possess two hands. 

f They possess smooth bodies, and heads covered 
with hair. 

g. Every muscle and every nerve in every variety are 
the same. 

//. They all speak and laugh. 

i. They eat different kinds of food, and live in all 
climates. 

j. They are more helpless, and grow more slowly 
than other animals. 

Professor Owen has very distinctly given his decision 
on this question in the following terms : " With regard 
to the value to be assigned to the distinctions of race, in 
consequence of not any of those differences being equiv- 



14S blending lights. 

alent to those characteristics of the skeleton or other 
parts of the frame upon which specific differences are 
founded by naturalists in reference to the rest of animal 
creation, I have come to the conclusion that man forms 
one species, and that differences are but indicative of vari- 
eties." " The unity of the human species is demonstra- 
ted by the constancy of those osteological and dental 
characters to which the attention is more particularly 
directed in the investigation of the corresponding char- 
acters in the higher quadrumana."* 

k. There is perhaps no argument in favor of the 
Bible doctrine of unity of race more direct than that 
which has been founded on the physiological barrier to 
descent from mixing distinct species. When crossed, 
they produce hybrids which are either barren, or. degen- 
erate so speedily that they die out. Varied experiments 
have fully proved the infertility of hybrids. The law 
which controls different species also checks their descent ; 
the mule, for example, closes the history of descent from 
the horse and the ass, and similar results are always 
educed from similar experiments. Hybridity, in the 
crossing of the horse and the ass, reaches its end in a 
single generation, and is thus a strong protest against a 
theory which is at present supported by influential advo- 
cacy. The plausible combinations of suitable facts, which 
the intermixture 'of varieties has supplied, do not, in the 
remotest degree, show the possibility of descent from 
clearly distinct species. While we have before us barri- 
ers which Nature does not overpass, among both living 

* Lecture before Cambridge University, p. 103. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 149 

plants and animals, we can do nothing else than reject 
suppositions as to all barriers having been by some means 
overcome in bygone ages. Purity of species has been 
preserved with obvious care. " It strikes us naturally 
with wonder," says Professor Dana, " that even in sense- 
less plants, without the emotional repugnance of instinct, 
and with reproductive organs that are all outside, the 
free winds being often, the means of transmission, there 
should be rigid law sustained against intermixture. The 
supposed cases of perpetuated fertile hybridity are so 
exceedingly few, as almost to condemn themselves as no 
true examples of an abnormity so abhorrent to the sys- 
tem. They violate a principle so essential to the integ- 
rity of the plant-kingdom, and so opposed to Nature's 
whole plan, that we rightly demand long and careful 
study before admitting the exceptions."* 

A careful review of this section of evidence satisfac- 
torily indicates that organic species preserve permanent 
distinctions, and that all the varieties of the human race 
constitute only one species, which has descended from 
a single pair. 

(2.) Language. — Language has unexpectedly become 
a witness to the unity of the race. A. new course of inves- 
tigation has been commenced, and has created surpass- 
ing-interest. The discovery, less than a century ago, of 
the Sanskrit literature, has revolutionized long-accepted 
opinions as to the Hebrew language, and is gradually 
removing confusion. It has become the connecting link 
between widely-separated dialects, and has established a 

* Quoted in " What is Trnth ?" by Rev. E. Burgess, A. M.. p. 189. 

13* 



t 5 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

new classification. The Asiatic Society, founded in Cal- 
cutta in 1784, and rendered illustrious by the exertions of 
Sir William Jones, Carey the missionary, and others, 
gave impulses to investigation which are still sustained ; 
and a history in philology of unequalled brilliancy has 
run on for half a century. A new science, that of Lan- 
guage, classed by Max Miiller among the Physical Sci- 
ences, has been created ; and the longer it is prosecuted 
and the more exactly its results are systematized, the 
more thoroughly is Scripture confirmed. Language is a 
mysterious characteristic of man, and forms an impassa- 
ble barrier between him and the lower animals. No the- 
ories of evolution or development can displace the mar- 
vellousness of human speech. Though much in the 
realm of language has perished ; though whole periods in 
its history have irrecoverably gone ; yet the mass that 
remains, both in dead and in living languages, is suffi- 
cient to tax for generations the scholarship of Europe 
and the East. It is yet impossible to fix exactly the 
number of known languages. Adelung announced three 
thousand and sixty-four distinct languages; Balbi eight 
hundred languages and five thousand dialects ; and Max 
Miiller has calculated that there are nine hundred known 
languages. Their number and their prominence may 
well excite our sympathy with Max Miiller, when, in sur- 
prise at their long neglect, he says : " Man has studied 
every part of nature — the mineral treasures in the bowels 
of the earth, the flowers of each season, the animals of 
every continent, the laws of storms, and the movements 
of the heavenly bodies ; he had analyzed every substance, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 151 

dissected every organism ; he knew every bone and mus 
cle, every nerve and fibre of his own body, to the ultimate 
elements which compose his flesh and blood ; he had 
meditated on the nature of his soul, on the laws of his 
mind, and tried to penetrate into the last causes of all 
being — and yet, language, without the aid of which not 
even the first step in this glorious career could have been 
made, remained unnoticed. Like a veil that hung too 
close over the eye of the human mind, it was hardly per- 
ceived. In an age when the study of antiquity attracted 
the most energetic minds, when the ashes of Pompeii 
were sifted for the playthings of Roman life ; when 
parchments were made to disclose, by chemical means, 
the erased thoughts of Grecian thinkers ; when the tombs 
of Egypt were ransacked for their sacred contents, and 
the palaces of Babylon and Nineveh were forced to sur- 
render the clay diaries of Nebuchadnezzar ; when every- 
thing, in fact, that seemed to contain a vestige of the 
early life of man was anxiously searched for, and care- 
fully preserved in our libraries and museums — language, 
which in itself carries us back far beyond the cuneiform 
literature of Assyria and Babylonia, and the hieroglyphic 
documents of Egypt — which connects ourselves, through 
an unbroken chain of speech, with the very ancestors of 
our race, and still draws its life from the first utterances 
of the human mind — language, the living and speaking 
witness of the whole history of our race, was never cross- 
examined by the student of history, was never made to 
disclose its secrets, until questioned, and, so to say, 
brought back to itself, within the last fifty years, by 



i 5 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

the genius of a Humboldt, Bopp, Grimm, Bunsen, and 
others."* 

This long neglect is strange ; it is an irremediable 
loss. Be it so ; we are now reaping the fruits of fresh 
enthusiasm and scholarship. The science of language is 
not only achieving with dead dialects what geology is 
tracing in fossils, but it is also doing with living lan- 
guages what natural history is accomplishing among the 
existent fauna of the globe. Like geology and astrono- 
my, it has had among its earliest efforts to correct its 
own mistakes, when, like them, it had spoken too hastily 
against the Bible. 

There are certain received conclusions which are con- 
firmatory of the Bible as to one language being the foun- 
dation of all others, until broken up in confusion at the 
Tower of Babel. The greatest philologists are agreed 
regarding the classification which reduces all languages 
to three families — the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Tu- 
ranian. Under these are grouped the chief dialects of 
Asia, Africa, and Europe ; and although the arrangement 
is confessedly 'imperfect, it is astonishing to find, amid 
many conflicting surface appearances, so much at bottom 
that is really harmonious. 

Another classification, which has been based on their 
roots, and has reference to their internal structure, does 
not militate against, but rather strengthens this conclu- 
sion.! In an instructive article on the Confusion oj 
Tongues, in Smith's " Dictionary of the Bible," there are 

* "Science of Language," p. 26. 

t " Science of Language," First Series, pp. 254-279. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 153 

specified four instances in which proofs of unity of lan- 
guage may be found ; and the writer adds : " Such a re- 
sult, though it does not prove the unity of language in 
respect to its radical elements, nevertheless tends to es- 
tablish the a priori probability of this unity ; for if all 
connected with the forms of language may be referred to 
certain general laws — if nothing in that department owes 
its origin to chance or arbitrary appointment — it surely 
proves the presumption that the same principle would 
extend to the formation of the roots which are the very 
core and kernel of language. Here, too, we might ex- 
pect to find the operation of fixed laws of some kind or 
other producing results of a uniform character ; here, too, 
actual variety may not be inconsistent with original 
unity."* 

The inference is fully warranted by what has been 
ascertained, that nothing valuable has been added to the 
substance of languages, that its changes have been those 
of form only, and that no new root or radical has been 
invented by later generations. The Teutonic languages 
of Europe, of which the vernacular Scotch is part, are 
illustrated by the language of Persia ; the Latin of Italy 
connects itself with Russian idioms ; and Greek with 
the Sanskrit of India. From Ceylon, with its fragrant 
breezes, to Iceland, with its wintry storms, there is, irre- 
spective of form, of color, of social life, and religious in- 
stitutions, but one belt of language. The American 
tribes in the far West, Humboldt has assured us, are in- 
dissolubly united to the inhabitants of Asia ; the Ian- 

"t "Smith's Bible Dictionary." Art., "Confusion of Tongues." 



!54 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



guages of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, have a common affin- 
ity ; hills, plains, climates change, but language in its 
substantial elements is really more enduring than the 
pyramids of Egypt, the ruins of Palmyra, or the statues 
of Greece. 

Klaproth, who has little reverence for the Bible, says, 
" All languages in the world are connected with one 
origin : a universal affinity is completely demonstrated ;" 
and Herder, though doubting the inspiration of Moses, 
is yet decided in his belief that the human race and hu- 
man language go back to one source. " All dialects," 
says the Petersburgh Academy, "are to be considered as 
dialects of one now lost." 

Max Miiller, who has traced an intimate connection 
between Finnish through the remote north of Europe 
and Tamil in Southern India, has submitted the follow- 
ing conclusion : " Nothing necessitates the admission of 
different independent beginnings for the material ele- 
ments of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of 
speech ; nay, it is possible, even now, to point out radi- 
cals, which, under various changes and disguises, have 
been current in these branches ever since their first sep- 
aration." Again, " if inductive reasoning is worth any- 
thing, we are justified in believing that what has been 
proved to be true on so large a scale, and in cases where 
it was least expected, is true in regard to language in 
general. . . . We can understand not only the origin of 
language, but likewise the necessary breaking-up of one 
language into many ; and we perceive that no amount of 
variety in the material or the formal elements of speech 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 155 

is incompatible with the admission of one common 
source." Inquiry has not exhausted anomalies ; difficul- 
ties remain ; the Chinese language has not yet been sat- 
isfactorily adjusted in the range of classification, nor 
have the rapidly-varying dialects of some outlying tribes 
been definitely assigned their place in the chain of con- 
nections ; but these do not affect the general conclusion 
to which philological investigation has guided scholars 
The science has led us to that highest and earliest rest- 
ing-place "whence we can see into the very dawn of 
man's life on earth, and where the words with which 
from childhood we have been familiar, ' And the whole 
earth was of one language, and one speech/ assume a 
meaning more natural and more impressive than they 
ever had before."* 

(3.) Tradition. — The traditions which prevail in all 
lands, connect together distant and dissimilar races. 

Omitting those that are less significant or less wide- 
spread, though full of interest notwithstanding, let us 
refer to some of those which have been most distinctly 
recognized in different parts of the world. Outlying and 
comparatively isolated tribes may be found, without tra- 
ditions of any kind ; but these do not affect the argu- 
ment as drawn from those traditions which, in different 
forms, are common to all the leading communities in the 
world. 

* For a general view of the whole subject, and for details also, we 
must refer to the " Science of Language," by Max Midler, First and Sec- 
ond Series ; to Bopp's " Comparative Grammar of the Sanskrit, Zend, 
Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, and other Languages ;" and to " Language, 
and the Study of Language," by Professor YV. D. Whitney. 



156 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

a. The creation of man has its place in the legends 
of Greece, in the beliefs of India, in the cosmogony of 
Peru, and in the traditions of the tribes of North Amer- 
ica, of the South Sea Islanders, and of the Dyaks of 
Borneo. 

b. The Garden of Eden has its counterpart in the 
City of Brahma, as described by the Vishnu Purana ; it 
has its representation also in the Grecian fable regarding 
the Garden of the Hesperides, with which every well- 
taught schoolboy is familiar ; and the encircling of the 
garden by high mountains, the golden apples, the myste- 
rious tree, the watchful serpent, the destruction of the 
serpent by Hercules, and the relation of Hercules to Ju- 
piter, are obviously suggestive of the Scripture narrative. 

c. The Temptation and the Fall have their record 
in the Greek legend regarding the lovely Pandora, who 
was sent by Jupiter to punish the human race. Yield- 
ing to her fatal curiosity, she opened the closed box 
which Prometheus had given to her, and diseases and 
wars sped forth. 

d. Traditions as to man's innocence, happiness, and 
freedom from disease, as to his having yielded to flattery 
in an evil hour, or to the temptation of a woman, and as 
to his having lost therefore his early intellectual and 
moral preeminence, prevailed in China, Thibet, Persia, 
Ceylon, and India. 

e. The division of time into weeks has been almost 
universal, and the prevalence of serpent-worship has 
been such as to be of itself a strong argument for the 
unity of the race. In Mr. Ferguson's most remarkable 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 157 

work on " Tree and Serpent Worship," we have practices 
described which unite Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 
Madagascar, the Friendly Islands, and in various parts 
of America, the serpent has been either held in the 
greatest reverence or worshipped. 

f. There existed traditions of the Deluge in China, 
India, Persia, Egypt, Greece, and the Roman Empire ; 
in the scattered islands of the Pacific ; in America — 
North and South ; amid the Indian tribes in sunny prai- 
ries, and the Cree Indians moving amid the enduring 
snows of the north. 

g. Sacrifices were offered in the different parts of 
the earth, and among all peoples. Religious rites, sac- 
rificial or expiatory, prevailed from Athens to Upsal, 
from Egypt to China, and in various portions of the 
American continent. 

These traditions, of which we have given only a very 
general outline, constitute a cumulative argument in favor 
of one race, which cannot be ignored or set aside. Their 
prevalence is utterly inexplicable, except through the Bi- 
ble narrative. On its basis alone can we so adjust the 
facts of science, and the common traditions of dissimilar 
races, as to realize perfectly harmonious results. 

(4.) Mental and Moral Endowments. — Even those who 
accept the Darwinian theory in whole or in part, admit 
that the intellectual and moral superiority of man is 
such as to separate him from all other creatures. What- 
ever differences of opinion may exist regarding man's 
physical relations to the lower animals, there is none in 
reference to his intellectual and moral superiority. 

14 



158 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

In the language of Scripture, man is made "in the 
image of God." The description is singular, to define a 
singular result. Man's standard is not of earth, his aspi- 
rations are upward ; he has elements in his spiritual na- 
ture which separate him from the world he dwells in. 
The Bible makes no limitation, and draws no distinction. 
As we have already explained, God made man capable 
of knowing, reasoning, and loving. While the body de- 
mands food, the mind seeks truth. It thirsts for knowl- 
edge ; hence, it is said of man, by the great Teacher, 
that, in the highest sense, he "shall not live by bread 
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God." Matt. 4 : 4. There is, further, a con- 
sciousness of right and wrong. He has a discriminating 
and distinguishing power. Perverted in its uses it may 
be, but still it works. Man has also a moral faculty. 
Conscience may slumber or be inactive, but the power is 
there to be acted on. In his most sunken state, he has 
a capacity for religion. He can be taught to look to 
God, and to a home in the Unseen. On these plain 
truths we need not dwell ; the question which connects 
itself with them is, admitting these facts, are they so 
present in all races as to prove them one in origin ? 

American controversialists, compelled by anatomy 
and physiology to give up the idea of difference of origin 
as dependent on man's physical structure, spent their 
energies in the attempt to prove that the negro race was 
not only intellectually inferior, but morally unimprovable. 
They denounced him as devoid of feeling, weak in intel- 
lect, and defective in moral principle ; but their proof has 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 159 

completely failed. Tried by tests common among our- 
selves, the negro disproves their assertions. 

Negroes have shown all the qualities of our emotional 
nature. Unexpected circumstances produce surprise or 
astonishment, and unexplained events, wonder ; the beau- 
tiful evokes admiration, and the sublime, awe ; kindness 
lights the eye with gratitude, and the amusing creates 
laughter ; sorrow bedews the cheek with tears, and bit- 
ter remorse follows the memory of a crime or a wrong. 
These emotions and these moral influences bind us all 
together. " Indeed," says an accurate observer, " the 
feelings of negroes are extremely acute. According to 
the way in which they are treated, they are gay or mel- 
ancholy, laborious or slothful, enemies or friends. The 
throb of manly affection, and the tear of brotherly sym- 
pathy — a glittering gem on a swarthy cheek — are of them- 
selves touches of nature making us all one." 

Their intellectuality, also, has been denied. Igno- 
rance and degradation are the facts adduced in proof; 
but history vindicates their title to great mental resour- 
ces. Has not the Ethiopic race left traces of its prowess 
not only in Africa, but in Central Asia ? Debased and 
sunken tribes in swampy regions, it is true, fringe the 
Atlantic coast ; but they are exceptional. Inland, the 
tribes are intelligent and powerful.* Try even the low- 
est of the negro tribes, and what will they not accom- 
plish ; give them scope, and they will show the ordinary 
results of civilization. Dr. Hamilton of Mobile, whose 

* The late despatches of Dr. Livingstone have proved beyond question 
what was before in part maintained. 



160 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

opportunities of observation were very extensive, has 
said, "That there is, in comparison with the white, any 
essential inferiority of intellect native to the negro, the 
observation and experience of nearly thirty years of 
familiar intercourse with whites and with blacks, as a 
minister of religion, would never lead me to believe. A 
difference there certainly is in the intellectual character 
as well as in the physical organization of the two races ; 
but a decided and essential inferiority of the one to the 
other, in point of intellect, I cannot discern."* 

Of their skill as carpenters and watchmakers, of their 
taste in drawing, of their musical talents, of their capacity 
in physical and mathematical science, many proofs might 
be given from the writings of those who have had oppor- 
tunities of personal observation. Blumenbach has de- 
clared that entire provinces of Europe might be named 
in which it would be most difficult to find in correspond- 
ents of the French Academy such good writers, poets, 
and philosophers, as are some of them. 

a. All men have a higher power than intellect — they 
have conscience. While Intellect and Will, separating 
man from all beneath, make him a person, Conscience 
makes him moral and responsible ; it gives the idea of 
right and wrong, and is the basis of natural law. It does 
not affect the argument to say that a common standard 
in different tribes and nations has not been found, and 
that moral judgments therefore differ. It is enough that 
there is any standard. The most debased criminals in 
our land, who have set law at defiance, calculate on trial 
* " The Pentateuch and its Assailants," p. 319. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 161 

and justice. The most sunken races have their rude 
way of settling disputes. " The principles on which men 
reason in morals," says Hume, "are the same, though 
their conclusions be different." 

b. All races have capacity for the higher exercises 
of religion. It is not necessary to enter into the dispute 
as to some tribes being destitute or not of every idea of 
even a remotely religious kind ; the question is, Have 
they capacity for religious teaching and a religious life ? 
No one who has denied this has given proof of his asser- 
tion. Experience alone can substantiate such opinions. 
Christian missionaries have never yet told us of an irre- 
claimable and unimprovable tribe. That differences 
exist in aptitude of intellectual and moral culture, every 
one admits. They are common in all civilized nations, 
as well as among savage tribes ; but races the most 
sunken and debased have been uplifted and refined. 
Culture cannot, and does not, impart a single intellectual 
and moral force not originally existent in man, but it 
evolves forces, however long-neglected and dormant ; and 
their appearance constitutes a new testimony to the unity 
of our race. To these and similar results we shall more 
fully advert when we have to consider the bearing of the 
Gospel message on the human race. 

c. Another peculiarity, common to all races, meets 
us in the fact that there is naturally no love of the Cre- 
ator by the creature, nor gratitude by the constantly 
upheld to the Upholder. Is it not strange that man 
should everywhere fear, and not love, God ? Is it not 

unnatural that, while thankful to his fellow-creature for 

11* 



1 62 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

kindness, man should be unthankful to his God, and un- 
mindful of him, except when compelled by uneasiness of 
conscience to honor him by a routine of external obser- 
vances ? There is only one explanation, and that is, a 
universal opposition to the holiness of a loving and mer- 
ciful Father. There is a sense of depravity, there is a 
feeling of wrongness, and there is, consequently, the 
gloom of fear where there should be the glow and the 
confidence of love. Powerful as is this darkening influ- 
ence, Natural Science cannot discover nor deal with it. 
" It lies where the tests of chemistry cannot detect, nor 
the knife of the anatomist reach it, nor the eye of the 
physiognomist discern, nor the instrument of the phre- 
nologist measure it. It lies in the depth of the soul, 
and comes out in the remarkable fact that, while all the 
hues of the skin differ, and the forms of the skull and the 
features of the face are cast in different moulds, the fea- 
tures, character, and color of the heart are the same in 
all. Be he pale-faced or red, tawny or black, Jew, Greek, 
Scythian, bond or free, whether he be the civilized inhab- 
itant of Europe, or roam a painted savage in American 
woods, pant beneath the burning sun, or, wrapped in furs, 
shiver amid the Arctic shores, (as in all classes of soci- 
ety, so in all races of men,) " the heart is deceitful above 
all things, and desperately wicked ;" " the carnal mind is 
enmity against God." The pendulum vibrates slower at 
the equator than the pole ; the farther north we push our 
way over thick-ribbed ice, the faster goes the clock ; but 
parallels of latitude have no modifying influences on the 
motions of the heart. It beats the same in all men, nor 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 163 

till repaired by grace does it in any way beat true to 
God."* 

In bodily structure, in language, in tradition, and in 
intellectual, moral, and religious character, we find abun- 
dant evidence to prove unity of race ; and there is the 
amplest confirmation of it in the character and extent of 
the Gospel or Christian scheme. It assumes unity, and 
it comes with a free, full, universal message. The Great 
Teacher and Redeemer drew no distinction : " Go ye 
therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the 
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy 
Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I 
have commanded you." Matt. 28 : 19, 20. The message 
is for all ; it is everywhere needed ; teaching is to be the 
process, and all are assumed to be capable of instruc- 
, tion and obedience. The doctrine of diversity of origin, 
and of distinct and lower races, is inconsistent, not only 
with the facts and principles of different sciences, but 
with the direct teachings of Christianity. 

* Dr. Guthrie. "The Gospel in Ezekiel," pp. 40, 41 ; abridged, 
1863. 



1 64 BLENDING LIGHTS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

WERE OUR FIRST PARENTS SAVAGES ? RECENT THEORIES 

AS TO THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION CONSIDERED IN 
RELATION TO SCRIPTURE AND HISTORY. 

Even if we had not Revelation to guide us, it would be most unphilo- 
sophical to attempt to trace back the history of man, without taking into 
account the most remarkable facts of his nature — the facts of civilization, 
arts, governments, speech, his traditions, his internal wants, his intellec- 
tual, moral, and religious constitution. If we will attempt such a retro- 
spect, we must look at all these things as evidenee of the origin and end of 
man's being ; and when we do thus comprehend in one view the whole of 
the argument, it is impossible for us to arrive at an origin homogeneous 
with the present order of things. — professor whewei.l. 

What was man's primeval condition ? Were our 
first parents savages? Are we descended from "some 
creature not worthy to be called a man" ? Is civilization 
the commencement of human history, or its close ? Is it 
a natural evolution of savage life, or is it dependent for 
its origin and growth on influences external to man ? Is 
it ever flowing and ebbing within definite and ascertain- 
able limits ? Does it reach a maximum only again to 
sink, or is it carrying with every apparently fitful advance 
the elements of expansion and of ultimate stability ? 
These are questions which the eager thinking of the age 
is forcing upon us, and compelling us to answer. Re- 
peated discussions in meetings of the British Association 
for the Promotion of Science ; elaborate works, such as 
those by Darwin, Spencer, Wallace, Sir John Lubbock, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 165 

and Tylor ; and powerful articles in our serial literature ; 
show the importance that is attached to this subject, and 
represent facts and inferences which, be our belief what 
it may, ought not to be summarily rejected. They claim 
a sifting yet candid examination ; and we should be 
able, on the basis of science and history, as well as on 
that of Scripture, to found reliable conclusions regarding 
the origin and progress of civilization. 

The discussion has not been satisfactorily prosecuted, 
because of the want of agreement as to the constituent 
elements of barbarism and civilization. Wherein lies the 
difference ? What line separates the two ? How low 
must a man sink to become a savage ? How high must 
he rise to be ranked among the civilized ? What kind 
and what amount of knowledge may be held sufficient to 
separate the civilized from the savage ? Of what mechan- 
ical appliances must he be capable, what intellectual 
resources must he command, and what moral and reli- 
gious sentiments must influence or control his life ? — are 
questions which have not yet been definitely answered. 
No attempt has been made to give a scientific definition 
of either barbarism or civilization, and the consequence 
is a prevailing haziness in all the reasoning which we 
have been constrained to follow. Sir John Lubbock has 
not made the attempt ; nor did Archbishop Whately ; 
nor has the Duke of Argyll, although in his " Primeval 
Man " he has specified this very defect. In his late work, 
Sir John Lubbock has distinctly refused to give any defi- 
nition. " In truth," he says, " it would be impossible in 
a few words to define the complex organization which we 



1 66 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

call civilization, or to state in a few words how a civilized 
differs from a barbarous people. Indeed, to define civil- 
ization as it should be, is surely as yet impossible, since 
we are far indeed from having solved the problem how 
we may best avail ourselves of our opportunities, and 
enjoy the beautiful world in which we live."* We are 
disappointed by this excuse. In a discussion of this 
kind, involving so much that is of vital interest, it is 
impossible to proceed in safety without some first princi- 
ples as our guide, and some end or object as our goal. 
Without these, we grope through mists, and are distract- 
ed by different standards. M. Guizot, in his well-known 
" History of Civilization in Europe," has recognized the 
importance of distinct ideas as to the meaning of the 
term, and has elaborately stated what are those condi- 
tions of society which in his view represent civilization. 
Although he does not give a scientific definition, he states 
with such clearness, descriptively and hypothetically, what 
individual, social, and political interests are embraced by 
it, that we can read with ease and comfort his truly philo- 
sophic discussion ; and even when we do not accept his 
conclusions, we are prepared to admit how harmoniously 
they fit into the descriptive hypothesis which he has given 
at the commencement. While his work has a different 
basis from that of Sir John Lubbock, and a less compre- 
hensive aim, it illustrates the close philosophic treat- 
ment which the subject must yet receive in the new rela- 
tions in which it has of late been discussed. 

* " On the Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man," 
P- 339- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 167 

The refusal of Sir John Lubbock to state what, even 
in a general or comprehensive sense, are the distinguish- 
ing features of the civilization regarding which he writes 
with such fulness, is unsatisfactory. It leaves everything 
in confusion. Let it be understood that it is not a logi- 
cal definition of civilization as it should be, nor any ex- 
planation of its material effects as they now appear, which 
we desiderate, but unambiguous references to such prin- 
ciples in mental and moral life as should control material 
results without being absolutely dependent on them. It 
does not avail to say that it is " impossible," because we 
have not " solved the problem how we may best avail 
ourselves of the opportunities and enjoy the beautiful 
world we live in." On what does this enjoyment de- 
pend ? On material acts, with the luxuries they bring ? 
or on mental and moral resources without them ? or on 
both ? It is surely not too much to expect from one who 
undertakes to explain to us "the origin of civilization," 
that he state in what sense he uses this term, and how 
much it implies in relation at least to those facts which 
he describes. There are surely some first principles 
which, operating in society, create civilization ; or there 
are at least some facts which, when they do appear, deter- 
mine its necessary conditions. 

As the opinions which have of late been thus influen- 
tially promulgated, would, if correct, not only render the 
Bible unworthy of acceptance, even as an historical docu- 
ment, but displace the whole Christian system as a Force 
elevating and refining the human race, it is incumbent 
on all to examine, with the greatest care, the reasoning 



1 68 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

by which their conclusions are supported. We therefore 
propose to examine the subject — First, generally in its 
relation to the Bible and to History ; and Second, more 
minutely, in its relation to the Mental Faculties, the Moral 
Sense or Conscience, and Religion. 

I. RECENT THEORIES IN RELATION TO THE BIBLE. 

Although we do not meet in the Bible with the term 
" civilization," nor with any formal delineation of that 
complex social organization which the word now implies, 
we have the principles clearly defined and the duties 
firmly enforced on which its origin, growth, and stability 
depend. They are moral rather than intellectual, and 
spiritual rather than material. 

Apart altogether from the question of inspiration, 
and assuming the Scriptural record to be not less worthy 
of acceptance as a mere history, or as suggesting a the- 
ory, than are those statements in books of travel which 
have been so lavishly used, we may fairly enough refer 
to the view which it gives of the origin of civilization, 
and claim for it respectful consideration. It expressly 
states that "man was created in the image of God" — 
that is, that he was not only intellectually but morally 
great ; that he acted from holy motives ; that, in his 
highest and most ennobling vocation, in fellowship or 
communion with the Being whose spiritual image he 
bore, he had an exhaustless source of true happiness. 
By spirit, human character is to be determined, and not 
by the industrial or the fine arts, or by any external 
details whatever ; these may shed light on the general 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 169 

attainments of a community in certain directions, but 
there may be a large amount of civilization without as 
well as with them. This depends on the possession of 
certain distinct ideas of man's relations to God and to 
his fellow-men. Let him but know that "God is, and 
that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him," 
and the external circumstances will gradually adjust 
themselves to expanding secular knowledge in both its 
principles and their applications. The civilization of our 
first parents, in its relation to this knowledge, was very 
high ; but in its relation to mechanical art it was at the 
outset necessarily very low — as low, probably, as can be 
conceived. It is not required for our argument to infer, 
with Archbishop Whately, that God taught them any 
mechanical arts. He gave them quick perceptions, ready 
and accurate reasoning power, and consequently facility 
of application, according to the exigencies of their life. 
And this is all that was necessary, in our subsequently 
changed condition, for the origin of those complicated 
arrangements which are summarized by the term civili- 
zation. In clearly defined ideas of the being and charac- 
ter of the Deity, in a sense of dependence on God, in the 
consciousness of needed forgiveness and acceptance, and 
in the recognition of the claims upon us of our brother 
man, we have the basis of a permanent civilization. Na- 
tions that have risen to greatness, and been deemed civ- 
ilized, reached their commanding height only through the 
measure of truth which they held even in partially dis- 
torted forms, but empires perished when at last the truth 
was wholly lost. 



j 70 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

False religions can live only by the truth which vital- 
izes them, and national histories are continued only on 
the same conditions. The splendor of Egypt, Chaldaea, 
Persia, Greece, Rome, evanished in gloom only when 
almost every moral principle had been buried in corrup- 
tion ; and national resuscitation became possible only 
through a restoration from without of vitalizing and con- 
trolling truths. 

All this is assumed in the Bible. It does not formally 
expound the conditions of civilization. Its descriptions 
and its precepts take for granted this recognition of 
moral principles by both individuals and nations. Men 
may read the Bible and miss this somewhat subtle perva- 
ding influence, or they may detect and feel it from the 
outset. A thoughtful American writer has thus referred 
to this difference: "The tilings in which an elevated 
social economy reveals itself to political wisdom, are not 
at all obtrusive upon the foreground of Scriptural thought. 
Wealth, art, literature, science, urbanity of manners, do- 
mestic comfort, institutions of charity, free governments, 
these are not the salient themes here, either of argument 
or of promise. A reformer might study pages of this 
volume, covering a thousand years of history, and not 
discover that inspired minds ever thought of any such 
sort of thing ; yet a wise man, instructed in God's wis- 
dom, may traverse the same ground, and so discern the 
gravitating of principles towards social results as almost 
to imagine that inspired minds thought of nothing else."* 

* Lecture by Rev. Austin Phelps, D. D. Boston Lectures. " Christi- 
anity and Skepticism," p. 38. 1S71. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 171 

Eastern nations retaining some such truths as we 
have referred to, represent, in varied forms, a civilization 
different from that of Western nations. Of them all it 
may be said that they are fixed ; their modes of thought, 
their manners, their arts, their superstitions, are cast in 
unvarying moulds, which must be broken to give the 
freedom which brightens the West ; and the Bible, with 
its varied truth and impelling force, is the one power, we 
believe, which is .destined to do it. What it is doing in 
Western it will also do for Eastern nations. When it is 
studied, and is accepted as a regulating book, it will speed- 
ily accomplish what neither commerce and peaceful inter- 
course, nor the turmoil of war, can ever achieve : the 
truth shall make these nations free in spirit and free in 
the introduction and enjoyment of the useful and orna- 
mental arts. The Bible alone is the fontal civilizing 
force in the world, and it is gradually changing the his- 
torical character of our race. 

The chief defect in the expositions of recent theorists 
is their omission to record the influences of Bible truth, 
and those revolutions in feeling, thought, and outward 
life which Christianity has so strikingly accomplished. 
As historical elements, these are incomparably worthier 
of acknowledgment than many of the traditions and cus- 
toms which they delineate with such diligence and care. 
And not until all the more prominent intellectual and 
moral results which Christianity is evolving are taken into 
account, as well as the peculiar phenomena of barbarism, 
can we have an approach to such a philosophic discussion 
of the whole subject as its vital importance demands. 



1 7 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

This, so far, is mere assertion, but so also is the state- 
ment on the other side, that we are descended from some 
creature not worthy to be called a man, and that the 
whole complex system of modern civilization has been 
slowly evolved from some creature without a single idea 
in its head. This is assertion against assertion, it is 
true, with this important difference, however, that we 
include in our system the facts of Christianity as pro- 
cesses in history. But let us here carefully examine 
those views which are stated in support of 

II. RECENT THEORIES IN RELATION TO HISTORY. 

Sunken as are the Fuegians and Bosjesmen, they are 
not low enough for our supposed origin. The ordinary 
term savage does not carry us far enough back in history, 
nor far enough down in the scale of being, for that dis- 
honoring origin which has been assigned to us. Whether 
that creature not worthy to be called a man was below 
or above the ape and the gorilla, does not clearly appear. 
Our parentage is uncertain. The beings with which or 
with whom our race began, are represented as but one 
remove from irrational animals. Man's instincts, intelli- 
gence, reason, habits, are so near those of the lower ani- 
mals, that it is delicate to separate them ; and from such 
a > beginning, they tell us, have arisen the intellect, the 
reason, the science, the arts, and the prospects of this 
nineteenth century. 

The various stages in the long process have been arti- 
ficially marked. The prehistoric ages have been divided 
into indefinite periods, dependent for their distinction on 



BLENDING LIGHTS. i 73 

the chief materials used in war, or for agricultural and 
domestic purposes. These periods, representing advan- 
cing stages in civilization, are, according to Sir John 
Lubbock, (i) the Palaolithic — that is, the old-stone pe- 
riod, when men used and could use only rough stones ; 
(2) the Neolithic, or new-stone period, when men had 
taste and skill enough to polish their stone implements 
and make flint-headed weapons ; (3) the Bronze period, 
when armor and cutting instruments of every sort were 
made of bronze ; and (4) the Iron period, when the in- 
struments and implements of former ages have given 
place generally to those of iron, and represent chiefly the 
civilization of the century in which we live. 

This division has a certain degree of historical appo- 
siteness, but we deny that there is evidence adequate to 
prove that man has gradually passed through them all 
upward to the highest pinnacles of the present age. 

The process of growth or expansion has been variously 
described, but by none with greater succinctness and feli- 
city than by the late Archbishop Whately. Although 
holding an opposite conclusion, he does full justice to 
the reasoning of his opponents : 

" It was long commonly taken for granted, not only 

by writers among the ancient heathens, but by modern 

authors, that the savage state was the original one, and 

that mankind, or some portion of mankind, gradually 

raised themselves from it by the unaided exercise of their 

own faculties. . . . You may hear plausible descriptions 

given of a supposed race of savages subsisting on wild 

fruits, herbs, and roots, and on the precarious supplies of 

15* 



i 7 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

hunting and fishing ; and then, of the supposed process 
by which they emerged from this state, and gradually 
invented the various arts of life, till they became a deci- 
dedly civilized people. One man, it has been supposed, 
wishing to save himself the trouble of roaming through 
the woods in search of wild plants and roots, would be- 
think himself of collecting the seeds of these, and culti- 
vating them in a plot of ground cleared and broken up 
for the purpose. And finding that he could thus raise 
more than enough for himself, he might agree with some 
of his neighbors to exchange a part of his produce for 
some of the game or fish taken by them. Another man, 
again, it has been supposed, would contrive to save him- 
self the labor and uncertainty of hunting, by catching 
some kind of wild animals alive and keeping them in an 
enclosure to breed, that he might have a supply always 
at hand. And, again, others, it is supposed, might de- 
vote themselves to the occupation of dressing skins for 
clothing, or of building huts or canoes, or of making 
bows and arrows, or various kinds of tools, each exchan- 
ging his productions with his neighbors for food. And 
each, by devoting his attention to some one kind of man- 
ufacture, would acquire increased skill in that, and would 
strike out new inventions. 

" And then, these supposed savages having in this 
way become divided into husbandmen, shepherds, and 
artisans of several kinds, would begin to enjoy the vari- 
ous advantages of division of labor, and would advance 
step by step in all the arts of civilized life."* 
* "Exeter Hall Lectures," pp. 9-1 1. 1854, 1855. James Nisbet &Co. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 175 

This statement, in so far as it relates to the gradual 
division of labor, may be accepted as probably correct ; 
but the question at issue is not, Whence the savage ? that 
has been already discussed by us, but, Supposing the sav- 
age existent, whence these processes ? from natural im- 
pulses or intuitions, or from external teachings by a 
higher tribe ? " They cannot be originated by savages," 
says the one party. " They can be originated by no 
other," say their opponents. 

" Such descriptions as the above," says Whately, "of 
what is supposed has actually taken place, or of what 
possibly might take place, are likely to appear plausible ; 
but, on close examination, their suppositions are found to 
be completely at variance with history, and inconsistent 
with the character of real savages. Such a process of 
invention and improvement as that just described, is 
what we may safely say never did and never can possi- 
bly take place in any tribe of savages left wholly to 
themselves." 

Without committing ourselves to the strong affirmation 
that such a " process never can possibly take place," it is 
enough to inquire whether any such process has ever been 
known to have taken place among "savages left wholly 
to themselves." In that "left wholly to themselves," 
lies the essential difference between the two systems or 
theories of civilization. 

Sir John Lubbock, and the ethnologists whom he 
represents, have set themselves to prove the opposite 
of Whately's conclusion, and both their scholarship and 
character entitle their opinions to our best consideration. 



176 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Leaving out of view, in the meantime, the teachings 
of Scripture, let us test their theory on its own merits, 
and endeavor to judge of it on the basis of history and 
science, as we should do in the case of any theory not 
running counter to any cherished belief or tradition. 

Two questions at this stage suggest themselves : 
first, Is the test or standard adopted sufficient to deter- 
mine the difference between barbarism and civilization ? 
and, second, Suppose the standard accepted, do the facts 
of history establish their theory ? 

The standard is unsuitable. Fundamentally, the 
theory is erroneous, for the following, among other rea- 
sons : 

i. It is defective, in making the industrial and me- 
chanical arts alone the standard by which to test degrees 
of civilization. It is difficult to find a common test ; but 
the one adopted, though in many respects good, is so 
inadequate in important particulars, that it cannot war- 
rant comprehensive conclusions. The theory fails to 
recognize personal culture apart from its mere material 
expression, and therein lies a fatal weakness ; for high 
culture and many of the "aspirations and sympathies of 
comparatively refined life, may subsist amid the very 
rudest industrial arts. Measured by the marvellous at- 
tainments of this Iron period of ours, the ages of Homer 
and Herodotus would be gloomily barbarous. Had their 
writings been lost; had the "Iliad" of the one and the 
history of the other — productions to which our best 
British scholars and statesmen have given so much of 
their leisure and cultivated thought — never been heard 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 177 

Of ; and had only the rude remains of these early times 
come to us in some loose fragments, we should have been 
resting on utterly erroneous conclusions regarding both 
the period and the people. 

" No proof, if proof there be, that primeval man was 
ignorant of the industrial arts, can afford the smallest 
presumption that he was also ignorant of duty, or igno- 
rant of God. This is a fundamental objection to the 
whole scope of Sir John Lubbock's argument. It inter- 
poses an impassable gulf between his premises and his 
conclusion."* This objection Sir John Lubbock has 
attempted to obviate, but without success. While we 
can acknowledge gradual advance from lower to higher 
degrees of skill in mechanical arts, without admitting 
that any one state of art necessarily represents finer 
feelings, nobler thoughts, and a more generous or holier 
life than the other, he and others are so restricted by a 
narrow theory, that they cannot include all the facts of 
intellectual and moral life. 

The ancient Germans, Gauls, and Britons, as descri- 
bed by Caesar and Tacitus, were savages ; yet they " cul- 
tivated their land, kept cattle, employed horses in their 
wars, and made use of metals for their weapons and in- 
struments." They had some of the commonest evidences 
of civilization, and we are not in circumstances to esti- 
mate fairly their personal culture, but we may infer that 
it was even higher than these evidences indicate. 

If we make industrial arts alone the test of civiliza- 
tion in Scotland and England, we should arrive at most 
* "Man, Primeval," by t ha Duke of Argyll, p. 132. 



178 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

erroneous conclusions regarding even comparatively re- 
cent times. And were we, indeed, at this moment, to 
estimate the character of the people in some districts of 
the Highlands of Scotland by their dwellings, their agri- 
culture, and their simple habits, we should completely 
misunderstand and wrong them. We should possibly 
represent as ignorant and barbarous, numbers of the 
most intelligent of our countrymen, and, viewed in the 
light of morality and religion, the most civilized of the 
British Empire, because their dwellings are the abodes 
of truth, and honor, and piety. Though their hamlets 
or clachans may be little better than a series of archi- 
tectural hovels, the inmates are notwithstanding brave, 
courteous, and refined ; they need not the dramas of 
Shakespeare or the epics of Milton to give them their 
share of the common splendors of their country ; for 
while they may have these, they have, besides, that 
higher lustre which is invariably diffused by the Psalms 
of David, the blending poetry, prophecy, and theology of 
Isaiah, the narratives of the evangelists ; and the doc- 
trines of the great Teacher who spake truth as never 
man spake it. 

2. The theory is defective also in not making suffi- 
cient allowance for the coexistence of barbarism and 
civilization at the same period in different parts of the 
world. Facts gathered in a single narrow district, or in 
contiguous territories, have been made the basis of plau- 
sible inference and the source of elaborate proof, when 
the facts of distant territories and corresponding periods 
would have shown other processes and another result 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 179 

When Caesar, for example, was carrying his triumphs 
onward to Britain, through the comparatively rude dwell- 
ings of Gaul, splendid palaces glittered in Eastern em- 
pires ; and long before his time, when Egypt, Assyria, 
and Persia were powerful in their military equipment 
and refined in their art, savage tribes hovered on their 
verge, or wandered in distant regions. 

While we find in the history of the world, contempo- 
raneously, in different kingdoms, the art evidences of 
barbarism and civilization, we have them no less dis- 
tinctly coexistent in the same district or kingdom. They 
are not connected as growth, part with part. Vases, 
cylinders, and engraved signets have been discovered, 
mingling with knives of flint or chert, stone hatchets, 
hammers, nails, and adzes. In Mexico and other parts 
of America, the facts of a high civilization antedate those 
of ignorance and degradation. Periods so commingle 
facts which should on this theory lie ages apart, that 
reasoning founded on their historical sequence must be 
received with the greatest hesitation and care. 

3. It is perfectly clear, judging from facts in the 
present age, that emigrants from civilized communities 
may have speedily lapsed into barbarism. The indus- 
trial arts of Britain are high ; but how many wanderers, 
leaving their homes and the refinement of their country, 
may betake themselves to distant regions without the 
least fitness to introduce any of either the mechanical or 
the fine arts ? How few, comparatively, of our emigra- 
ting families know anything whatever of those indus- 
trial agencies which have made their country great ; or, if 



i So BLENDING LIGHTS. 

they knew them, could turn them to practical account ? 
Skilled artisans would soon find their experience value- 
less ; and with the first generation the refinements of 
another land and an early home would disappear ; and 
thus might a savage race have its origin or first roots in 
no ordinary civilization. That both prehistoric and his- 
toric times have seen such changes, cannot be doubted. 
"Even now," says Wilson, "the skill of the American 
miner has to be imported, and the copper miners of Lake 
Superior are almost exclusively derived from Cornwall, 
or the mining districts of Germany. . . . The old Dutch- 
man exported his bricks across the Atlantic, wherewith 
to found his new Amsterdam on the banks of the Hud- 
son ; and the English colonist, with enterprise enough 
to mine the copper veins of Lake Superior, still seeks a 
market for the ore in England, and imports thence 
both the engineers and the iron wherewith to bridge 
his St. Lawrence." After adverting to the migration of 
Asiatic tribes, he adds : " Their industrial arts were all 
to begin anew ; and thus, wherever we recover traces of 
the first- footprints of the old Nomad in his wanderings 
across the Continents of Asia and Europe, ... we find 
that the Stone period is not necessarily the earliest hu- 
man period, but only the rudimentary condition to which 
man had returned, or may return again, in the inevitable 
deterioration of a migratory era."* Such processes and 
such results have, doubtless, often come and gone. Al- 
though skilled races in prehistoric ages have not left us 
art fabrics or other products to indicate their degree of 

* " Prehistoric Man," by Daniel Wilson, vol. I, pp. 143, 144. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 1S1 

civilization, and emigrating bands cannot stamp on dis~ 
tant regions the material impress of that civilization from 
which they departed, both have been real, and brought 
into the solitudes of their chosen abodes the refined feel- 
ings and the social intercourse of their early homes. 
This refinement no art structure or fabric could embody 
or represent ; but in a generation or two it would proba- 
bly be completely lost, although, in some instances, it 
may have run for centuries through patriarchal tribes of 
olden times, and not a trace of their intellectual vigor, 
and moral worth, and kindliest sympathies can now be 
found. 

It is only by a comprehensive and careful survey of 
the facts which Asia and America, as well as Europe, 
are giving, that any reliable conclusions can be gained. 
The attention has hitherto been too exclusively fixed on 
European evidence or facts, while the key to the inter- 
pretation of the whole has been lying for ages in the 
East. In short, this classification of Periods, while very 
convenient, and in some respects just, is so devoid of 
scientific accuracy that it cannot be accepted as the 
basis of conclusions regarding the tvhole human family. 
It demands special geographical and physical conditions 
for the start of the first human pair, without which the 
first two periods — the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic — 
might form no distinctive part of human history. There 
are, for instance, vast territories in which stones are as 
scarce as in others metals are. South American tribes 
have been thrilled into ecstasy by finding pebbles ; and 

in the wide alluvial plains of Chaldasa, stones are not 

16 



1 3 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

available for common implements. If, in some such dis- 
tricts of these, the first pair and their successors had run 
their history, the stone age probably could not have been 
known, as those who wandered into stone districts should 
have made such progress as to dispense with them, at 
least in their rough and unhewn state. Men living in a 
comparatively stoneless territory, like that of Mesopota- 
mia, may indeed possess those qualities of a high civiliza- 
tion which, though but very slightly visible in mechani- 
cal arts, may yet go forth in genial public combinations, 
in kindly companionship, elevated thought, and religious 
observances. 

Again, it has, curiously enough, been concluded by 
Sir John Lubbock that savages do not sink ; that they 
rise, but do not fall back. "It is a common opinion," he 
says, "that savages are, as a general rule, only the miser- 
able remnants of nations once more civilized ; but al- 
though there are some well-established cases of national 
decay, there is no scientific evidence which would justify 
us in asserting that this is generally the case. No doubt 
there are many instances in which nations, once progres- 
sive, have not only ceased to advance in civilization, but 
have even fallen back. Still, if we compare the accounts 
of early travellers with the state of things now existing, 
we shall find no evidence of any general degradation. 
The Australians, Bushmen, and Fuegians lived, when 
first observed, almost exactly as they do now. In some 
savage tribes we even find some traces of improvement ; 
the Bachapins, when visited by Burchell, had just intro- 
duced the art of working in iron ; the largest erection in 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 183 

Tahiti was constructed by the generation living at the 
time of Captain Cook's visit ; and the practice of canni- 
balism had been recently abandoned : again, out-riggers 
are said to have been recently adopted by the Andaman 
Islanders ; and if certain races — as, for instance, some of 
the American tribes — have fallen back, this has perhaps 
been due, less to any inherent tendency, than to the inju- 
rious effect of European influence. Moreover, if the 
Cape of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, etc., had 
ever been inhabited by a race of men more advanced 
than those whom we are in the habit of regarding as the 
aborigines, some evidence of this would surely have re- 
mained ; and this not being the case, none of our travel- 
lers having observed any ruins or 'other traces of advanced 
civilization, there does not appear to be any sufficient 
reason for supposing these miserable beings to be at all 
inferior to the ancestors from whom they are descended."* 
It would not be an easy task to find a single passage 
in which assumptions, unsustained by the slender facts 
adduced, are made the chief support of a generalization 
so sweeping as that savages do not sink ; and, indirectly 
of the inference, that, without external aid, they rise. 
Sir John finds in the accounts of early travellers, as com- 
pared with the present state of things, no evidence of 
any general degradation ; but the fact is, that those to 
whom he refers — the Australians, the Bushmen, and the 
Fuegians — cannot sink lower without disappearing alto- 
gether. Should they not, on this theory, be ere now 
showing tendencies upwards ? He quotes the Bacha- 

* '• Prehistoric Man," pp. 337. 338. First Edition. 



1 84 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

pins, Tahitians, and Andaman Islanders, as giving some 
evidences of improvement; but he cannot prove, what is 
specially needed in the discussion, that they were not 
visited by some who introduced improvements, or that 
they had not received some stray traveller who stimula- 
ted them to new exertions. Admitting that there might 
be occasional movements somewhat in advance of sheer 
barbarism, they are not sufficient to counterbalance all 
the facts which prove sameness in savage life. His con- 
necting the degradation and decay of American tribes 
with European influences, is a mere assumption. If the 
germ of progress really exists in savage life, contact with 
a civilized race should quicken it and give it scope. His 
inference that, if the miserable aborigines of the Cape of 
Good Hope, Australia, and New Zealand had ever supe- 
rior ancestors, traces of their existence should be found, 
is altogether unwarranted ; for it is quite possible, as we 
have already shown, that those who have emigrated from 
civilized communities, and have carried with them to 
desolate or unpeopled regions a knowledge of some of the 
arts, might soon lose them, because inapplicable, or, in 
their new circumstances, useless ; and in a generation 
or two the families would be found, in harmony with the 
resources of their country, subsisting like savages, de- 
pendent on fruits, on fishing, on hunting, or occupying 
a somewhat higher sphere as keepers of sheep or cat- 
tle. Nothing, in all probability, has been more common 
in the past, than that two or three families having been 
swept from the civilization of Asia to some of the neigh- 
boring islands or more distant continents, and having 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 185 

been cut off from all intercourse with their parent com- 
munity, should leave behind them as successors those 
who, in a generation or two, would roam exultingly in the 
wild freedom of the savage. To expect traces of early civ- 
ilization in such outlying regions, is contrary to the prob- 
abilities of history, and shows to what weak reasoning a 
theorist will have recourse, even when he is distinguished 
by merit as well as accomplished and independent ; but 
to expect traces of civilization in the central regions of 
early emigration, is perfectly natural on our side of this 
question, and we are not only bound, but are prepared, to 
show them. 

It is not a little surprising to find so deliberate a 
thinker as Sir John Lubbock asserting that there is no 
scientific evidence which would justify us in inferring 
that, as a general rule, savages are the remnants of na- 
tions once civilized. Of course, if he means by this that 
civilized nations once existed where savages are now 
found, as ruins lie on the site of an old castle, no one will 
assert that this is the "general rule." The ancestors of 
savage tribes have wandered to new regions and sunk ; 
and a strong, if not indeed an irresistible argument in 
favor of this view, is to be found in the almost universal 
traditions which have been known to prevail in nations 
and tribes the most remote from one another. Their 
arts have perished where their traditions have survived. 
With the histories of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, and Mex- 
ico, in his hand, it is perplexing to hear a philosophic 
observer still demanding scientific evidence of degrada- 
tion and decay. _ 



1 86 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

But why should savages be stationary, while nations 
once civilized retrograde ? What barrier to descent is 
there in the life of the savage ? What physical or men- 
tal obstacle is it that checks his downward career ? If 
man has been developed from some creature not worthy 
to be called a man, why may he not relapse into that un- 
worthy creaturehood ? Scientific evidence is decidedly 
in favor of such a recurrence. Civilization is, on this 
theory, correspondent to domestication of the lower ani- 
mals, and, as is well known, when they are left free, they 
not only return to their early modes of life, but assume 
their first appearance. The horse, when permitted to 
sweep without restraint over the wide pampas of South 
America, shows not new but original qualities ; and even 
the stiff, slow, lumbering hog, losing in freedom " the 
lethargy of the sty, exhibits the fierce courage of the 
wild boar." Then, why is it that man, left free and un- 
tutored, does not sink in accordance with this law, even 
lower than Fuegian or Bushman, and exhibit the wild 
freedom of that strange progenitor which has not a name ? 

This should be the natural result, and indeed, also, in 
one sense, the safest. " To exist at all," says the Duke 
of Argyll, " this creature must have been more animal in 
its structure than man. That structure could not be 
changed to less of animal and more of man, without 
danger to his existence. If reason obtained a great start 
in advance, the theory of development is destroyed. Inter- 
position — which they deny — would be implied, and even 
then, with such advantages as many tribes do now pos- 
sess, life is most precarious. These are reckoned too 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 187 

high for the start in the race, and if the lower animal 
structure best suited these animals, it is not likely that, 
by natural selection, they should ever become higher. 
The difficulties here represented are insuperable." If, 
by any process, man should reach so high a stage of im- 
provement as we have indicated, his risks, his greater 
bodily weakness, and his tendency in common with all 
animals to revert to the original type, should bring him 
back to the early creaturehood from which he had un- 
wisely emerged. 

Whately's demand for historical evidence of ascent to 
civilization by any one savage tribe or nation, has not 
been met by any ethnologist. Sir John Lubbock has 
endeavored to overcome this difficulty, and has failed. 
He objects to the demand, as, in the nature of the case 
impossible, for the monuments are wanting. By monu- 
ments, it would be difficult, it is true, to prove the race 
to have been originally savage ; but there has been am- 
ple time, if indeed the germs of progress exist in bar- 
barous races, to find somewhere in rude incipient monu- 
ments evidence of vitality and growth, and some proba- 
bility of future eminence. But such evidence has not 
been offered, nor is it ever likely to be found. There is 
not a vestige of proof that those who lived in Europe in 
the stone age, rose to that of bronze by their own unaid- 
ed skill ; but there is very clear and very decided proof 
that other races, breaking in upon the stone-implement 
communities, did introduce their bronze instruments, and 
that they in their turn received iron implements from an 
irruption of succeeding races. 



1 83 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Historically, stone implements shculcl be followed by 
those of copper and of tin separately, for it is only after 
both had been in use for some time that we should expect 
the union of the two, that is, of the copper and the tin, 
in bronze utensils. The bronze, it is true, would be 
speedily adopted, as Sir William Wilde suggests, in pref- 
erence to copper or tin, for general use, because it is 
harder and sharper ; but still, sufficient time must have 
elapsed to diffuse such instruments as would have proved 
their introduction by invention, if there had been in any 
region such material historical growth as the theory 
assumes. But it is not so. Bronze instruments appear 
suddenly in the midst of stone implements, without the 
intermediate stage of separate vessels of copper and of 
tin. Sir John Lubbock has candidly admitted that the 
absence of implements made either of copper or of tin, 
indicates that " the art of making bronze was introduced 
into, not invented in Europe."* But the concession is 
historically fatal to his theory. It invalidates the whole 
of his reasoning as to continuity of progress from bar- 
barism to civilization. In Europe, these periods are not 
a growth, they are a series of distinct additions. 

New ideas and practices were infused by some other 
nations. The East is the only probable source, and their 
introduction expresses a common origin, for the instru- 
ments are not only generally, but perfectly alike. 

Mr. Wright, whose authority is unquestionable, has 
declared that "the bronze swords or celts, whether in 
Ireland, in the far West, in Scotland, in distant Scandi- 
* " Prehistoric Times," Second Edition, p. 58. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 189 

navia, in Germany, or, still farther east, in the Sclavonic 
countries, are the same — not similar, but identical." Pro- 
fessor Nilsson traces the origin of bronze implements to 
the Phoenicians ; and we know that in the East, bronze 
was common at least 800 b. c, for both Homer and Hesiod 
speak of them, and by an older pen than either held, it is 
declared in the fourth chapter of Genesis : "And Zillah, 
she also bare Tubal-cain, an instructor of every artificer 
in brass and iron." Egypt in Joseph's time had her 
sharp and polishing instruments, and, in Solomon's time, 
the Sidonians were skilled in hewing timber, and the 
Syrians were cunning to work all " works in brass." It 
is admitted by all that brass here means bronze. More 
than three thousand years ago bronze was common in 
the East, and its sudden appearance in the West, in Ire- 
land, for instance, and in Scandinavia, not only gives evi- 
dence in favor of civilization being dependent on external 
influences for its progress, but sheds light on the question 
of time, and guides us to at least approximate dates. In 
short, there has been a complete breakdown in the effort 
to prove that, in the course of ages, the development has 
been continuous from the rough stone edge to the smooth, 
from that to bronze, and from bronze to iron. 

Since Archbishop Whately sifted, with the skill of a 
severe logician, all the historical evidence which, up to 
his time had been published, there has been little added 
in the way of discovery or fresh observation. The facts, 
in the main, are old ; the collocation only is new ; and 
any intelligent reader is competent to judge of both as 
matters of testimony, and of the inferences which have 



190 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

been deduced from them. If it had been shown, in even 
one instance, that any savage race had risen to a recog- 
nizable degree of civilization, without the introduction of 
new ideas and a higher example, there would be pre- 
sumptive evidence for the truth of the theory ; yet only 
presumption, unless it could also be shown that they had 
been so long sunken, that probably no recuperative power 
lingered from a previous state. In the descent from civ- 
ilization to barbarism, a nation or tribe may preserve this 
recuperative force, when, in the history of individuals or 
of isolated tribes, it might be lost as they passed into 
new territories. The ancient Gauls and Germans, for 
example, preserved this recuperative tendency ; and if 
such as the Australians or Fuegians ever gave any indi- 
cation of self-improvement or tribe-culture, we should 
have the presumptive evidence which we desiderate ; but 
even that has not been forthcoming, and as yet Whately's 
demand remains unmet. 

Those who, through close and varied intercourse, have 
had the best means of judging of the condition and ca- 
pabilities of savage races, have decided against this plau- 
sible theory. Humboldt, with his usual caution, has 
said : " The important question has not yet been resolved, 
whether the savage state, which even in America is found 
in various gradations, is to be looked upon as the dawn- 
ing of a society about to rise, or whether it is not rather 
the fading remains of one sinking amid storms, over- 
thrown and shattered by overwhelming catastrophes. To 
me the latter seems nearer the truth than the former." 
And Sir George Grey, at a recent meeting of the British 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 191 

Association, firmly opposed the theory. He has had 
varied opportunities of observation, and in his view no 
advances have been made by really savage tribes. The 
stationary remain stationary, for they cannot extricate 
themselves, nor do they appear to have any decided de- 
sire to change their condition. 

It is unnecessary to prosecute farther this part of the 
subject, as enough has been stated to show that the his- 
torical evidence is, in its incompleteness, similar to that 
of Darwin for the advance of animal life and its fabrics , 
the links are wanting where we should expect to find 
them, and where their appearance is indispensable to 
prove the theory. Its advocates have, with more or less 
frankness, confessed their inability to account for those 
facts and principles on which Christian apologists rest 
their historical argument for the truth of the Scripture 
record of the origin and progress of civilization. 



192 BLENDING LIGHTS. 



CHAPTER X. 

WERE OUR FIRST PARENTS SAVAGES? (CONTINUED) RE- 
CENT THEORIES AS TO THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION 
CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO THE MENTAL FACULTIES, 
THE MORAL SENSE, AND RELIGION. 

Christians have a right to protest against the arraying of probabilities 
against the clear teachings of Scripture. It is not easy to estimate the 
evil that is done by eminent men throwing the weight of their authority 
on the side of unbelief, influenced by a mere balance of probabilities in 
one department, to the neglect of the most convincing proofs of a differ- 
ent kind. . . . Thus they often decide against the Bible on evidence that 
would not determine an intelligent jury in a suit for twenty shillings. — 

PROFESSOR C. HODGE. 

In attempting to deduce those mental and moral re- 
sults which characterize modern civilization from some 
creature that had not even a head in which to treasure a 
single idea, theorists have greater difficulties to overcome 
than when they endeavor to connect man's body with the 
lowest mollusk. No one refuses to acknowledge the ex- 
istence of intelligence, memory, and some measure of 
reasonable power in many of the lower animals ; but 
such an admission stops far short of connecting the hu- 
man mind, by lineal descent, with intellectual germs in 
some gorilla, or snail, or worm, and of discovering in that 
lowliest origin not only the foundation of the complex 
fabric of our civilization, but the spring of all those ideas 
of immortality, responsibility, private and public duties, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 193 

eternity, and God, which shed a richer splendor over 
man's history than that which all the sciences and arts 
united can of themselves create. The advocates of this 
theory have utterly failed in their attempt to include in 
their system, and to account for, the practical lessons of 
Christianity. Its lofty morality, its sublime doctrines, 
and its " pure and undefiled religion," are left without 
an origin or an aim. As facts, if as nothing else, theo- 
rists are bound to account for them, or, at least, as an 
outcome from previous ideas. Let us examine the facts 
which they select from the natural history of the lower 
animals and of the lowest man, to constitute the basis of 
ultimate intellectual and moral improvement. What evi- 
dence is there that the ideas and the habits of the lower 
animals and the most sunken savages, so commingle as 
to make this theory even plausible ? Is there a vestige 
of proof to show that there has been an intermingling of 
notions or practices, and that, through or by them, man 
has emerged to that lowest platform on which there was 
the first beam of civilization ? What data do they present 
to warrant our acceptance of the sweeping conclusion 
that Psychology, Mental Philosophy, Ethics, and Practi- 
cal Religion, or the lessons of Christianity, are deducible 
from even the most accomplished of the lower animals ? 

To that issue the theorist is brought, and he is bound 
to face it. If he cannot include in his exposition all the 
higher forms of Feeling, Thought, and Law, he should 
acknowledge his failure, and that we are justified in 
rejecting his conclusions. 

Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Sir John Lubbock, 
17 



1 9 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

evidently anticipating such legitimate demands as these, 
have resolutely attempted to satisfy them ; and, in their 
respective fields, have adduced their strongest proofs and 
best reasoning. By placing in immediate connection 
their interlacing and sometimes conflicting expositions 
of each topic, we shall obtain a definite view of what has 
been most influential in deciding their opinion, and be 
the better able to do justice to them and ourselves in 
forming a deliberate conclusion. 

But to follow this course is to find the very same kind 
of defective reasoning in reference to the descent of the 
human mind and the growth of civilization, of which we 
complained when discussing the proof for the descent of 
the human body from some primordial germ which start- 
ed into life millions of years ago. There are the same 
unbridged chasms, the same absence of necessary links, 
the same inadequacy of data. 

Three questions require to be answered. First, Are 
there any facts to show the close connection of the mind 
and habits of the highest of the lower animals with the 
very lowest of the human race ? Second, Is there any 
evidence of a moral nature in the lower animals which 
can, even plausibly, be regarded as the foundation of 
man's moral constitution ? And Third, Out of what 
condition is religion evolved ? On what foundation does 
this theory place it ? What is its influence on civiliza- 
tion ?" 

Darwin himself has answered these questions with 
such qualifications, that it is surprising to see him en- 
deavoring to fasten together important conclusions by a 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 195 

chain, broken and dissevered through the absence of its 
central links. 

Let us next consider — 

III. CIVILIZATION IN RELATION TO MAN'S MENTAL FACUL- 
TIES. 

Among British Naturalists of the highest standing, 
there is a general concurrence of opinion as to the gulf 
between the intellectual faculties of man and whatever 
degree of mind may show itself in the lower animals. It 
is impossible to connect the two. Professor Huxley- 
speaks " of the great gulf which intervenes between the 
lowest man and the highest ape in intellectual power,"* 
" of the immeasurable and practically infinite divergence 
of the human from the Simian stirps/'f and "of the pres- 
ent enormous gulf between them."$ "At the same time," 
he repeats, " no one is more strongly convinced than I 
am of the vastness of the gulf between civilized man and 
the brutes ; or is more certain that, whether from them 
or not, he is assuredly not 0/"them."§ 

In reference to this vast break, Darwin is no less 
explicit than Huxley. When he is describing the intel- 
lectual distance between man and those creatures which 
are nearest him in brain-organization and force, he de- 
clares the difference to be enormous. "No doubt," he 
says, "the difference in this respect is enormous, even if 
we compare the mind of one of the lowest savages, who 
has no words to express any number higher than four, 
and who can use no abstract terms for the commonest 

* "Man's Place in Nature," p. 102. t Ibid, Foot-note, p. 103. 

X Ibid, p. 102. § Ibid, p. 1 ro. 



196 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

objects or affections, with that of the most highly organ- 
ized ape. The difference would, no doubt, still remain 
immense, even if one of the higher apes had been im- 
proved or civilized as much as a dog has been in compar- 
ison with its parent form, the wolf or jackal."* Notwith- 
standing this "immense" distance between the two, and 
the consequent want of the least evidence of any lineal 
relations whatever, he has amusingly assumed, in his 
" Origin of Species," that he has discovered such a men- 
tal connection of man with the lower animals as shall 
form the basis of a new system of Psychology. Mental 
science will start on a new track in search of other ob- 
jects than our metaphysicians have hitherto kept in view. 
His statement is, " In the distant future, I see open fields 
for far more important researches. Psychology will be 
based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquire- 
ment of each mental power and capacity by gradation. 
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his his- 
tory."! The contests of metaphysicians will cease, even 
when the phrenologist has transferred his examination of 
the supposed compartments of the human brain to the 
nervous tissues of the lower and lowest animals, and new 
triumphs will indeed give unexpected lustre to man's his- 
tory, when he has educed from a material body that which 
is non-material, and from the perishing that which is 
imperishable. We have here a theory involving the com- 
plete and immediate overthrow of that system of mental 
science in which Mind is regarded as a substance distinct 

* " Descent of Man," vol. i, p. 34. 

t " Origin of Species," pp. 577, 578. 1869. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 197 

from the body, and which has been developed by some 
of the most accurate and powerful thinkers of recent 
times, advocated on the possible existence of facts of 
which there is not the slightest evidence. Mr. Wallace, 
who in originality and independence as a thinker and a 
naturalist is Mr. Darwin's compeer, rejects his theory 
regarding the descent of our mental faculties. There are 
faculties and conceptions for which, in his view, it pro- 
vides no explanation. "But there is," he says, "another 
class of human faculties that do not regard our fellow- 
men, and which cannot, therefore, be thus accounted for. 
Such are the capacity to form ideal conceptions of space 
and time, of eternity and infinity ; the capacity for in- 
tense artistic feelings of pleasure in form, color, and com- 
position, and for those abstract notions of form and num- 
ber which render geometry and arithmetic possible. 
How were all or any of these faculties first developed, 
when they could have been of no possible use to man 
in his early stages of barbarism ? How could ' Natural 
Selection,' a survival of the fittest in the struggle for 
existence, at all favor the development of mental powers 
so entirely removed from the material necessities of sav- 
age men, and which, even now, with our comparatively 
high civilization, are, in their farthest developments, in 
advance of the age, and appear to have relation rather to 
the future of the race than to its actual status ?"* These 
questions are unanswerable, and expose the indisputable 
inadequacy of the foundation on which Mr. Darwin has 
raised his complicated structure. 

* Wallace on "Natural Selection," pp. 351, 352. 
17* 



i 9 8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Professor Tyndall, starting with the idea of the de- 
velopment of life from the star dust, comes to the same 
conclusion, and places it before us with such vividness 
that it cannot soon be forgotten. " For what are the 
core and essence of this hypothesis ? Strip it naked, and 
you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the 
more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not 
alone the noble forms of the horse and lion, not alone the 
exquisite and wonderful mechanisms of the human body, 
but the human mind itself — emotion, intellect, will, and 
all these phenomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. 
Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than 
a refutation."* Whether life has its origin in the "star 
dust," or in some germs at a later date, the process is 
the same, and the idea is equally absurd. We say absurd, 
because there is not a trace of lineal descent by which we 
can possibly connect with the highest and best-informed 
ape or gorilla the intellect of a Newton, a Bacon, a Shake- 
speare, or a Milton. Darwin himself has admitted that 
the facts are wanting and the connections hidden. We 
must, therefore, be excused for rejecting his inferences, 
and refusing to take shelter in a fabric which is con- 
fessedly without a foundation. 

This view is supported by Bunsen, when he says, 
" No length of time can create a man out of a monkey, 
because it can never happen ; for it is a logical contra- 
diction to suppose the growth of reason out of its oppo- 
site."! 

* "Fragments of Science, and Scientific Thought," p. 163. 
t "Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. 4, p. 54. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 199 

It may not be out of place to add here, to the admis- 
sions of naturalists themselves, and to the inference of a 
philosopher, the opinion of one of the readiest wits and 
keenest intellects of his time. " What," exclaimed Syd- 
ney Smith, " has the shadow or mockery of faculties 
given to beasts to do with the immortality of the soul ? 
It is no reason to say that, because they partake in the 
slightest degree of our nature, they are entitled to all the 
privileges of our nature. I confess I have such a marked 
and decided contempt for the understanding of every 
baboon I have yet seen — I feel so sure the blue ape with- 
out a tail will never rival us in poetry, painting, and 
music — that I see no reason whatever why justice may 
not be done to the few tatters of understanding which 
they may really possess." 

IV. CIVILIZATION IN RELATION TO THE MORAL SENSE OR 
CONSCIENCE. 

To the second question, also, Darwin has given a no 
less decided reply. Earnest as he is in claiming for the 
lower animals the possession of mental powers, he aban- 
dons the idea of their morality, and proceeds to build an 
ethical system for Man without any recognizable founda- 
tion. "As we cannot distinguish between motives, we 
rank all actions of a certain class as moral, when they 
are performed by a moral being. A moral being is one 
who is capable of comparing his past and future actions 
or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. 
We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower ani- 
mals have this capacity. Therefore, when a monkey 



200 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

faces danger to rescue its comrade, or takes charge of an 
orphan monkey, we do not call its conduct moral."* He 
admits that he finds no morality among the lower ani- 
mals ; but he claims amoral sense for man, and assumes 
that it has been educed from them by some kind of crea- 
tive force in social instincts and sympathies ; yet why or 
how the same social instincts which he traces in the lower 
animals have failed to create in them any germ of con- 
science, he does not explain. He tells us that "the 
social instincts both of man and the lower animals have 
no doubt been developed by the same steps ;" and he 
infers, at the same time, that the one has become moral, 
while the other has remained non-moral ; nor does he 
improve his exposition when he adds, "According to the 
view given above, the moral sense is fundamentally iden- 
tical with the social instincts, and in the case of the 
lower animals, it would be absurd to speak of these in- 
stincts as having been developed from selfishness, or for 
the happiness of the community,"! Assuredly, if the 
moral sense is, as he says, " fundamentally identical with 
the social instincts," an incipient conscience or "moral 
sense" should be found manifesting itself in the instincts 
of the lower animals. If his theory of "descent" is 
worth anything, it should be marked by such a connec- 
tion as we have indicated. That it is not, is the exposure 
of another unbridged chasm in the path of descent. In 
snmming up the evidence for man's moral sense, he in- 
troduces elements for the existence of which, on his the- 
ory, he cannot possibly account, when he says, " Ulti- 
* " Descent of Man," vol. I, pp. 88. 89. t Ibid., p. 98. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 201 

mately, a highly complex sentiment, having its first origin 
in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation 
of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and, in 
later times, by deep religious feelings, confirmed by in- 
struction and habit, all combined, constitute the one 
moral sense or conscience."* What, then, of those tribes 
which have for generations been destitute of instruction 
and deep religious feelings ? Have they consequently 
been destitute of conscience ? and have there really been 
whole races of mankind without morality, like the beasts 
which perish ? We thoroughly repudiate the idea of con- 
science being in the least dependent on social instincts 
for its very existence, and on self-interest for its exercise. 
And if it is absurd, as he says it is, "to speak of their 
instincts as having been developed for the happiness of 
the community," is it not equally absurd to speak of them 
as having " certainly been developed for the general good 
of the community" ? If it is true that the lower animals 
have the same social instincts with man, why do they not 
look ahead, also, to the "general good" of the commu- 
nity, and give some joint token of "a moral sense," at 
least in germ ? If the social instincts are indeed funda- 
mentally identical in the lower animals and man, why 
are the results so widely different ? The facts which he 
adduces are obviously incoherent, and his reasoning is 
illogical. 

Herbert Spencer strikes in at this juncture with an 
ingenious hypothesis, which he explains and vindicates 
with his wonted fervor of thought and charm of diction. 
* "Descent of Man," vol. 1, p. 165. 



2C2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

He has boldly accounted for the origin of the " moral 
sense," without a single fact on which to rest his suppo- 
sition. He demands from us the belief that "experiences 
of utility" and " nervous modifications" have been trans- 
mitted for ages, and have been so accumulated as ultimate- 
ly to create or " become in us certain faculties of moral in- 
tuition." His words are, " To make my position fully un- 
derstood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the 
fundamental propositions of a developed moral science, 
there have been, and still are, developing in the race, cer- 
tain fundamental moral intuitions ; and that, though these 
moral intuitions are the result of accumulated experiences 
of utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have 
come to be quite independent of conscious experience. I 
believe that the experiences of utility, organized and con- 
solidated through all past generations of the human race, 
have been producing corresponding nervous modifications, 
which, by continued transmissions and accumulation, 
have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition, 
active emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, 
which have no apparent basis in the individual experi- 
ences of utility."* By this fine phraseology, we are lia- 
ble to be imposed on, and to take it for granted that it 
is sustained by facts in natural history and mental science ; 
while the truth is, it is destitute of the least support. In 
the history of those animals whose instincts and experi- 
ences are best known to man through succeeding ages, 
there is not a vestige of improvement ; and when we 
turn to the records of the human race, there is not a single 

* Letter to Mr. Mill in Bain's" Mental and Moral Science," p. 722. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 203 

line of evidence to prove that, in the remotest generations} 
there was only an incipient moral sense, and that suc- 
ceeding generations show advances' in sensitiveness and 
strength of conscience apart from revealed truth. 

This utilitarian hypothesis, which is the theory of 
natural selection applied to the mind, Mr. Wallace re- 
gards as inadequate to account for the development of 
the moral sense in savage man. The same deficiency 
which we noticed in accounting for the development of 
the mental faculties, is met when we endeavor to trace 
the origin of the moral sense to experiences of utility ; 
"For," he says, "although the practice of berevolence, 
honesty, or truth, may have been useful to the tribe pos- 
sessing these virtues, that does not at all account for the 
peculiar sanctity attached to actions which each tribe 
considers right or moral, as contrasted with the very 
different feelings with which they regard what is merelv 
useful. . . . The utilitarian sanction for truthfulness is 
by no means very powerful or universal. Few laws en- 
force it. No very severe reprobation follows untruth- 
fulness. In all ages and countries, falsehood has been 
thought allowable in love, and laudable in war ; while, at 
the present day, it is held to be venial by the majority of 
mankind in trade, commerce, and speculation."* Cn the 
utilitarian hypothesis, truthfulness could never be estab- 
lished or strengthened by sanctity or a sense of right ; 
yet there is a mystical sense of wrong attached to un- 
truthfulness even by whole tribes of utter savages. Some 
of the barbarous hill tribes of India are distinguished for 

* Wallace on "Natural Selection," p. 352. 



204 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

veracity. There are those of them who "always speak 
the truth ;" and Major Jervis says, "the Santals are the 
most truthful men I ever met." A remarkable fact 
against the arguments for utility to the individual is given 
by Mr. Wallace : " A number of prisoners, taken during 
the Santal insurrection, were allowed to go free on pa- 
role, to work at a certain spot for wages. After some 
time cholera attacked them, and they were obliged to 
leave ; but every man of them returned and gave up his 
earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages, with money 
in their girdles, walked thirty miles back to prison rather 
than break their word !" Mr. Wallace's own experience 
among savages gave him, in similar instances, convin- 
cing proof of truthfulness. It is held sacred by some 
tribes and despised by others ; and it is difficult to un- 
derstand how " experiences of utility" should leave over- 
whelming impressions in some tribes and none in others, 
or create in some "a sanctity which overrides all consider- 
ations of personal advantage, while in others there is 
hardly a rudiment of such a feeling." Much as Mr. 
Wallace holds in common with Darwin and Herbert 
Spencer, he repudiates their views regarding a moral 
sense, and holds it to be an essential part of man's na- 
ture, which could not possibly have been gradually 
evolved from the experiences of utility, transmitted 
through many generations. 

As has been quite conclusively shown by Mr. R. 
Holt Hutton, in a remarkable paper in Macmillari s 
Llagazine, there is no evidence whatever, in even a sin- 
gle instance, of such a transformation as Herbert Spen- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 205 

cer describes, of " experiences of utility" passing into an 
intuition which has become permanent as a working force 
in the human race. After stating that craftiness was 
justified by the utility of its consequences in the time of 
Homer's wily " Ulysses," and that the maxim, " Honesty 
is the best policy," was not introduced until long after 
the most imperious enunciation of its sacredness as a 
duty, Mr. Hutton adds, " Three thousand years ago at 
least, there is no trace of any such sanction for honesty 
in the literature which gave to honesty the most binding 
character. ' He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, 
who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity nor sworn 
deceitfully,' ' he that sweareth to his hurt, and changeth 
not,' was not praised at that date as the gainer of all 
sorts of earthly advantages for society, but as alone 
able to enter into communion with God." He declares 
that there are no moral notions, however sacred, which 
have not been promulgated for thousands of years, and 
that the Bible had constantly to check utilitarian objec- 
tions to their authority, and " utilitarian excuses for 
breaches of duty." He has also well observed that, if 
anything is remarkable in the history of morality, it is 
the anticipatory character of moral principles, the inten 
sity and absoluteness with which they are laid down ages 
before the world has approximated to that ideal which 
had thus early been asserted.* 

The attempt, indeed, to explain away the human con- 
science, or to reduce it to dependence on the shifting 

* "Macmillan's Magazine," July, 1S69. See also chapter 9, in Mivart's 
" Genesis of Species," for an able discussion of " Evolution and Ethics." 

18 



2 o6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

experiences of utility, and on modifications of the ner- 
vous tissues, has proved completely abortive. The com- 
mon reasoning in support of the hypothesis has been 
condemned as fallacious by influential members of the 
same school, and as worthy only of rejection. 

Sir John Lubbock himself, perceiving the serious ob- 
jections to which Herbert Spencer's reasoning is exposed, 
has not hesitated to set it aside, but only to be equally 
unsucessful in the substitute which he has proposed. 
Repudiating "utility to the individual," he advocates 
mithority as the basis or origin of morality, and supports 
his conclusion by a reference to the ideas and customs 
prevalent in Australia, where the best -of everything is 
by law given to the old men, who "naturally lose no op- 
portunity of impressing their injunctions on the young," 
praising those who conform, and condemning those who 
resist. "Authority," he adds, "seems to me the origin, 
and utility, though not in the manner suggested by Mr. 
Spencer, the criterion of virtue."* Is there not in this 
brief statement very surprising confusion ? Authority 
must have right and wrong for its guidance. It is adminis- 
trative of what is just. It does not originate duties and 
virtues, it is ruled by them, and when authority is abso- 
lute, we have only two conditions, despotism and subjec- 
tion or slavery. The ideas of right and wrong must 
have an acknowledged value as recognized principles, 
before " authority" could enforce their application. If 
we accept Sir John Lubbock's historical explanation, 
then right and wrong, like Spencer's experiences of util- 

* "Origin of Civilization," pp. 272, 273. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 207 

ity, must ultimately disappear in the shifting" claims of 
sheer selfishness. 

No sooner have we carefully reviewed the principles 
and inferences which Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Sir 
John Lubbock respectively advocate as the basis and 
explanation of the origin and progress of civilization, 
than we are convinced of their helplessness, as either 
intellectual or moral guides, when they pass from the 
legitimate and severer exercises of physical science and 
philosophy into a domain of human inquiry which can- 
not be safely traversed without believing, as a first truth, 
that man has had given to him, as part of his complex 
nature, a separate spiritual existence, which, though work- 
ing here in and through a bodily organization, has yet 
laws and conditions which are not dependent on the 
body, but are related to the " unseen and eternal." Rec- 
ognizing this complex nature, the bodily, the intellect- 
ual, and the moral, and classifying on a distinct basis 
their separate phenomena and laws, we find that the con- 
clusions which are logically reached are more in harmo- 
ny with the teachings of Scripture than with the theories 
of skepticism. 

While this necessarily brief exposition of their con- 
flicting opinions as to the very foundation of civilization 
might be largely extended, enough has been submitted 
to show how valueless are the speculations of even pow- 
erful thinkers, when they attempt to compress within 
the restricted area of natural science, the higher and 
wider laws or conditions of mental science and moral 
philosophy. 



2 o8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

V. CIVILIZATION IN RELATION TO RELIGION. 

Still more signal has been their failure, in the effort 
to trace the origin and development of religion from the 
no-ideas of " semi-human" beings, to the doctrines and 
the ennobling practical lessons of Christianity. It is by 
no means enough that they look over the records of trav- 
ellers, and collect the many hasty and incongruous be- 
liefs and practices which they have detailed, so that by 
an arbitrary collocation they may make plausible their 
system of evolution. Nor is it enough that they assert 
that certain advanced religious ideas and practices may 
have come from others wbich preceded them. They are 
bound to demonstrate their necessarily continuous prog- 
ress, until they have culminated in the present civiliza- 
tion of Christendom. Sir John Lubbock and Mr. W. B. 
Tylor have attempted to accomplish, in reference to the 
growth of religion, what Mr. Darwin has failed to achieve 
in the psychological history of our race. Beginning with 
tribes in which he says no trace of religion has existed, 
Sir John afterwards finds a rudimentary religion, and at- 
tempts to trace, historically, the ideas and customs ex- 
pressed by Marriage, Law, and Religion. 

Between these two states of no-religion and rudimen- 
tary religion, there is another unbridged gulf. How can 
religion be evolved from no-religion ? Throughout his 
work on the " Origin of Civilization," and that, also, of 
Mr. W. B. Tylor on the " Early History of Mankind," 
apart from the amazing industry which they exhibit, and 
regarded simply as philosophical discussions, there pre- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 209 

vails a surprising incoherency. Their facts do not sus- 
tain their inferences. In tracing the highest phases of 
religious thought back to the first dreams as their origin, 
Sir John Lubbock nullifies his own assertion as to tribes 
existing without any religion. If dreams are the origin 
of our ideas of the spirit-world, and, ultimately, not only 
of the Deity, but of our duties to him and our fellow-men, 
is it possible that there could be a tribe without rudimen- 
tary religion, since they all dream ? Dogs dream. Dar- 
win's " semi-human" beings, and Sir John Lubbock's 
" creatures not worthy to be called men," must have also 
had their dreams. Why not their religion ? If we ac- 
cept this hypothesis, we cannot admit the existence of 
tribes without any religious notions or any sense of duty. 
Mr. Tylor does not commit himself to the conclusion 
that any tribe ever existed without religion, nor does he 
think it " advisable to start from this ground in an inves- 
tigation of religious development." As a matter of fact, 
such tribes have not been found any more than tribes 
without language, or living without fire. The " asser- 
tion that rude non-religious tribes have been known in 
actual existence, though in theory possible, and perhaps in 
fact true, does not at present rest on sufficient proof, 
which, for an exceptional state of things, we are entitled 
to demand."* This statement, though very cautiously 
expressed, is sufficiently confirmatory of the objection 
which we have urged to the whole theory as being de- 
fective in essential links. Mr. Tylor, however, agrees 
with Sir John Lubbock in the conclusion, that all the 

* "Primitive Culture," vol. I, p. 378. 
18* 



2io BLENDING LIGHTS. 

various religious beliefs in the world, with their compli- 
cated and conflicting systems of worship, are traceable 
to dreams and shadows ; and under the head " Animism," 
he devotes a large portion of his elaborate work, " Primi- 
tive Culture," to the elucidation of this view. It were a 
waste of time to enter on an exhaustive discussion of the 
facts which Mr. Tylor and Sir John Lubbock have piled 
together as the foundation on which, they say, the reli- 
gious fabrics of the world are resting. In their very 
nature, they are inadequate to account for the clear, 
definite, and ennobling ideas which appear in the Chris- 
tian world, ideas which cannot possibly be the product of 
evolution from such an origin, because they are, in some 
striking instances, not only repressive but repugnant to 
man's lower nature, in which their history is assumed to 
have begun. 

With considerable ingenuity it has been attempted, 
on this theory, to trace the ideas and practices through 
which Marriage, Law, Spirit, Immortality, and God, have 
come to be acknowledged ; but the difficulties of the 
method have forced Sir John Lubbock not only to begin 
with races without a moral sense, and without morality, 
but afterwards, when morality has been established, to 
dissociate it from religion. He rejects the reasoning of 
Mr. Wallace as to the morality of certain tribes, inqui- 
ring, " Does it prove even that they have any moral sense 
at all ?" and adding, " Surely not."* He quotes Mr. Dove 
regarding the Tasmanians, to show that they are entirely 
without any moral views and impressions ; Mr. Burton, 
* " Origin of Civilization," p. 263. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 211 

to show that in Eastern Africa "conscience does not ex- 
ist ;"* and other travellers, to prove the same non-mo- 
rality. But giving equal time to the tribes and nations 
of the world, and the same working force in dreams and 
shadows to produce morality and religion, why is it, or 
how is it, that there should be any tribe now without 
either or both ? On our theory, such a condition is easily 
accounted for ; on his, it is utterly inexplicable. It is 
perfectly clear that from this origin no fixed principles 
can be educed to guide the world. Without religion, 
without belief in a higher Being, there can be no felt 
obligation, and, consequently, no permanent code of mor- 
als. Each individual and each tribe will assert, wherever 
it is possible without impunity, its own supremacy. The 
facts which Sir John Lubbock quotes, in his chapter on 
Character and Morals, confute his own inferences ; 
and when we revert to his chapter on Religion, which 
somewhat awkwardly and illogically he has introduced 
before that on Morals, we find it impossible to connect 
the two by that process of development which it is his 
aim to vindicate. He frankly concedes, in the following 
statement, what proves ultimately an unbridged gulf be- 
tween "rudimentary religion" and religion as it is in 
Christendom : " It must, however, be admitted that reli- 
gion, as understood by the lower savage races, differs 
essentially from ours ; nay, it is not only different, but 
even opposite. Thus, their deities are evil, not good ; 
they may be forced into compliance with the wishes of 
man ; they require bloody, and rejoice in human sacrifi- 

* " Origin of Civilization," p. 264. 



212 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ces ; they are mortal, not immortal ; a part of, not the 
author of nature, they are to be approached by dances 
rather than by prayers, and often approve what we call 
vice, rather than what we esteem as virtue. . . . We re- 
gard the Deity as good ; they (the lower races) look upon 
him as evil : we submit ourselves to Him ; they endeavor 
to obtain control over Him ; we feel the necessity of ac- 
counting for the blessings by which we are surrounded ; 
they think the blessings come out of themselves, and 
attribute all evil to the interference of malignant be- 
ings. * 

Mark the bearing of these concessions. The religion of 
the lower savages not only differs " essentially " from ours, 
but is its " opposite'' How then can this essentially differ- 
ent and opposite religion be evolved or developed from 
that which is beneath it, or lower ? Such a result is in- 
conceivable on the principle which runs through his whole 
exposition of the " Origin of Civilization." Further, 
how is it that we regard as good the Deity, whom they 
all regard as evil ? What has induced this great change? 
How is it, also, that while there are gods of all qualities, 
there is no God of holiness except where the Bible is ac- 
knowledged ? How is it that in all the systems of reli- 
gion in the world, apart from the Bible, there is endless 
confusion, and we can find no such grand and compre- 
hensive description as that with which from childhood 
we have been familiar — " God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, 
and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, 
justice, goodness, and truth" ?f 
* "Origin of Civilization," p. 116. i Shorter Catechism, Question 4. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 213 

It is difficult to give anything like coherence to Sir 
John Lubbock's reasoning on this subject, for, although 
he speaks of the " religious beliefs of the higher races,"* 
he gives to the Bible no higher place than to other books. 
When in reference to sacrifices, for example, he quotes 
David's saying, " I will take no bullock out of thy house, 
nor he-goats out of thy folds," Psa. 50 : 9, he accepts the 
statement only as in advance of its time, and he accounts 
for sacrifices, even in Solomon's time, not only as being 
necessary " in the then condition of the Jews," but as 
being part of the "natural process of development "f 
through which religion must pass. The animal sacrifices 
which he finds on a great scale among the Jews, he can 
understand only on the hypothesis that they were once 
usual ; and he assumes, by a forced interpretation of 
the 27th chapter of Leviticus, that " human sacrifices 
were at one time habitual among the Jews."$ He en- 
tirely misses the meaning of the Jewish sacrifices, and fails 
to connect them with the great fact in the New Testament 
history which led Paul to exclaim, " God forbid that I 
should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
Gal. 6: 14. We have referred to these somewhat minute 
yet essential parts of his exposition, because they become 
incoherent, and in part unintelligible, when near its close 
he says : " The higher faiths, however, merely superim- 
posed themselves on, and did not eradicate the lower 
superstitions."§ Whence are these higher faiths ? Are 
they revealed or evolved ? And how came they to super- 

* " Oi igin of Civilization," p. 236. t Ibid., p. 237. 
t Ibid., p. 243. § Ibid., p. 255. 



214 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

impose themselves ? The difficulty is not lessened when, 
in the next paragraph he says : " Nay, in the absence of 
education, not even Christianity prevents mankind from 
falling into these errors."* He does himself the greatest 
possible injustice if he recognizes Christianity as a re- 
vealed system, " superimposing " a higher faith, revolu- 
tionizing the world, and ennobling it with the fullest pos- 
sible civilization, and yet does not set it down as the 
basis of all that is true, permanent, and heavenly in the 
moral and religious evolution of the human race. 

We most cordially concur in Sir John Lubbock's 
statement that science is rendering "immense service" 
to the cause of religion and humanity, and that true sci- 
ence and true religion cannot be really opposed to one 
another ; but we repudiate the idea that " true religion, 
without science, is impossible." St. Peter and others, in 
apostolic times, knew little of physical science, for it is 
to that section of thought Sir John Lubbock refers ; but 
he will not deny that they exemplified true religion, and 
that " to the poor " the gospel was preached. 

We think he has also signally failed in his estimate of 
the power of religion, and of the tendencies of the human 
heart and intellect, when he declares that he holds the 
non-existence of religion among savage races to be their 
original condition, because it is difficult to believe that a 
people which had once possessed a religion should ever 
lose it."f He knows little of the condition of our sunken 
population in large towns, who can write thus regarding 

* "Origin of Civilization," p. 256. t Ibid., p. 348; see also "British 
Association Reports," p. 121. 1867. Dundee. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 215 

the preservation of religious beliefs among them. Men 
may not be able to forget the religion which they were 
once taught, or to root out every vestige of the religious 
belief which they have deliberately abandoned, and to 
that extent Sir John Lubbock's declaration may be true, 
that " Man can no more voluntarily abandon or change 
the articles of his religious creed than he can make one 
hair black or white, or add another cubit to his stature ;"* 
but beyond that it is not true, and gives no support to his 
theory. Our experience of the helplessness and igno- 
rance of those who have been allowed to grow up in our 
great cities, unheeded by man and reckless of the future, 
warrants our unqualified rejection of this too generous 
statement. In an examination of factory workers in 
which, when attending the Glasgow Uuiversity, we took 
part with others, at the request of one of the most enter- 
prising and philanthropic merchants in the city, the igno- 
rance of the simplest Bible truths which prevailed, was 
conclusive proof of the almost incredible rapidity with 
which a people might sink through even civilized society, 
into that state spoken of by the apostles as " having no 
hope, and without God in the world."f They had not 

* " Origin of Civilization," p. 348. 

t Some answered that "God was the first man;" some that "Jesus was 
the first man ;" some that " Eve was the first man ;" some " never heard 
of heaven or hell ;" and one answered that she " kent naething about thae 
things;" some were ignorant of the resurrection, and refused to believe it; 
some said the soul would die with the body ; and one, on being asked sim- 
ple questions about Moses, Joseph, Daniel, and others, said she " did not 
know any of these gentlemen." The examination embraced 69S workers, 
male and female, between 13 and 21 years of age, in four lactones, viz., 
two spinning, one steam-loom, and one woollen, and was conducted, du 



2i6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

abandoned their religious belief, for they had never been 
taught any, and their " social instincts " did not much 
assist them. Many of them had no conception whatever 
of a Deity, of future reward or punishment, of heaven or 
hell ; and they were as ignorant of the facts of Scripture 
as if they had been brought up in Timbuctoo or Unya- 
nyembe ! If such thorough ignorance of all religion and 
its duties can be found in a city representing, in its West- 
End, the luxury, the culture, and the refinement of mod- 
ern civilization, what degradation and sunkenness might 
we not expect in the territories of neglected savage tribes ? 
This sunken condition is by no means exceptional. The 
varied experiences of town missionaries have furnished 
similar facts, and confirmed the conclusion that morally, 
intellectually, and physically, man does often sink from a 
higher to a lower level. Men lose religious knowledge, 
they cease to believe religious truth, and they fall away 
from religious duty. This has been admirably stated by 
the Duke of Argyll ;* and there is perhaps no part of 
Sir John Lubbock's reply which is weaker than his treat- 
ment of this objection.! Although religions, as he as- 
serts, may not be put on nor cast off like garments, 
according to their utility, beauty, or power of comforting, 
they may be gradually reduced or worn out, or become 

ring six evenings, by twelve schoolmasters, the rector of the Normal Col- 
lege, and six students of the university, assisted by the overseers of each 
public work. The examination was thorough, and revealed a state of 
almost utter heathenism, which confounded us. The facts were published 
at the time, and were not called in question. See "Stow's Training Sys- 
tem," p. 128. Tenth edition. 

* "Primeval Man," p. 156. f "Origin of Civilization," p. 348. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 217 

so patched that the original texture may be scarcely 
recognizable, or they may be scornfully torn off and flung 
aside by infidels, whose families are allowed to grow up 
in neglect of every religious observance. A very gener- 
ous weakness is betrayed by Sir John Lubbock, when he 
gives the following reason for the permanence of reli- 
gious influences : " Religion appeals so strongly to the 
hopes and fears of men ; it takes so deep a hold on most 
minds ; it is so good a consolation in times of sorrow and 
sickness, that I can hardly believe any nation would ever 
abandon it altogether."* Nations may not deliberately 
abandon their religion ; yet emigrants to other lands may 
gradually or rapidly lose it, and found communities or 
tribes in which religious beliefs are but dimly percepti- 
ble. In large towns like Glasgow, Liverpool, and Lon- 
don, there may linger among the sunken masses vague 
notions of a power in religion, so long as the Sabbath 
bells and a day of rest proclaim its existence ; but in such 
notions there can be no support, nor consolation, nor 
civilizing influence. 

On his theory, how can religion be of the least prac- 
tical value ? It is of the earth, earthy ; it is a religion 
without a Bible and without a Saviour, originated in 
those irrational creatures which are beneath man, and 
developed by a process which no one • can comprehend. 
It is at best a struggle, an upheaval ; it cannot uplift or 
attract us, it has no heavenliness, and of what avail can 
it possibly be to the spirit as it is leaving the " earthly 
house of this tabernacle" for " the unseen and eternal" ? 

* "British Association Reports," p. 121. 1S67. 

19 



2i8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

"By these theorists, we are left ignorant of the future. 
They can know nothing of it, their philosophy fails them, 
they ignore in their history of civilization the one Book 
which can explain aright, because it originates, its high- 
est forms, which is the true interpreter of history, and 
the sanctifying Power which is to uplift a sunken world. 

What are the highest aspirations of these guides ? 
What practical form does their religion assume ? And, 
of what moral value can it be to the human race ? Let 
themselves speak. Darwin has said, after referring to 
the strange superstitions and customs which have pre- 
vailed, as being " terrible to think of," " yet it is well 
occasionally to reflect on these superstitions, for they 
show us what an infinite debt of gratitude we owe" — to 
whom ? to man ? to God, the bountiful giver of every 
good and perfect gift ? no ! — " to the improvement of our 
reason, to science, and our accumulated knowledge."* 
Think of that, "gratitude to science" and to our own 
" accumulated knowledge' ! ! As well is it to speak of 
gratitude to stocks and stones, or other senseless things. 

Nor does Herbert Spencer guide us to a clearer at- 
mosphere and a firmer resting-place, when he reasons in 
favor of a progress which shall cease altogether when an 
" equilibrium" has been established between man and his 
surrounding conditions. When the internal forces which 
we know as feelings are perfectly balanced by the exter- 
nal forces which they encounter, then there will be 
reached something like the repose of heaven.f Is such 

* "Descent of Man," vol. i, pp. 68, 69. 

\ Herbert Spencer's words are, " The adaptation of man's nature to 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 219 

a result possible ? Does philosophy warrant the suppo- 
sition that discipline shall cease, and man's intellectual 
and moral nature shall be balanced between opposing 
forces ? The hypothesis is unscientific. It violates the 
laws which history and our constitution have proved to 
be permanent and ineradicable, in our yearning after a 
higher and brighter existence than this world can know. 
We may at once set aside, as untrue to nature, the con- 
clusion that there shall ever be a condition on earth in 
which human desires will be satisfied through any con- 
ceivable combination of external forces with internal 
feelings, and that the hitherto unsatisfied pantings of the 
soul will cease in the enjoyment of the dull repose of the 
mere brute. He has studied the struggles of the human 
mind to little purpose, indeed, who believes that aught 
earthly can satisfy its deepest longings. To accept Her- 
bert Spencer's theory of the highest conceivable form of 
civilization, is to assume that man's unquenchable thirst 
shall be satisfied here, that desire shall be lost in the 
stupor of luxury, and that hope itself shall perish in earth- 
born perfection. 

Beautiful as the theory is in the sphere of the imagi- 
nation, facts do not sustain it ; and our reason scorns 
it, as violating some of those laws by which the human 

the conditions of his existence, cannot cease until the internal forces, 
which we know as feelings, are in equilibrium with the external forces 
they encounter. And the establishment of this equilibrium is the arrival 
at a state of human nature and a social organization such that the indi- 
vidual has no desires but those which may be satisfied without exceeding 
his proper sphere of action, while society maintains no restraints but those 
which the individual voluntarily respects." First P7-inciples, p. 512. 



22 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

constitution is being ever disciplined in relation to the 
unseen and eternal. The speculations in which many 
indulge, varied as they are, and, in some instances, really 
invigorating as mental gymnastics, are yet unprofitable, 
and we must add, illogical. Divested of those ideas 
which the theorists have unconsciously drawn from that 
Christianity which like the atmosphere, is diffused over 
society in Britain, their speculations could not bear the 
touch of the gentlest test. They have no right to use 
its principles, for the only ideas which they can employ, 
with logical fairness, are those which issue from their 
own departments in the natural history of the lower an- 
imals and man. Their ideas of " sin" and " sorrow and 
repentance," of a " moral sense," and of a universal, be- 
neficent, and Holy Creator and Ruler,* are obviously bor- 
rowed from the Bible, and the Christian system which it 
unfolds ; and yet they professedly exclude both. Let 
them carry out their principles, and the legislation of 
Britain will pass into the confusion which "strikes" 
among the employed and the' combinations of the em- 
ployers are already beginning to create. What princi- 
ples and what precepts can legislators in the Darwin, 
or Herbert Spencer, or Sir John Lubbock school, bring 
to bear on contending masses of man, which can be of 
the least practical value, except those which are drawn 

* See Sir John Lubbock's " Prehistoric Times," p. 387, second edition ; 
and also Darwin's "Descent of Man," vol 11, p. 395, where it is said, 
" The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator of the Universe does not 
seem to arise in the mind of man until he has been elevated by long-con- 
tinued culture." Culture has never given that idea apart from the Bible 
or tradit on. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 221 

from Scripture, and which inculcate with all the majesty 
of divine authority the obligations of self-denial and mu- 
tual love ? Selfishness and utilitarianism in political 
economy will be inevitable results on the theory of nat- 
ural selection, and the " survival of the fittest" will be 
the prevalence of might only. Their teaching bears us 
back to the too-long-honored plan, 

"That they should take [select] who have the power, 
And they should keep who can." 

Natural selection can acknowledge no law, and barba- 
rism can create none. " Where there is no law, there is 
no transgression." This nation, if civilization is to pre- 
vail in its highest and most enduring form, must revert 
with more than its old earnestness to the principles 
which the Word of God inculcates ; for through these 
only is that righteousness made powerful by which na- 
tions are permanently exalted. 

We cannot leave this subject without protesting 
against the notion which some appear to cherish, when 
they charge us, sometimes by hints, and sometimes 
openly, with being unfavorable to science, and fearing it. 
We are not. We love it. The works of God in creation 
are a source of inexhaustible delight to every student. 
Next to the guidance of the Word of God, the lessons of 
his works are the most impressive, animating and enrich- 
ing. That man's heart is not right, who is not elevated 
by the beauties, and even by the very mysteries which 
nature is ever spreading before him ; but while conce- 
ding all this, we cannot accept as true the declaration that 
science can of itself make us " innocent" or more virtu- 

19* 



222 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ous, and that "religion is impossible without it." The 
highest possible civilization will combine them both. 
When they shine upon one another, pouring forth their 
treasures of light for man's enlargement and comfort, 
science, philosophy, theology, and religion, may be found 
mutually helpful. We resist their separation. We keep 
side by side the Works and the Word of God. The lon- 
ger the humble student looks into the Word of God, 
the more imposing does the grandeur of its revelation 
become, and the more satisfying to the soul is its deep- 
ening confidence in its God. But there is this peculiari- 
ty in the marvellous volume, that while it impresses the 
philosopher, it interests the child. Within this record, 
while there are treasured up for us wondrous facts, ten- 
derest sympathies and purest thoughts, profoundest phi- 
losophy, and mysterious movements of divine government 
and of sovereign grace, into which angels love to look, 
there are also teachings so simple and so direct that a 
child's lip can lisp them, and a child's life embody them. 
There may be true religion in the life of the young 
without much of the profounder theology on which many 
expend their strength. So, also, " pure and undefiled 
religion" may exist without attainments in natural science. 
Men ignorant of the speculations of the philosopher, and 
unable to comprehend the calculus of the mathematician, 
or to apply any of the tests of the scientist, may, not- 
withstanding, enjoy vigorous health, be nerved by the 
bracing breeze, and revel in the beauty of a summer's 
landscape or in the wild turmoil of a winter's storm ; so, 
also, those who are similarly ignorant may have health 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 223 

of soul, and delight in the beauties of holiness, while 
they realize, in the Lord Jesus Christ, " the chief among 
ten thousand, the altogether lovely." Millions of our 
working population, unacquainted with recent discoveries 
of science and applications in» art, and undisturbed by 
conflicting Biblical criticisms or historic doubts, or the 
problems of speculative theology, may, notwithstanding, 
have that faith, and that experimental knowledge of the 
few simple doctrines which are related to sin, repentance, 
pardon, and peace, and may be marked by that refine- 
ment of feeling, of language, and of conduct, which 
Christianity alone imparts, and which of itself consti- 
tutes a civilization incomparably nobler than that which 
science alone can ever evolve. 

The bold assumptions by modern theorists of prog- 
ress, are to be strenuously resisted. They claim it as 
their distinctive characteristic ; but we do not yield it ; 
while partially theirs, it is preeminently ours. Progress 
with us has not only a more comprehensive range of feel- 
ing and of thought, but a grander close, while they are 
left behind in comparative gloom. That the affections 
be purified and exalted, the understanding enlightened, 
the will made submissive, and the imagination regulated, 
is the law of the Christian's life. His path, like that of 
the just, shall shine "more and more unto the perfect 
day." Sanctification is evolution in its highest form. 
Following on to know the Lord is the Christian's privi- 
lege, and to bear in love his brother's burden, is to "ful- 
fil the law of Christ." Thus man may reach the summit 
of civilization on earth, but progress hereafter shall be 



224 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

continuous, development of character in eternity may be 
anticipated. Capacity will be enlarged. " It doth not 
yet appear what we shall be ; but we know that when He 
shall appear we shall be like Him." The light of Scrip- 
ture, blending with that of Science, not only to enlarge 
our conceptions, but to cheer and guide us on our earthly 
pilgrimage, shines beyond the gloom of death into the dis- 
tant future, and reveals intuitional attainment. By its 
light we discover unfailing advancement. Imposed limit 
there is none. Growth in knowledge will never cease. 
It may be ours, in that new and heavenly sphere, to rise 
from stage to stage in perfect bliss, sounding depth and 
solving problem, seeing as we are seen, and reaching 
heights of thought, from which, when we look back on 
all that we deemed grandest here, we shall regard them 
but as child-experiences in the comprehensiveness and 
magnificence of those attainments which eternity shall 
evolve and sustain. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 22* 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN — THE BIBLE CHRONOLOGY — THE 
CHRONOLOGY OF GEOLOGISTS. 

And while the student of nature goes on honestly, patiently, diffi- 
dently, observing and storing up his observations, and carrying his reason- 
ings unflinchingly to their legitimate conclusions, convinced that it would 
be treason to the majesty at once of science and of religion, if he sought 
to help either by swerving ever so little from the straight rule of truth ; 
yet he does all this under a reverent sense of responsibility, fostered and 
deepened by his religious convictions. — the aichbishop of canter- 
bury. 

We have reached another and higher stage, but only 
to be beset by new difficulties. Such questions are 
pressed upon us as, When was Man created ? Through 
what periods has his history passed ? Does the Bible 
chronology harmonize with those long ages through 
which, according to some distinguished geologists and 
archaeologists, Man has existed ? 

Before we enter on the discussion of the facts and 
inferences which they adduce, it is indispensable that we 
determine what the Bible teaches on this subject, and 
what, consequently, we are really bound to defend. 

I. THE BIBLE CHRONOLOGY, AND ITS TEACHING AS TO THE 
ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

Much confusion and much unnecessary alarm have 
arisen from a disregard, on the part of Christian apolo- 
gists, of what the Bible does teach concerning the Anti- 



226 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

quity of Man ; and one of the benefits which extending 
science has conferred, has been to compel interpreters to 
look more closely to the Scriptures, and to remove every 
incrustation with which their predecessors may have 
encumbered the text. 

We have no definite Bible chronology. No texts give 
the date of either the Creation of Man or of the Deluge ; 
accordingly the period between them is variously estima- 
ted. In the Hebrew chronology, for example, it is 1,656 
years; in the Samaritan, 1,307; in the Septuagint, 2,262 ; 
and in Josephus, 2,256. The common conclusion that 
6,000 years make up man's history, cannot be positively 
established. While the chronology deduced from the 
Hebrew gives 4,000 years between Adam and Jesus 
Christ, that of the Septuagint extends man's history by 
1,500 years, making the period of his existence 5,532 
years; and some increase this difference by 120 years 
more. We have to deal with the question, it is true, 
only in relation to the history of man since the Deluge, 
but the same elasticity is apparent in the chronology after 
the flood as before it. As part of the Scripture genealo- 
gies is definite and part indefinite, we have no means of 
determining satisfactorily what is the length of man's 
history ; or, in other words, the antiquity of the race. 
The consequence is, that, apart altogether from recent 
geological disquisitions, different dates and periods have 
been stated and resolutely defended. Ussher, Hales, 
Petavius, Jackson, Poole, and Bunsen, for example, have 
published widely varying results. By a close examina- 
tion of the separate genealogical tables, we are taught 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 227 

other than purely historical truths, and we may well 
pause before concluding that they are meant merely as a 
basis for any chronological system whatever.* While 
many systems have been advocated in avowed and irrec- 
oncilable opposition to the Bible, it is evident that the 
differences, even among those who are devout believers 
in its reliableness, are such that no sane man can dogma- 
tize as to its chronology. " The extreme uncertainty," 
says Dr. Hodge, " attending all attempts to determine 
the chronology of the Bible, is sufficiently evinced by the 
fact that one hundred and eighty different calculations 
have been made by Jewish and Christian authors, of the 
length of the period between Adam and Christ. The 
longest of them make it six thousand, nine hundred and 
eighty-four, and the shortest, three thousand, four hun- 
dred and eighty-three years. Under these circumstan- 
ces, it is very clear that the friends of the Bible have no 
occasion for uneasiness. If the facts of science or of his- 
tory should ultimately make it necessary to admit that 
eight or ten thousand years have elapsed since the crea- 
tion of man, there is nothing in the Bible in the way of 
such concession. The Scriptures do not teach us how 
long men have existed on the earth. Their tables of 
genealogy were intended to prove that Christ was the 
Son of David and of the Seed of Abraham, and not how 
many years have elapsed between the creation and the 
advent."! Although eight or ten thousand years are 

* See an instructive article, Does Scriphcre settle the Antiquity of Man ? 
in the " British and Foreign Evangelical Review," by Rev. Malcolm 
White, M. A. January, 1872. 

t " Systematic Theology," vol. 2, p. 41. By Charles Hodge, D. D. 



2 23 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

insignificant, compared with the long periods over which 
geologists carry the history of man, they may prove ulti- 
mately more than sufficient to cover the facts alike of 
science and of history. But while it is acknowledged 
that we have no rigid chronological system in the Bible 
on which to fall back, that admission is widely different 
from accepting the conclusions of the geologist, and 
attempting to force the Bible into harmony with them. 
Let us now examine 

II. THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE GEOLOGISTS. 

Of all the sciences, geology is, in many respects, the 
most indefinite. The data are uncertain, and conclu- 
sions as to Time are generally so vague as to be almost 
useless. The problems of the geologist, like those of the 
mechanic, depend for their solution on the elements of 
Force and Time. Let force be increased, and time may 
be lessened ; but let time be prolonged, and a correspond- 
ingly lessened force will produce the same result as a 
greater force in shorter time. The geologist, therefore, 
in looking only to results, may make the time long or 
short which was necessary to produce certain effects, 
according as he makes the conditions of long time or of 
great force predominate. 

Looking into the immeasurable Past, he endeavors to 
break it into indefinite sections by such terms as " eras," 
" epochs," and " cycles ;" and he has introduced a vague 
chronology by speaking of Time as pre-geological, geo- 
logical, and historical. That remote period which starts 
on its course backward from the date of the first fossil, is 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 229 

prc-gcological ; the period extending from the first fossil 
to the first man, is geological ; and that which follows is 
historical, as more or less strictly related to man.* Dr. 
Page regards the first as an abysm which the human in- 
tellect, in even its boldest moods, shrinks from exploring. 
But there are workers in Natural Philosophy busy with 
problems which lie beyond the sphere of the geologist, 
and by whose labors the whole question of Time may be 
soon reduced within a more manageable compass than at 
present. This remark applies also to the historical peri- 
od, which, in its divisions and in its extent, is still wrapped 
in obscurity. We are, as yet, only on the verge of this 
great field of inquiry, and while theories are admissible, 
perhaps in the meantime indispensable, dogmatism can 
be the sign only of weakness or ignorance. 

Our investigation is for the present limited to the geo- 
logical period which has been designated the historical, 
or rather to that which is connected with Prehistoric 
Archceology, in as far as it mingles its facts with those of 
geology. The two sciences are interwoven. As in the 
one, a stone hatchet, a flint arrow-head, a fragment of 
pottery, will shed historical light on the purpose for 
which it was made, and on the degree of intelligence then 
existing ; so, in the other science, a leaf, a shell, or a frag- 
ment of bone will reveal what the climate was, as well 
as the other conditions in which man then lived ; and both 
togetker will contribute to reveal the character of man 
and the circumstances of his home. 

It is with this period alone we have to do at present; 

* "The Past and Present Life of the Globe," by Dr. Page, p. 219. 
20 



2 3 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

but although it is the most recent, and although its facts 
are within common reach, much diversity of opinion and 
inference prevails. Although agreed in claiming imvzen- 
sity of time, geologists are by no means at one regarding 
any definite period for man's history. Wallace is toler- 
ably certain that man has run a course of a thousand 
centuries, but he does not see any evidence against his 
having existed "ten thousand centuries;"* and he as- 
sumes that there was a time " when he had the form, but 
hardly the nature, of man ; when he neither possessed 
human speech, nor those sympathetic and moral feelings 
which, in a greater or less degree, everywhere now dis- 
tinguish the race."f Similar views are held by Darwin, 
Sir Charles Lyell, and Professor Huxley. On this point 
their only difference consists in the duration of the his- 
tory they assign to man. Professor Ftthlroth of Elber- 
feld, in his work on the "Neanderthal Fossil Man," telis 
us that " it reaches back to a period of from two hundred 
thousand to three hundred thousand years ;" and some 
enthusiastic anthropologists have put in the modest claim 
for man of nine million years. This amazing elasticity 
is utterly inconsistent with the principles of scientific 
investigation. The geological chronologists are evidently 
without such definite data as are indispensable even for 
judicious conjecture, and they are exposing their own 
weakness, as guides of scientific thought, by such hap- 
hazard inferences. Our hope is, that Natural Philosophy 
will soon correct the vagaries of Natural Science, through 
such application of principles as Sir W. Thomson has 

* " Natural Selection," p. 303. t Ibid., pp. 322, 323. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 237 

already indicated. It will most probably be found that 
the physical conditions of our globe were, in those dis- 
tant periods, unsuitable for man ; or, failing this, it may 
be ascertained that, if so many hundred thousand years 
are demanded for man's history — confessedly the latest 
in the geological records — there cannot be obtained suit- 
able and sufficiently extended periods for the life-histo- 
ries of those creatures which preceded man in successive 
formations, until we are landed in that time during which, 
as Sir W. Thomson has demonstrated, no life could have 
possibly existed. When it is borne in mind that these 
far-separated chronological conclusions have been de- 
duced from precisely the same facts, he must be credu- 
lous indeed who places any faith in them. 

But, at the same time, as these conclusions carry the 
Antiquity of Man far beyond the Bible record, it becomes 
us to examine carefully the facts on which they rest. 
We have done so, and the history of the inferences based 
upon them by no means increases our confidence in the 
chronological guidance which has been offered to us. 
Allusion has been already made to the nearly perfect 
human skeletons which were found imbedded in what at 
first appeared to be old limestone, on the mainland of 
Guadaloupe ; and to the fact that, after a keen discussion, 
and a temporary triumph on the side of the opponents of 
the Bible, it was discovered that the limestone was a 
recent formation, and that the age of the skeletons could 
not be much more than two hundred years. A similar 
agitation was produced when the footprints of man were 
discovered on limestone, and described in the "American 



2.12 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



Journal of Science," and a similar collapse followed when 
Dr. Dale Owen proved that they had been traced by an 
Indian tribe. 

A mass of conglomerate rock was found in 1831 at 
the depth of ten feet below the bed of the river Don in 
Derbyshire ; and had there been found in that mass, as 
there might have been, portions of any human skeleton, 
and nothing more, there would have gone forth to all 
parts of the civilized world the conclusion that additional 
proof had been obtained that man existed hundreds of 
thousands of years before the earliest possible date in 
Scripture chronology ; but, very awkwardly for the advo- 
cates of a vast antiquity, the discovery of several silver 
coins of the reign of Edward the First, showed that the 
conglomerate rock was only about six hundred years 
old. 

Not dissimilar has been the history of Mr. Leonard 
Horner's famous discovery in the Nile deposit. Having 
been intrusted in 185 1, by the~Royal Society of London, 
to make a series of borings in the sediment of the river 
Nile, Mr. Horner employed several engineers and sixty 
workmen, and did his appointed work very efficiently. 
Shafts and borings were made at intervals across the 
valley from east to west ; and, in the course of the exca- 
vations, they brought to the surface jars, vases, pots, a 
small human figure in burnt clay, and several pieces of 
burnt brick, obtained at various depths, but sometimes as 
low as sixty feet. Minute calculations of time were 
instantly prosecuted. Assuming a certain thickness of 
mud deposit in a century, it was announced that the 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 233 

pieces of burnt brick were twelve thousand years old. 
Another fragment was found at the depth of seventy-two 
feet, and having been connected with a somewhat differ- 
ent rate of calculation, led to the conclusion that it was 
thirty thousand years old. So on they went with facts 
and inferences, until it was ascertained, unfortunately for 
the theorists, that confounding witnesses were forthcom- 
ing. A piece of pottery, which must have been made, 
as they asserted, before the historic period, turned out 
to be of Roman manufacture ; and in the deepest boring 
of all, at the foot of the statue of Rameses II., the dis- 
covery of the Grecian honeysuckle, marked on some of 
those mysterious fragments which they imagined to be 
prehistoric, proved that it could not have been older than 
the age of Alexander the Great. When Sir R. Stephen- 
son was engineering in the neighborhood of Damietta, 
he found, at a greater depth than Mr. Horner reached, a 
brick bearing on it the stamp of Mohammed AH.* The 
attempt to neutralize the damaging effects of these facts, 
by showing that the Egyptians of old did burn bricks, 
has been fruitless ; and men of his own school have be- 
come ashamed of Sir Charles Lyell's somewhat careful 
exposition of Mr. Horner's "preposterous" calculations, 
and regret that he " should have thought it worth while 
to notice such absurdities." It is, however, but just to 
Sir Charles to state that, while he is careful in giving 
Mr. Horner's facts, and seems anxious to defend his 
inferences, he admits that Egyptologists do not consider 
his experiments satisfactory for testing the age of a given 

* "London Quarthrly Review," p. 240, No. 51. 1S66. 
20* 



234 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

thickness of the Nile sediment."* The changes in the 
river Nile, and the fuller knowledge of the action and 
the varying rate of deposits by the Ganges and other 
great rivers, have turned the attention of the scientific 
world altogether aside from Mr. Horner's discoveries, as 
destitute of the least title to respect or acknowledgment. 
These and similar blunders by geologists of the highest 
standing should render us very chary in accepting any 
of those generalizations which do not rest on a wide 
induction of facts. 

With the precautions which the history of this discus- 
sion has already suggested, we should not be deemed 
unnecessarily suspicious if we prefer waiting for fuller 
information before accepting facts and inferences, even 
when both appear to be worthy of an undisputed place 
in our investigations. Although we may be unable to 
explain some facts which seem to contradict or neutralize 
others, it is our duty to reject none, but to retain them, 
in the hope that their mutual relations may, in due time, 
be clearly established. As it is, of course, inadmissible, 
in a discussion of this kind, to ignore a single well- 
authenticated fact, because it may constitute the one link 
needed to give completeness to the evidence, it is neces- 
sary to sift, one by one, the whole series on which con- 
clusions may rest regarding the Antiquity of Man. 

For the sake of distinctness, it may be better to group 
the evidence for man's antiquity under the three follow- 
ing divisions : 

* "Geological Evidences for the Antiquity of Man," by Sir Charles 
Lyell, p. 38. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 235 

(1.) The discovery of human remains in a fossil state, 
in strata, or deposits, and caves. 

(2.) The discovery of flints and stone implements in 
connection with remains of extinct animals. And, 

(3.) The existence of villages built on piles, in Switzer- 
land and elsewhere. 

I. — 1. " The fossil man of Denise," found in a volcanic 
breccia, near the town of De Puy-en-Velay, in Central 
France, attracted, as in similar instances, the earnest 
attention of geologists ; but great doubt exists as to the 
genuineness of the skeleton. Sir Charles Lyell half 
admits the likelihood that imposition may have been 
practised on the scientific observers in that district, and 
does not deny the probability that certain slabs of tuff 
which contained human remains were tampered with. 
" Whether some of these were spurious or not," he says, 
" is a question more difficult to decide. One of them, 
now in the possession of M. Pichot-Dumazel, an advocate 
of Le Puy, is suspected of having had some plaster of 
Paris introduced into it to bind the bones more firmly 
together in the loose volcanic tuff."* Sir Charles went 
in 1859 to Le Puy, to inquire into the authenticity of the 
bones and into their geological age ; and he employed a 
laborer to make some fresh excavations, "in the hope of 
verifying the true position of the fossils ; but all of this 
withoitt success." He failed even to find in situ any 
exact counterpart of the stone of the Le Puy Museum. 
But apart from this side of the question, M. Felix Robert 
has decided that the tuff is " a product of the latest erup- 

* " Antiquity of Man," p. 196. 



236 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

tion of the volcano ;"* and M. Pichot is " satisfied that 
the fossil bones belonged to the period of the last vol- 
canic eruptions of Velay."f . 

2. The fossil human bone of Natchez, on the Missis- 
sippi, has been adduced as proving an antiquity of at 
least a hundred thousand years ; but scarcely can any 
evidence be more precarious. Sir Charles Lyell himself 
does not insist on the facts as in any degree constituting 
reliable proof, but has suggested, as a possible explana- 
tion of the association of the human bone with the re- 
mains of extinct animals, that the former may possibly 
have been derived from the vegetable soil at the top of 
the cliff ; whereas the latter may have been dislodged 
from a lower position, and both may have fallen into the 
same heap at the bottom of the ravine. The black color 
of the human bone may have been acquired by its having 
lain for centuries in the dark superficial soil common in 
these regions, a supposition fully borne out by the fact 
that many human bones in old Indian graves, in the same 
district, have been stained of as black a dye. Sir Charles 
in part apologizes for introducing this theory, and adds, 
"but so long as we have only one isolated case, and are 
without the testimony of a geologist who was present to 
behold the bone when still engaged in the matrix, and to 
extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend 
our judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil."^ 

We should rather say that it is not " allowable" to intro- 
duce such a case as in any shape calculated to shed light 
on this subject. It proves nothing, it confirms nothing. 
* "Antiquity of Man," p. 167. t Ibid., p. 195. % Ibid., pp. 202, 203. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 237 

3. A human skeleton, found at a considerable depth 
near New Orleans, has been employed with a greater air 
of triumph than is usual, even with the eager advocates 
of a high antiquity for man. Sir Charles attaches con- 
siderable importance to this discovery, in connection with 
his estimate of the time during which the delta of the 
Mississippi has been formed. The area is 30,000 square 
miles ; the sedimentary matter has reached a depth of 
several hundred feet ; and he approximates a minimum 
of time for this deposit by ascertaining, experimentally, 
the annual discharge of water by the river, and the mean 
annual amount of solid matter in its waters. " The low- 
est estimate of the time required would lead us to assign 
a high antiquity, amounting to many tens of thousands 
of years (probably more than 100,000) to the existing 
delta." In one part of this delta, when carrying a large 
excavation through a succession of beds made up chiefly 
of vegetable matter, the workmen passed " four buried 
forests superimposed one upon the other;" and at the 
depth of sixteen feet, they " found some charcoal and a 
human skeleton." By making certain assumptions as to 
the age of the successive forests, Dr. Dowler has assigned 
to the skeleton an antiquity of 50,000 years. 

It will be observed that the four superimposed forests 
are comprised within sixteen feet — in itself a very im- 
probable circumstance — and it may be added, that Sir 
Charles has evidently misgivings as to the calculations 
of Dr. Dowler, for he is careful to state that, as the dis- 
covery in question had not been made when he saw the 
excavation in progress at the Gas Works, in 1346, he 



238 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

"cannot form an opinion as to the value of the chrono- 
logical calculations which have led Dr. Dowler to ascribe 
to this skeleton an antiquity of 50,000 years."* The 
estimate of time by Dr. Dowler is one of those random 
guesses which are becoming almost intolerably frequent 
in professedly scientific investigations. Sir Charles him- 
self has given an entirely different estimate of the re- 
quired time, when, in his work, " Second Visit to the 
United States," he quotes a writer in " Silliman's Jour- 
nal" regarding the growth of the cypress swamp : " Sec- 
tions of such filled-up cypress basins, exposed by the 
changes in the position of the river, exhibit undisturbed, 
perfect and erect stumps, in a series of every elevation 
with respect to each other, extending from high-water 
mark down to at least twenty-five feet below, measuring 
out a time when not less than ten fully-matured cypress 
growths must have succeeded each other, the average of 
whose age could not have been less than four hundred 
years — thus making an aggregate of 4,000 years since 
the first cypress-tree vegetated in the basin. There are 
also instances where prostrate trunks of huge dimen- 
sions are found imbedded in the clay, immediately over 
which are erect stumps of trees, numbering no less than 
800 concentric layers."! Let it be borne in mind, that 
the skeleton for which Dr. Dowler claimed a history of 
50,000 years, was discovered under four of these long 
" buried forests" or "cypress growths ;" and that, as the 
writer in "Silliman's Journal" assigns to each a mini- 

* " Antfquity of Man," pp. 43, 44. 

t "Silliman's Journal," Second Series, vol. 5, p. 17. January, 184S. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 239 

mum of four hundred years, the antiquity of the skeleton 
might not be more than sixteen hundred years, even 
when admitting that the fact has been accurately stated. 
But is it not as probable that the human body may have 
sunk through the soft mud in a section of the swamp, or 
that some surface-layer overlying a narrow opening, and 
yielding, may have allowed the skeleton to fall, within 
the last few hundred years, to the place in which it was 
found ? 

Sir Charles Lyell's estimate of the time during which 
the present delta of the Mississippi has been in exist- 
ence, is altogether unsatisfactory ; and his demand for 
more than 100,000 years has not been honored by those 
who have given special attention to this subject, and who 
have placed together such data as warrant the inference 
that no more than 4,000 years has been required for the 
formation of the delta from, at least, a hundred miles 
above New Orleans.* The movements of rivers are so 
unsteady, and the rate of deposit so varied, that no claim 
as to man's antiquity can safely be made to depend on 
them. The experience of an "An Old Indigo Planter," 
as given in the " Athenaeum," is significant : " Having 
lived many years on the banks of the Ganges," he says, 
" I have seen the stream encroach on a village, undermi- 
ning the bank where it stood, and deposit, as a natural 
result, bricks, pottery, etc., in the bottom of the stream. 
On one occasion, I am certain that the depth of the 
stream where the bank was breaking, was above forty 
feet ; yet, in three years, the current of the river drifted 

* " What is Truth ?" by Rev. E. Burgess, pp. 29S, 299. 



240 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

so much, that a fresh deposit of soil took place over the 
debris of the village, and the earth was raised to a level 
with the old bank. Now, had our traveller obtained a 
bit of pottery from where it had lain for only tJirce years, 
could he reasonably draw the inference that it had been 
made 13,000 years before ?"* 

Dr. Page justly sneers at the attempt to chronologize 
through the facts by which some have elaborated con- 
clusions, and tells us truly that we have yet no means of 
estimating aright geological time, and no power to give 
it expression in years and centuries. " Many ingenious 
calculations," he says, " have no doubt been made to ap- 
proximate the dates of certain geological events ; but 
these, it must be confessed, are more amusing than in- 
structive. For example, so many lines of mud are annu- 
ally laid down by the inundation of the Nile ; fragments 
of pottery have been found at the depth of thirty feet — 
how many years since the pottery was first imbedded ? 
Again, the ledges of Niagara are wasting at the rate of 
so many feet per century ; how many years must the 
river have taken to cut its way back from Oueenstown 
to the present falls ? . . . . For these and similar compu- 
tations, it will be at once perceived that we want the 
necessary uniformity of factor ; and until we can bring 
elements of calculation as exact as those of astronomy 
to bear on geological chronology, it will be better to 
regard our ' eras,' and ' epochs,' and ' cycles,' as so many 
terms indefinite in their duration, but sufficient for the 
magnitude of the operations embraced within their 

* See "The Truth of the Bible," by the Rev. B. W. Savile, p. 116. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 241 

limit."* This admission, by such a geologist as Dr. 
Page, sufficiently vindicates the unwillingness of Bible 
students to accept, as correct, the inferences as to time 
which many are pressing upon them. 

4. Much interest has from time to time been awa- 
kened by the discovery of human bones in caves ; and 
attempts have been eagerly made to prove an extravagant 
antiquity for man from their position and their connec- 
tion with other bones. Details have been published re- 
garding the caves and fissures in England, in France, in 
Germany, in Hungary, in Canada, and elsewhere ; but it 
is unnecessary to discuss them here separately, as there 
is remarkable similarity in the facts, as well as in the 
conclusions to which they have led. Those that are 
typical may sufficiently indicate the amount and kind of 
evidence which have been brought forward, and within 
what limits the discussion should be conducted. 

At Hoxne, in Suffolk, in the beginning of this cen- 
tury, and later, not only in the caves of Gower, in Gla- 
morganshire, but in various other localities in England, 
flint implements have been found so associated with the 
bones of extinct animals, that a long chronology would 
be required to reach their origin. In the Bize cavern, in 
the department of the Aude, human bones, with frag- 
ments of rude pottery, were mingled with land-shells of 
living species, and with the bones of extinct animals. 
Similar researches brought to light similar facts in the 
cavern of Pondres, near Nismes ; but of these results no 
less an authority than M. Desnoyers has said : " The flint 

* " The Past and Present Life of the Globe, p. 220. 
21 



24 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

hatchets and arrow-heads, and the pointed bones and 
coarse pottery of many French and English caves, agree 
precisely in character with those found in the tumuli, and 
under the dolmens (rude altars of unhewn stone) of the 
primitive inhabitants of Gaul, Britain, and Germany. 
The human bones, therefore, in the caves, which are as- 
sociated with such fabricated objects, must belong, not 
to antediluvian periods, but to a people in the same stage 
of civilization as those who constructed the tumuli and 
altars."* Sir Charles himself, after visiting several caves 
in Germany, and after weighing the arguments of both 
M. Desnoyers and Dr. Buckland, has come to the con- 
clusion that the human bones mixed with those of extinct 
animals in cavern-mud, in different parts of Europe, 
" were probably not coeval. The caverns having been at 
one period the dens of wild beasts, and having served at 
other times as places of human habitation, worship, sep- 
ulture, concealment, or defence, one might easily con- 
ceive that the bones of man and those of animals, which 
were strewed over the floors of subterranean cavities, oi 
which had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them 
with the surface, might, when swept away by floods, be 
mingled in one promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous 
mud or breccia."!' 

Dr. Schmerling of Liege, with rare enthusiasm, ex- 
amined more than forty caverns in his neighborhood, and 
made some very remarkable discoveries ; yet they bear 
no direct evidence for a distant antiquity. Sir Charles 

* Quoted by Sir C. Lyell, in " Antiquity of Man," p. 61. 
t " Antiquity of Man," p. 62. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 243 

adopts Dr. Schmerling's doctrine, "that most of the ma- 
terials, organic or inorganic, now filling the caverns, 
have been washed into them through narrow, vertical, 
or oblique fissures, the upper extremities of which are 
choked up with soil and gravel."* 

What has proved of chief interest in Dr. Schmerling's 
investigations, is his finding in the Engis cave the re- 
mains of three human beings, and, among them, that 
skull which, in contrast with the Neanderthal skull, found 
in 1857, has excited so much keen debate. 

The discussion, though not lying very properly with- 
in this part of our subject, may be noticed in passing. 

The Engis skull was unequivocally so much older 
than the Neanderthal, judging from the position in which 
it was found, that, if there had been truth in the theories 
regarding the gradual development of the race, it should 
have been greatly less in its intellectual promise than 
the other ; and yet, to the utter confusion of all theorists, 
it approached very near to the highest or Caucasian type ; 
while of the other, Professor Huxley has admitted that 
" it is the most brutal of all known human skulls. "f 

Baffled by the contradiction which these two skulls 
gave, not only to the theory of " periods," but' to the the- 
ory of physical and intellectual evolution, theorists take 
refuge in the declaration that the first traces of the pri- 
mordial stock whence man has proceeded must be looked 
for in far older formations than those hitherto examined. 
The Neanderthal skull has come forth as a resolute wit- 

* " Antiquity of Man," p. 70. 

t See Professor Huxley's Paper in " Antiquity of Man," pp. 80, 89. 



244 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ness against the doctrine of the progressive development 
of the cranium, and has given a decided check to hasty 
speculation. Sir Charles Lyell admits that these two 
skulls have created very great surprise ; because the one, 
which by common consent is so old, is, notwithstanding, 
of the highest or Caucasian type ; and the other, which 
is admitted to be without any claims to antiquity, has 
departed so far from the normal standard of humanity, 
that it will not piece into the development theory. But 
if this skull, which is low in size and conformation, had 
been found in the position of the other, and the other 
had chanced to occupy its place, the reasoning on behalf 
of this theory would have been intolerant, and doubters 
would have been unsparingly denounced as bigots. 

Of other instances given, it may be sufficient to notice 
only one. At Aurignac, in the south of France, an open- 
ing into a cave was accidentally discovered in 1852, and 
in it were found seventeen human skeletons, which were 
speedily removed and buried in the neighboring ceme- 
tery. About eight years afterwards, M. Lartet examined 
the cave-remains ; and although he failed to obtain any 
satisfactory information regarding the human skeletons, 
he assigned to them a remote antiquity, along with the 
implements and other bones which he obtained. Sir 
Charles Lyell, however, does not think that the facts 
which M. Lartet has stated add anything to the evidence 
in favor of man's antiquity.* 

The conclusion of Dr. Page, in reference to all these 
cave-finds, is confirmatory of the views which we have 

* " Antiquity of Man," p. 189. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 245 

expressed regarding the uncertainty or unreliableness of 
the reasoning by which it has been attempted to carry 
the antiquity of man into immeasurably distant periods. 
After taking into consideration the facts which have been 
stated in relation to the formation and age of peat-mosses, 
and to remains in cave-earth, he is not sure whether the 
older bones of the extinct animals "may not have been 
washed up, drifted, and reassorted from earlier deposits." 
That very possibility gives an insecure footing to those 
who would establish inferences on such data. The hu- 
man skeletons which have been found in caverns he 
regards as being but of yesterday, when geologically esti- 
mated, and " dating back, at the utmost, but a few thou- 
sand years."* 

This conclusion is all the more satisfactory, as given 
by one of the most independent and cautious of geologists, 
and should encourage Bible students to cherish a deeper 
confidence in the principles which many are assailing. 

II. The evidence of antiquity, dependent on the con- 
nection of Flint Arrow-Heads and other stone imple- 
ments with the remains of extinct animals, and which is 
closely related to that of the human skeletons whose his- 
tory we have been examining, has of late been very con- 
stantly pressed into service by avowed opponents of the 
Bible. 

As intimately connected with the discovery of human 

skeletons in the position referred to, we may here notice 

the finding of human relics in Danish peat, in the valley 

of Somme, and in various caves. 

* " Geology, Advanced Text-Book," p. 383. 
21* 



246 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

The Danish peat has a chronological history assigned 
to it, dependent, first, on its rate of growth ; and second, 
on the trees which have successively lived in the course 
of its formation. In the lowest, and therefore oldest 
stratum of the peat, the Scotch fir, which is not now a 
native of the Danish islands, flourished and disappeared 
long ago. On a higher level, and in a subsequent period, 
the oak succeeded the Scotch fir; and "after flourishing 
for ages," was in turn displaced by the beech.* Danish 
naturalists and antiquarians have connected with these 
trees, respectively, the stone, bronze, and iron periods. 
In the oldest formation, deep in the peat, and under the 
trunk of a pine-tree, Steenstrup found a flint instrument ; 
and on these facts, calculations have been made by which 
some geologists have determined the antiquity of man. 

"What may be the antiquity," says Sir Charles Lyell, 
" of the earliest human remains preserved in the Danish 
peat, cannot be estimated in centuries with any approach 
to accuracy. In the first place, in going back to the 
bronze age, we already find ourselves beyond the reach 
of history, or even of tradition. In the time of the Ro- 
mans, the Danish isles were covered, as now, with mag- 
nificent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this 
tree flourish more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eigh- 
teen centuries seem to have done little or nothing tow- 
ards modifying the character of the forest vegetation. 
Yet, in the antecedent bronze period, there were no beech- 
trees, or at most, but a few stragglers, the country being 
covered with oak. In the age of stone, again, the Scotch 
* "Antiquity of Man." by Sir Charles Lyell, pp. 9, 372. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 247 

fir prevailed, and already there were human inhabitants 
in those old pine forests. How many generations of each 
species of tree flourished in succession before the pine 
was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by the beech, 
can be but vaguely conjectured ; but the minimum of 
time required for the formation of so much peat, must, 
according to the estimate of Steenstrup and other good 
authorities, have amounted to at least four thousand 
years : and there is nothing in the observed rate of 
growth of peat opposed to the conclusion that the num- 
ber of centuries may not have been four times as great, 
even though the signs of man's existence have not yet 
been traced down to the lowest or amorphous stratum."* 
This calculation as to time must be very uncertain, 
because we as yet know little or nothing of the physical 
conditions under which the moss, during its different 
stages, was deepened. Mosses are formed with compara- 
tive rapidity in moist and cold districts, through fallen 
trees and the stagnation of water giving rise to marshiness. 
Although in a warm climate decayed timber would imme- 
diately be removed by insects or by putrefaction, in the 
cold temperature now prevailing in our latitude, many 
examples are recorded of marshes originating in this 
source ; and Sir Charles Lyell admits that in Mar forest, 
in Aberdeenshire, large trunks of Scotch fir, which had 
fallen from age and decay, were soon immured in peat.^ 
And he distinctly states that the overthrow of a forest 
by a storm, about the middle of the seventeenth century, 

* "Antiquity of Man," pp. 16, 17. 

t Lyell's " Principles of Geology," p. 72a 



248 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

gave rise to a peat-moss near Loch Broom, in Ross-shire, 
where, in less tlian half a century after the fall of the trees, 
the inhabitants dug peat.*" He admits, further, that such 
events were by no means uncommon in either Britain or 
the Continent ; and the obvious and natural question 
suggested is, May not many storms have produced simi- 
lar changes in the Scotch fir and oak forests in the Da- 
nish islands, so that the growth of moss may have been 
rapid as it was in Ross-shire, and in other localities in 
Scotland and Wales about which reliable information 
has been obtained ? 

Among other interesting instances of the growth of 
moss, may be mentioned those of Hatfield in Yorkshire, 
and Kincardine in Scotland. In Hatfield moss, which 
was evidently a forest eighteen centuries ago, fir-trees 
have been found ninety feet long, and oaks one hundred 
feet; but at the bottom of the mosses, strange to say, 
Roman roads have been discovered, showing that the 
mosses have grown since the Roman invasion. "All the 
coins, axes, arms, and other utensils found in British and 
French mosses, are also Roman — so that a considerable 
portion of the peat in European peat-bogs is evidently 
not more than the age of Julius Caesar. Nor can any 
vestiges of the ancient forests described by that general 
along the great Roman way in Britain be discovered, 
except in the ruined trunks of trees in peat."f When we 
take these and similar instances into account, we are 
justified in regarding as altogether visionary. those calcu- 
lations in which M. de Perthes and others have indulged, 
* Lyell's " Principles of Geology," p. 721. \ Ibid. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 249 

when they have speculated regarding time, and have 
claimed tens of thousands of years for the formation of a 
moss only thirty feet in thickness. In an interesting lit- 
tle work by the Rev. J. Brodie,* there is reference to the 
Roman road in Scotland as covered by eight feet of 
moss, and as laid bare fifty or sixty years ago : and he 
supposes that this road could not have been made before 
the year of our Lord 200, that being the date at which 
the Roman conquests were pushed farthest into Britain ; 
and, assuming the rate of growth in the peat to have 
been uniform from that time, Mr. Brodie infers that there 
would be six inches of increase in a century — not an 
inch and fifth, as M. de Perthes has calculated. 

The uncertainty of those causes which determine the 
age of peat mosses, is made still more apparent by com- 
paring the facts in Europe with those of America. To 
the authority of Professor C. Hitchcock few will hesitate 
to submit ; and his conclusion is, that " the growth of 
peat is extremely variable, even in contiguous swamps. It 
accumulates much more rapidly in the primitive forest 
than after clearings have been effected, chiefly, perhaps, 
because in a wooded country rain is more common, as 
any one who has travelled in a wild northern region can- 
not have failed to notice." Comparing the rate of growth 
where the country has been to a large extent cleared, 
with the rate of growth where there has been no such 
clearance, Professor Hitchcock has come to definite con- 
clusions as to the variableness of the growth. Supposing 

* " The Antiquity and Nature of Man," by the Rev. J. Brodie, M. A., 
pp. 49, 50. 



250 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

that the original Danish forest of Scotch fir may have 
been destroyed by fire in a single season, as often hap- 
pens in North America, he affirms that the blackened 
trunks would be replaced by the "second growth," con- 
sisting in America of the birch, poplar, and similar trees, 
and that in two or three centuries the new forest would 
be thoroughly established. In Denmark, while the sec- 
ond forest was of oak, and was succeeded by a third, con- 
sisting of beech-trees, he does not admit that the whole 
forest would have been exclusively made up of any one 
of the three — firs, oaks, or beeches : " Our primitive for- 
ests commonly contain a ' mixed growth' — it is generally 
very limited valleys or hill-tops that are covered by only 
one kind of tree ; pine, spruce, juniper, and maple, are 
intermixed in equal proportions in some regions, while 
oak, hickory, and chestnut predominate elsewhere. Obser- 
vation would therefore indicate the probability of a mixed 
growth in the stone and bronze as well as in the iron age. 
For this reason we must leave a margin in our calcula- 
tions of time from the succession of forests — certain dis- 
tricts having the oaks predominating longer than others, 
may have been those taken for calculating. Estimating 
from these new standpoints, we may say that the mini- 
mum required to produce the changes observed in the 
Danish forests, may be two thousand years."* 

Other elements, necessarily entering into the proba- 
bilities of the question of time, increase the difficulties of 
calculation. Trees growing on the edges of the moss 

* Quoted by Professor Duns, in "Science and Christian Thought," 
p. 246. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 251 

fall over on its surface, and are in turn covered over ; 
slips which are not uncommon might carry different 
trees into the moss, and rains falling, or water oozing into 
the edges or the centre of the moss, might give it & flu- 
idity not at all uncommon, which might admit of flint or 
other implements gradually sinking to a considerable 
depth. It appears preposterous to found any conclusion 
as to time on the fact of implements being discovered 
at any depth in moss. If traces of man's presence in a 
definite form, as the Roman roads at the depth of eight 
feet in the Hatfield moss, or if evidences of human ac- 
tion on any of the sunken trees were adduced, there 
would be greater plausibility in the auguments by which 
their conclusions are vindicated. 

Sir Charles Lyell himself, after reviewing the calcu- 
lations in which "archaeologists and geologists of merit 
have indulged, in the hope of arriving at some positive 
dates," has given, as his conclusion, that they are only 
"tentative," in short, only "a rough approximation of the 
truth." Although 4,000 and 7,000 years before our 
time have been assigned for the history of certain events 
and monuments, he candidly admits "that much collat- 
eral evidence will be required to confirm these estimates, 
and to decide whether the number of centuries has been 
under or over- rated."* 

2. Another prominent instance of flint implements 
made by man, and on which, in reasoning, much stress 
has been laid, has been adduced from the valley of the 
Somme, in Picardy, France. Referring to geological 

* " Antiquity of Man," p. 373. 



2 5 2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

treatises for a minute description of the valley, we shall 
limit our statement to such details as are required 
for forming a fair estimate of the argument. The 
chalk formation originally occupied the whole district ; 
but, by degrees, a stream began to flow across this 
chalky region, and a valley was formed, which, in the 
bottom, has an average width of a mile. In the lowest 
part of the valley is a bed of gravel, from three to four- 
teen feet thick ; and on this, separated by a thin layer 
of clay, there is a growth of peat from ten to thirty feet 
in depth, through which the river is flowing. On the 
sides of the valley are beds of gravel resembling an- 
cient river banks, the lower of which is close on the 
peat, while the upper is from eighty to a hundred feet 
higher. It is in these gravel-beds that, mingled with 
bones of animals now extinct, various tools of flint, spear- 
heads, &c, have been found. Two arguments for the 
antiquity of the race have been based on the fact of the 
remains which have been associated together. The first 
is, that the men who used the flint instruments lived 
with races of animals long extinct ; and the second is, 
that a long period was required for the geological changes 
which have subsequently taken place. 

But the mere fact that man was contemporaneous 
with animals now extinct, can prove nothing in reference 
to his antiquity. The animals may have been lingering 
through a gradual extinction to his day, or man may 
have begun to exist when their race was vigorous. A 
writer in the " Westminister Review," who strongly 
pleads for man's remote antiquity, has frankly admitted 



BLENDING LIGHTS. . 253 

that the argument from coincidence of remains goes for 
nothing — " Since many species of animals, whose first 
introduction dates much farther back in geological time, 
are at present contemporaneous with man ; and carcasses 
once frozen up might be preserved for thousands of 
years as well as for hundreds, for millions as well as for 
thousands."* The late Professor Rogers, writing in 
" Blackwood's Magazine," reasoned powerfully to the 
same effect, that geologists too hastily gave to the Dilu- 
vium a remote antiquity ; that its relation to historic 
time is not ascertainable ; and that it is every whit as 
natural and as logical to infer the relative recency of these 
now extinct animals because the works of man are found 
with them, as it is to infer the antiquity of man from the 
assumed greater age of these animals. He insists that 
a specially remote age is not necessarily attributable to the 
flint-shaping men of the Diluvium because of their living 
at the same time with the mammoth, and that, if their 
association is to be held proving a long prehistoric an- 
tiquity, other evidences must be obtained. f 

It is obvious that this line of exposition may be legiti- 
mately extended to meet all the instances in which flint 
and other stone implements have been found mixed with 
the bones of extinct animals. Their coincidence proves 
nothing as to remoteness of time in man's history. 

The second form of the argument depends on the 
length of time required for geological changes which 
have taken place since the extinct animals and man have 

* " Westminster Review," April, 1S63. 

t "Blackwood's Magazine," October, i860; pp. 428, 431. 

22 



254 - BLENDING LIGHTS. 

been supposed to live together. Geologists are not 
agreed regarding the age of the beds in which the flint 
implements have been found. Mr. Prestwich has con- 
cluded that the evidence requires of us to bring forward 
the extinct animals towards our own time, as much as it 
does to carry man back toward their supposed place in 
geological time. The discussion has oscillated between 
those who admit the probability of unexpected temporary 
convulsions or violent movements, and those who advocate 
undeviating uniformity. While Sir Charles heads the 
latter in Britain, the late Sir R. Murchison, an authority 
equally high, led those geologists who resist the attempt 
to account, by slow and uniform processes, for all the 
phenomena which are presented. The two methods in 
nature, if we so designate them, almost invariably go to- 
gether ; and if this be granted, we may, without much 
difficulty, rest assured that such rapid changes took place 
as are adequate to explain the facts by which so many 
are at present perplexed. Dr. Duns, after referring to 
Sir Charles Lyell's description of the erosive action of 
running water, and his illustration of its force by the 
river Simeto making its passage, in the course of two 
centuries, through the lava of Etna, (which had dammed 
up its bed in 1603,) by opening through the solid mass a 
channel varying in width from fifty to several hundred 
feet, and in depth, in some parts, from forty to fifty feet, 
puts this apt question, " If the Simeto has, in two hun- 
dren years, cut a ravine through hard volcanic rock a 
hundred feet wide and fifty deep, how long would the 
Somme take to excavate its present valley in the soft 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 255 

chalk rocks over which it runs ? In the latter case, we 
have not hundreds of years, but thousands at our dis- 
posal."* While there were at work other agencies than 
this erosion by water, its influence ought surely to be 
fairly estimated as producing geological changes. 

In an able paper on Valley Gravels, which Mr. Af- 
fred Tylor read at the Geological Society, the not un- 
common supposition was maintained, that the drift of 
the Sorame valley was of marine origin, and that the flint 
implements had been introduced by floods, and were of 
recent date. While resisting both conclusions, Mr. Prest- 
wich confessed that he regarded the gravels as having 
been deposited by forces far more powerful than any 
recognized at the present day, and that the time for pro- 
ducing the results now visible was therefore comparative- 
ly short. Sir Roderick Murchison has emphatically 
stated, in reference to a corresponding subject, that "no 
analogy of tidal or fluviatile action can explain either the 
condition or position of the debris and unrolled flints and 
bones. On the contrary, by referring their distribution 
to those great oscillations and ruptures by which the 
earth's surface has been so powerfully affected in former 
times, we may well imagine how the large area under 
consideration was suddenly broken up and submerged. . . 
In short, the cliffs of Brighton afford distinct proofs 
that a period of perfect quiescence and ordinary shore 
action, very modern in geological parlance, but very 
ancient as respects history, was followed by oscilla- 
tions and violent fractures of the crust, producing the 
* "Science and Christian Thought," pp. 273, 274. 



256 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

tumultuous accumulations to which attention has been 
drawn."* 

In the view of these oscillations, and their occasionally- 
violent movements, sometimes extended and sometimes 
limited in their area, we cannot reckon on long peri- 
ods for producing effects which may have been rapidly 
accomplished, nor can we determine when these may or 
may not recur in the physical history of the earth's crust. 

* Sir R. Murchison, " On the Distribution of the Flint Drifts of the 
Southeast of England." 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 257 



CHAPTER XII. 

ANTIQUITY OF MAN (CONTINUED) THE CHRONOLOGY OF 

ARCHAEOLOGISTS INFERENCES CONNECTED WITH GE- 
OLOGY AND HISTORY — THE DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS — 
SWISS LAKE DWELLINGS EGYPTIAN MONUMENTS. 

The antiquities piece on in natural sequence to the geology ; and it 
seems but rational to indulge in the same sort of reasonings regarding 
them. They are the fossils of an extinct order of things, newer than the 
tertiary — of an extinct race, of an extinct religion, of a state of society 
and a class of enterprises which the world saw once, but which it will 
never see again ; and with but little assistance from the direct testimony 
of history, one has to grope one's way along this comparatively modern 
formation, guided chiefly, as in the more ancient deposites, by the clew of 
circumstantial evidence. — hugh miller. 

There is another class of facts more closely related 
to Archaeology than to Geology, which are also claimed 
as evidence of man's antiquity. Although archaeology, 
as a science, has to do exclusively with man and his 
works, it is difficult to determine where it begins in geol- 
ogy and where it ends in history, as it interweaves with 
both and binds them together. While flint implements 
and human bones have been found in caves and moss- 
depths, or in other superficial formations, we have class- 
ed them under the section geology, because there has 
been nothing artificial in their resting-place to distin- 
guish the remains of man from those of the lower ani- 
mals ; but where the remains have been connected with 

artificial structures of any kind, such as the Danish shell- 

22* 



258 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

mounds, the lake dwellings, or the American mounds, 
or Egyptian and other monuments, we should class them 
under archceology. 

This distinction, which we venture to suggest, will 
free the discussion from some of the embarrassment and 
confusion which arise from commingling the same facts 
under both the geological and archaeological divisions. 
It is not absolutely accurate; because everything prehis- 
toric which is related to man is archaeological, whatever 
be the position or circumstances in which it is discover- 
ed ; but the distinction is convenient, and it is sufficiently 
logical to give consistency to the discussion of the ques- 
tion before us. 

III. For these reasons, we have separated the facts 
which we have now to consider from those already ex- 
amined, as more properly geological. 

i. The first which we notice are the Danish Shell- 
Mounds, or Kjokkenmodding — "kitchen refuse heaps." 
What are the facts here, and what the inference ? " At 
certain points," says Sir Charles Lyell, " along the shores 
of nearly all the Danish islands, mounds may be seen, 
consisting chiefly of thousands of cast-away shells of the 
oyster, cockle, and other mollusks of the same species as 
those which are now eaten by man. These shells are 
plentifully mixed up with the bones of various quadru- 
peds, birds, and fish, which served as the food of the rude 
hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were accumu- 
lated." Similar mounds have been left near the shore by 
North American Indians. " Scattered all through the 
Danish heaps are flint knives, hatchets, and other instru- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 259 

ments cf stone, horn, wood, and bone, with fragments of 
broken pottery, mixed with charcoal and cinders ; but 
never any implements of bronze, still less of iron. . . . 
The mounds vary in height from three to ten feet, and, 
in area, are some of them 1,000 feet long, and from 150 
to 200 wide. They are rarely placed more than ten feet 
above the level of the sea, and are confined to its imme- 
diate neighborhood."* Sir Charles briefly repeats his 
argument based on the growth of a succession of differ- 
ent kinds of trees, and on the slow growth of peat-moss ; 
but as his reasoning has already been fully considered, 
and its weakness exposed in the light of his own admis- 
sions,! it is unnecessary here to make further allusion to 
it. All that is required is to notice such new reasoning 
as he has adduced, and for that purpose a few sentences 
will suffice. His arguments are (1) As there are parts of 
the coast where the western ocean is wearing down the 
cliff, it appears that, through a slow process, the land has 
been carried off on which shell-mounds were raised ; and 
(2) As the cockle and mussel shells in the mounds are 
larger than those now existing m the neighboring sea, a 
change in its littoral water has taken place. His other 
arguments regarding the smaller race of dogs then exist- 
ing, and those birds, also, which are now all but extinct, 
carry little or no weight on his side of the question. That 
certain mounds are not found on the western shore, 
proves nothing as to their antiquity, nor does the fact of 
a moss intervening between the sea and any mound ; for 
there is no evidence that moss was formed subsequently 
* Antiquity of Man," pp. 11, 12. t Ante, Chap. 11, pp. 246, 251. 



2 6o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

to such mounds, and besides, the early inhabitants may 
have preferred to rest on their landward side. 

The mere deterioration of the eatable shells can 
scarcely be accepted as evidence ; for, as Professor C. 
H. Hitchcock has stated, while " similar heaps are scat- 
tered along the Atlantic coast, from Prince Edward 
Island to Georgia," and while, in both continents, " these 
heaps indicate that the oyster formerly flourished in 
abundance where it is now extremely scarce," this fact 
does not of itself necessitate an ancient date for the 
forming of the refuse heap ; " because in Maine, we can 
prove that the oyster became thus nearly extinct within 
the time of the white population." "At the present day," 
says Professor Duns, " there are tribes of Indians in 
British North America who form such refuse-heaps still ; 
while, contemporary with them, there are others who 
have no such customs. Would any one, then, be war- 
ranted to conclude that these refuse-heap makers are 
greatly more ancient than the others ?"* A minute ex- 
amination of proof, not only in the localities where re- 
cent discoveries have been made, but in those distant 
parts of the world in which similar facts or changes have 
been noticed, discredits the deductions which have been 
made regarding man's antiquity. 

II. LAKE DWELLINGS. 

There is another series of facts which have of late 
awakened much interest, because they have been em- 
ployed in some instances in evidence of a remote anti- 
* " Science and Christian Thought," p. 228. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 261 

quity of man. Lake Dwellings, or houses built on 
wooden piles driven into the soil, or firmly propped at 
the bottom of lakes, and at some distance from the 
shore, have been found in Switzerland, in Italy, in 
France, in Ireland, and Scotland. This strange mode of 
dwelling seems to have been common in Southern and 
Western Europe, and to have been intended as security 
against the attacks of beasts of prey, as well as from the 
inroads of hostile tribes. Such dwellings were little 
known, and attracted little attention, until the lakes and 
rivers in Switzerland sank lower than usual in the winter 
of 1853-54; and the inhabitants bordering the lake of 
Zurich attempted to reclaim some of the shore by dredg- 
ing the mud to form an embankment, when they unex- 
pectedly found not only wooden piles driven into the bed 
of the lake, but hammers, celts, and various implements. 
These hamlets built above the waters having at times 
taken fire, many of the implements and utensils sank 
into the lake ; and these relics have become the fossils 
by which we interpret the history of the people and esti- 
mate its length — they aire the clew through the labyrinth 
of prehistoric times by which the archaeologist reaches a 
dim knowledge of the past. 

Finding stone implements in connection with lake 
dwellings, while in others those of bronze predominate, 
archaeologists have given them an historical significance, 
assigning, by a kind of random estimate, to the stone- 
period an age of from 5,000 to 7,000, and to the bronze 
age from 3,000 to 4,000 years — in all, from 8,oco to 
1 1,000 years, without including any portion of the iron 



262 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

age. Precisely the same kind of elasticity prevails in 
the calculations of the archaeologist, of which we com- 
plained in the reasoning of the geologist. M. Morlot 
reaches his conclusions by assuming that the Tiniere, a 
torrent which flows into the lake of Geneva, had formed 
its delta of gravel and sand with uniform regularity, and 
that layers of vegetable soil had been spread by the slow 
hand of many centuries ; so that when the cutting for a 
railway laid open a section, thirty-two feet in depth, he 
had only to assume for the Roman period an antiquity of 
sixteen or eighteen centuries, and the rest was easy ; to 
add thousands was natural, and contradiction was diffi- 
cult. M. Troy on makes similar calculations, but Sir 
Charles Lyell hesitates to accept any of them.* 

Those lake dwellings which are nearer us — the cran- 
noges of Ireland and Scotland — are acknowledged to be 
of recent date. Sir John Lubbock himself admits that 
they are " referable to a much later period than those of 
Switzerland," and that " they are frequently mentioned in 
early history." The O'Neil, as late as 1567, is reported 
to have fortifications " in sartin ffi'esliwater loghesy^ Is 
it not all but inconceivable that rude lake dwellings 
should continue through a period of 5,000 or 7,000 years, 
and that through all that time agricultural and pastoral 
'ife should in any one territory be non-existent ? Lake 
dwellings would be inconsistent with the maintenance of 
flocks and herds ; and to suppose that hunters only lived 

* " Antiquity of Man," p. 29. 

t See an interesting chapter on Lake Dwellings in Sir John Lubbock's 
"Prehistoric Times," second edition, pp. 166-214. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 263 

through that long and dreary period, is utterly incompat- 
ible with the growth of population on the one hand, and 
with the supply of food by the chase on the other. 
Herodotus described lake dwellings, about 320 years 
b. c, similar to those of the Swiss, as prevailing among 
the Paeonians in Thrace ; and although he has informed 
us that the Paeonians lived in them with their families 
and horses, the fact does not nullify the opinion that the 
extension of this system, or anything like it, for thou- 
sands of years, is utterly at variance with the laws of the 
nomadic or pastoral life. Similar habitations are still to 
be found among the Papoos in New Guinea and in the 
straits of Malacca.* 

Such dwellings prove the enduring character of cer- 
tain habits of life in the midst of an advancing tide of 
improvement ; nothing more. They cannot be connect- 
ed with the meagre skill of the stone age, as it has been 
usually represented, because the very maintenance of 
such dwellings presupposes agricultural or pastoral sup- 
plies, and the facts which have been brought to light con- 
firm this view. In short, when all the evidence which 
these lake dwellings furnish — embracing stone and bronze 
implements ; fragments of rude pottery ; remains of 
wheat, and barley, and flax, which must have been intro- 
duced from Asia ; the bones of animals whose repre- 
sentatives still live in Europe, with the exception of the 
Urus, which, however, had not become extinct until after 
Caesar's time ; the thickness of mud deposites in the 
delta of Tiniere ; the rate at which the land has en- 

* "Scripture and Science not at Variance," p. 184. 



264 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

croached on the lake of Brienne ; and the growth and 
movements of mosses or bogs within even historic times — 
has been carefully sifted and weighed, the mere idea of 
5,000 or 7,000 years of such supposed facts resulting at 
last in the evolution of a bronze age is absurd ; it is 
without a vestige of that support which should entitle it 
to any acknowledgment in a strictly scientific inquiry. 

As the Danish mounds and lake dwellings have been 
introduced to give evidence in favor of man's antiquity, 
by some whose attainments command universal respect, 
it is necessary to make here one or two additional refer- 
ences to the subject. When considering the origin and 
progress of civilization, we directed attention to the stone, 
bronze, and iron periods, in their relation to man's power 
of invention in the savage state, and his subsequent 
advancement :* but it may be of importance to notice, 
briefly, what did not then fall logically within the limits 
of our exposition, viz., the relation of these distinct peri- 
ods to the general question of Time. What evidence do 
the supposed periods give on behalf of a remote antiquity 
for man ? 

While the theory of distinct periods gives convenient 
forms of expression, and is useful in indicating, in a gen- 
eral way, progress in mechanical and industrial arts, it 
assumes what has been already proved to be untenable in 
either fact or principle— -first, that man's origin was lower 
than that of the lowest savage now on the face of the 
earth ; second, that he has slowly crept upward through 
the stone and bronze periods to his present civilized state ; 

* Chapters 9 and 10. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 265 

and third, that each successive period emerged from that 
which preceded, only after it had run a course of some 
thousands of years. It is the last assumption which falls 
to be noticed ; the first and second have been already 
considered. 

On every student anxious to know the truth of his- 
tory, irrespective of collateral interests, the question nat- 
urally presses itself, What of Asia and Africa ? While 
it is instructive to examine facts in Europe, and to found 
on them sweeping generalizations, is it fair to excend these 
to countries whose facts, so far as they have been yet 
ascertained, suggest a different conclusion ? It is well 
known that, during at least part of the stone age in 
Europe, the East was resplendent in its civilization. 
How arrange the facts of African and Asiatic civilization 
so as to make them fit into this theory ? In some parts 
of the world, the stone age still lingers. Suppose that 
three hundred, or only a hundred years ago, its tools had 
been buried, and explorers in the neighborhood of Cape 
Horn brought up from diggings some stone implements, 
what value could be attached to the reasoning based upon 
them as to a distant age ? Not dissimilar is the weak- 
ness of much of the recent reasoning as to periods which 
we have been constrained to study ; it does not make 
allowance for the coexistence in the world of tribes using 
stone implements, of communities using bronze, and of 
nations using iron. The advocates of the succession of 
such periods by a kind of lineal descent, fail in their 
proof ; nay, rather, are answered by their own admissions 
that when bronze implements have appeared, they have 



266 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

been introduced by some foreign hand into a stone-using 
tribe. Sir John Lubbock has admitted, as already sta- 
ted, (p. 187,) that bronze was introduced, not invented, in 
Europe ; and Worsaae is still more explicit on this sub- 
ject, when he states what really is an unanswerable refu- 
tation of the whole theory of period-descent, a refutation 
all the more decided because coming from one who is 
not only highly distinguished as an antiquarian, but 
known as an ardent supporter of the Period theory. " We 
must not, however," he says, "by any means, believe that 
the bronze period developed itself among the aborigines 
gradually, or step by step, out of the stone period. On 
the contrary, instead of the simple and uniform imple- 
ments and ornaments of stone, bone, and amber, we meet 
suddenly with a number and variety of splendid weapons, 
implements, and jewels of bronze, and sometimes, indeed, 
with jeivels of gold. The transition is so abrupt, that 
from the antiquities we are enabled to conclude, what in 
the following pages will be further developed, that the 
bronze period must have commenced with the irruption 
of a new race of people, possessing a higher degree of 
cultivation than the earlier inhabitants."* Not only is 
this introduction or irruption acknowledged, but the con- 
temporaneous use of stone and bronze implements and 
utensils is distinctly specified. " The universal diffusion 
of metals could only take place by degrees. Since in 
Denmark itself neither copper nor tin occurs — so that 
these metals, being introduced from other countries, were 
of necessity expensive — the poorer classes continued for 

* " Primeval A7itiquities of Denmark," by J. J. A. Worsaae, p. 24. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 267 

a long series of years to make use of stone as their mate- 
rial."* That they "continued for a long period," is an 
admission which shows how uncertain must be all calcu- 
lations as to Time, for if, in any locality, stone imple- 
ments left by the poor had been discovered long after 
bronze was used by the higher classes, a miscalculation 
of some thousand years might possibly be made. 

Engelhardt, referring to the same sudden change, as 
it is seen especially in burial customs, says that it cannot 
be accounted for by the peaceful intercourse of civilized 
nations, and that the time of the change cannot be deter- 
mined by the antiquities themselves, because neither coins 
nor inscriptions have been discovered. 

And what is worthy of special notice is, that Engel- 
hardt acknowledges an equally complete and sudden 
change in the introduction of the iron age. There is no 
slow transition. "The differences," he says, "are too 
striking. We look in vain for points of resemblance be- 
tween the antiquities of the two periods with regard to 
shape and ornamentation."! Thus, according to these 
Danish archaeologists, there is no proof whatever of the 
same race passing upwards from the stone to the bronze, 
or from the bronze to the iron age, without some new 
impulse, or adequate external force. Nor do the leading 
Danish antiquarians indulge in extravagant claims as to 
time. Worsaae attributes " to the stone age an antiquity 
of at least three thousand years ;" and he adds, that 

* " Primeval Antiquities of Denmark," by J. J. A. Worsaae, p. 24. 
t " Denmark in the Early Iron Age, illustrated by Recent Discoveries 
in the Peat-Mosses of Slesvig," by Conrad Engelhardt, p. 7. 1866. 



268 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

"there are geological reasons for believing that the 
bronze period must have prevailed in Denmark five or 
six hundred years before the birth of Christ."* This 
estimate is easily reducible within the general limits of 
Bible chronology ; and Engelhardt is equally cautious in 
making the first or oldest division of the iron age about 
250 b. c. The transition period he extends to the sev- 
enth century of the Christian era, and the late iron age 
to the introduction of Christianity in Denmark, about 
the year 1000. 

But even this modified and comparatively unobjec- 
tionable view is not accepted by some of our more expe- 
rienced archaeologists. While they admit that stone im- 
plements are found abundantly in all parts of the British 
Islands, and in all parts of the world, and that " nothing 
seems more natural, not only in a very rude state of soci- 
ety, but also in much more civilized times, when commu- 
nication between different parts of the country was slow, 
and metal was not always to be had, than to form rough 
tools or weapons, especially for the chase, of hard stones," 
they are of opinion that "it has been assumed rather has- 
tily that, where we find these implements of stone, the 
people to whom they belonged were not acquainted with 
the art of working metals."* Mr. Wright, whose decis- 
ion is of great weight, gives a series of examples to 
show that the stone implements have mingled with bronze 
and iron, and that they have been continued to a recent 

* "Primeval Antiquities of Denmark," p. 135. 

t "The Celt, the Roman, and the Briton," by Thomas Wright, Esq., 
pp. 69, 72. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 269 

date — to the battle of Hastings, for instance, in England, 
and to the wars of Wallace in Scotland.* And he gives 
it, also, as his opinion, that many of the flint implements 
could not have been prepared as they have been, without 
metal instruments. 

Obscure as many of the local facts are, and uncon- 
nected as are the records of the different races, enough 
is becoming distinctly known not only to make us hesi- 
ate about admitting the sequence of these ages in the line 
which the theorists demand, but to confirm our belief in 
the general chronological outline given in the Bible, to 
which we have already referred. " The utmost that these 
remains enable us to do," says an able writer, " is to con- 
clude something of certain races in a corner of the world, 
probably, at any rate possibly, driven into it from earlier 
seats ; they contribute but little light to the larger and 
more interesting questions connected with the early con- 
dition and progress of mankind. And these remains 
themselves are, for the present, hopelessly isolated. All 
existing collections, numerous and abundant as they are, 
fail to supply a thread which connects one group with 
another, either in the line of descent or in collateral rela- 
tionship. We cannot find the clew to pass from stone to 
bronze, or from bronze to iron. Further, it is very pre- 
carious to make rudeness in workmanship or difference 
in material a test of relative antiquity. . . . Again, the 
relation, in point of time, of bronze to iron, is far too 
uncertain to warrant us in making an age of iron after an 
age of bronze. It may be probable that in certain races 

* "The Celt the Roman, and the Briton," p. 72. 
23* 



270 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

bronze was used before iron in preference to it, or, at 
any rate, instead of it ; but, as a general rule, we can but 
guess, and our grounds for guessing are not very good. 
We are in absolute ignorance of everything connected 
with the first use of metals ; how and when they were 
applied to the purposes of daily life ; under what circum- 
stances of discovery, or foreign introduction and teach- 
ing, they came to be employed in Europe."* 

There is a very general concurrence of opinion among 
ethnologists, that the successive advances of population 
over Europe have originated in Asia ; that the probable 
seats of early civilization were the banks of the Nile, the 
Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus, and the Ganges ; and 
that the rapid changes in mechanical or industrial arts 
which unexpectedly meet the archaeologist in Western 
Europe, are traceable to Eastern impulse. Archaeologi- 
cal science is adjusting its inferences regarding periods 
to a wider induction of facts, and it is cheering to find 
that the adjustment is coming closer to the Scripture 
record. Students in different sections are so approach- 
ing each other, that the light of their more accurate con- 
clusions is beginning to blend with the light which the 
Bible has been for ages shedding on the antiquity of man. 

Our attention has hitherto been exclusively directed 
to the evidence connected with the rude skill and practi- 
ces of either apparently or really barbarous tribes ; but 
there remains for examination another important depart- 
ment, which is dependent for its facts on the existence of 
a high degree of civilization. It is 

* "Saturday Review," August 12, 1S65, p. 20S. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 271 



III. THE EVIDENCE FROM ANCIENT MONUMENTS AND 
INSCRIPTIONS. 

As the monuments of Egypt alone have supplied the 
chief proof which has been adduced in support of man's 
antiquity, it will be unnecessary to examine in detail sub- 
ordinate or incidental evidences of the same kind obtain- 
ed in other countries ; nor will it, indeed, be necessary to 
spend much time with the evidence which Egypt has sup- 
plied, because the reasoning which was for some years 
eagerly maintained has been almost altogether abandoned. 
We shall have occasion, however, to refer more particu- 
larly to the monuments and inscriptions, not only of 
Egypt, but of other countries, when inquiring to what 
extent, in the light of History, the minuter as well as 
the more general statements of the Bible are receiving 
merited recognition and acknowledgment. 

Nothing could be more natural, we admit, than the 
demand on the part of the rejecter of the Bible, that the 
Christian should look at the Egyptian monuments and 
inscriptions, and acknowledge the likelihood that they 
told of an earlier history for man than the Bible gave. 
The pyramids of Egypt, with their overawing and som- 
bre vastness ; her temples, with their sphinxes, colon- 
nades, and painted chambers ; her palaces and obelisks, 
with their traces of exquisite culture, scattered with most 
amazing profusion ; her mysterious hieroglyphics and 
papyrus-rolls ; have made her truly "a land of wonders," 
and have most naturally suggested the inquiry, Since 
ruins so vast, representing in varied forms art so ad- 



272 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

vanced, have existed for so many centuries, what may 
have been the range of preceding history that created a 
civilization which, after all, they only in part reveal ? It 
is indicated in the Bible that, even in Abraham's time, 
remarkable advances had been made; for when he went 
to Egypt there was a completely-organized nation, with 
its king and princes, its gold and silver, and its abundant 
agricultural produce. In all the aspects of ancient Egypt, 
there appeared so many tokens of a remotely early civili- 
zation, that no surprise need be felt at the urgency with 
which infidel writers continued to ply Christians to yield 
the Bible as historically untrustworthy, nor at the em- 
phasis with which they asserted that if these monuments 
could only find an interpreter, the writings of Moses 
would soon be thoroughly confuted. To the questions, 
How long since these pyramids were built ? and, What 
mean these inscriptions ? the Christian apologist could 
give no answer; and his silence was reckoned equivalent 
to bigotry or defeat. But the monuments have at last 
found interpreters, and the Christian has obtained his 
required answer. 

In considering the early civilization of Egypt and 
other countries, it must be granted that there are no 
dates by which we can determine the length of time 
between the Deluge or the Dispersion at the building of 
the Tower of Babel, and the visit of Abraham to Egypt. 
It has, therefore, been variously estimated. The Vatican 
copy of the Septuagint gives 1,172 years as the length 
between the Deluge and the 70th year of Terah, Abra- 
ham's father; Josephus, 1,002; and the Hebrew, only 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 273 

about 427 years. The difference is very great between 
the first date and the last ; but we may fairly assume that 
a much longer period elapsed between the Deluge and 
the time at which Abraham visited Egypt. If we even 
restrict ourselves to the lowest Septuagint number, there 
is a period of about 1,200 years for the outcome of Egyp- 
tian civilization, as it is represented in Abraham's time. 
We do not, however, impose any such restriction ; the 
period may have been greatly longer ; the Bible does not 
settle those early dates, nor does it supply reliable his- 
torical data, until the time of Saul and the building of 
the Temple by Solomon. We do not hesitate, therefore, 
to give such scope to the Bible chronology between the. 
Deluge and the time of Abraham's visit to Egypt, as 
shall be sufficient to provide for all the facts of its early 
civilization. As the numbers given in the Bible have 
been expressed by alphabetic letters, which are, in sev- 
eral instances, like each other, they may have been inter- 
changed ; and not only may differences have thus arisen, 
but the time also may have been unduly shortened. As 
the Bible is not specific in its early dates, none of the 
chronological systems which have been published have 
divine authority ; and we violate no principle in prefer- 
ring whatever period gives the fullest and most natural 
range for the development of Egyptian civilization prior 
to the times of Abraham and Joseph. 

It is, at the same time, to be kept in view, that all 
the skill which those had reached who lived before the 
Deluge, their knowledge of writing, (probably in different 
forms,) their power of representing ideas and objects 



274 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

pictorially, and their notions of domestic and social or- 
ganization, would, in all likelihood, be transferred to the 
New World by Noah and his family. The human race 
would thus enter on a fresh course after the Flood, not 
with everything to learn, but with the ideas, the habits, 
and the mechanical skill of that ancient civilization of 
which striking glimpses are obtained in the first chapters 
of Genesis. 

While holding this view, and admitting the necessity 
of an elongated early chronology, we refuse to rush to 
the opposite extreme, and to accept or advocate a period 
of six or seven thousand years between the Deluge and 
the time of Abraham, not only because it is unnecessary 
for such facts as are known, but because, in that time, 
according to the ordinary laws regulating the growth of 
nations, there would have been other revolutions than 
those which have been recorded both in the Bible and in 
profane histories. 

It is necessary to inquire here whether the monu- 
ments themselves unfold anything like the history which 
opponents of the Bible have claimed. While it was sup- 
posed that the pyramids were built in ages so remote as 
to baffle research, and that the mysterious inscriptions 
on monuments and on the papyrus-rolls, if only once in- 
terpreted, would unfold a history which should confound 
the defenders of the Bible, strangely enough, in the prov- 
idence of God, the age of the pyramids has been deter- 
mined, and the inscriptions have been largely deciphered, 
in such a way as to vindicate the Bible and place legiti- 
mate inferences beyond cavil or objection. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 275 

That which is held to be the oldest pyramid, has been 
proved by Sir John Herschel to have been built as lata 
as between 2 171 and 2123 b. c. Professor Piazzi Smyth 
has confirmed the conclusion. By astronomical science 
the date has been established, and the idle speculations 
about remote ages have been dissipated. There are, it 
is true, some monuments which are supposed to be older 
than this great pyramid; as, for instance, the pyramid of 
Saqqarah, the tomb of King Senta, and the statues of the 
family of Sefra, belonging respectively to the first, sec- 
ond, and third dynasties ; but two centuries, at most, are 
held sufficient to represent the whole difference. Cham- 
pollion has given it as his opinion that " no Egyptian 
monument is really older than the year 2200 b. c." Ma- 
riette Bey has adduced evidence in favor of a like gen- 
eral conclusion ; and Sir J. G. Wilkinson has decided that 
few paintings or sculptures remain of an age prior to the 
accession of Osirtesen I., whom he supposes to have 
been contemporary with Joseph, and to have ascended 
the throne about the year b. c. 1740. The tombs in the 
vicinity of the pyramids, and those hewn in the rock near 
Oasr e'Sy'ad, the ancient Chenoboscion, he regards as 
places of sepulture of individuals who lived in the time 
of Suphis and his immediate successors, and as having, 
therefore, a date about the year 2090 or 2050 b. c* — that 
is, before the time of Abraham. The claims of a greatly 
older date, because of stones in the area of the pyramid, 
he sets aside as without support. "It is evident," he 

* "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," by Sir J. G. 
Wilkinson, vol. 3, pp. 277, 278. 



276 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

says, "that the tombs built of stone, which stand in the 
area before and behind the great pyramid, were erected 
after it had been commenced, if not completed, as their 
position is made to conform to that monument ; and that 
those hewn in the rock at the same place were not of an 
older period, is shown by the style of the sculptures and 
the names of the kings."* That date must be the start- 
ing-place of the Bible student — if he go backward, there 
is hopeless confusion ; if he go forward, there is increas- 
ing light. 

This important decision as to the date of the oldest 
pyramid, has been amply vindicated by the inscriptions 
that have been recently deciphered. These inscriptions, 
with their mysterious hieroglyphics or sacred sculpture, 
and their hieratic characters, which no scholar could 
interpret or explain, were for many centuries wistfully 
examined, but in vain. Those whose attainments and 
skill were the most likely to command a solution of these 
historical enigmas, were completely baffled ; and the 
rejecters of the Bible, as unworthy of belief in even its 
historical statements, were all pointing in triumph to the 
mysterious monuments of Egypt as probable witnesses 
of remotest ages, when, apparently by accident, the means 
of interpreting them were obtained. The circumstances 
were no less remarkable than the time in the controversy 
was opportune. The French Government had sent along 
with the army, in its expedition to Egypt in 1798, a num- 
ber of men distinguished in the various branches of sci- 

* "Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians," by Sir J. G. 
Wilkinson, vol. 3, p. 278. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 277 

ence and literature, to inquire into the antiquities of the 
country. Engineers and draftsmen were sent to help 
them — every facility was granted to secure success — and 
the reports, with the monuments sent home, aroused pub- 
lic attention not in France only, but over all Europe. 

In digging the foundation of Fort St. Julian, near 
Rosetta, the French engineers came on a huge block of 
black basalt, having inscriptions which at once awakened 
the greatest interest and the liveliest hopes. This pre- 
cious monument was afterwards taken from the French 
by the English fleet, and in 1799 deposited in the British 
Museum as the " Rosetta Stone." Its importance it 
would be difficult to over-estimate. As its history is 
well known, no fuller references need be made to it than 
are barely necessary for our argument. It has three 
distinct inscriptions. The uppermost one is in hiero- 
glyphics much mutilated ; the second is in the enchorial 
or demotic character — that is, in the language early spo- 
ken by the people, but afterwards lost ; and the third is 
in Greek, and it was understood to be a translation of the 
hieroglyphics. For about twenty years the problem re- 
mained unsolved ; the Rosetta stone continued a mystery, 
notwithstanding the earnest study of the most accom- 
plished scholars in Europe, who had obtained copies of 
it. While many a burning brow had ached in the attempt 
to solve the problem — while Champollion, a young French- 
man, having with wonderful enthusiasm studied Egyptian 
antiquities, had published, in 1814, his learned work, 
" L'Egyptesous les Pharaons," containing a collection oi 
the geographical notices occurring in Coptic MSS. col- 

24 



278 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

lated with those of ancient and modern authors, and 
while, by the research and ingenuity which his work 
evinced, he had given fresh impulse to many an ardent 
student — infidel archaeologists, and mere litterateurs, 
whose attainments in any science were slight, were alike 
eager in making the most of their opportunity, by turn- 
ing every new discovery to account against the Bible, by 
challenging Christian apologists to speak out in defence 
of its historical statements, and by meeting their silence 
with ridicule, sarcasm, and merciless invective. 

The claims of an immense antiquity were urged with 
as much tenacity of purpose as have been the demands 
of the geologist for millions on millions of years, and two 
of the strongest proofs then adduced were the once famous 
Zodiacs of Denderah and Esneh. The facts may be 
briefly recalled, as showing us the necessity there is for 
caution, and the encouragement there is for confidence 
in the Bible. 

When, in 1798, General Bonaparte, with his French 
soldiery and his literary men, entered the small town of 
Denderah, in Central Egypt, he found two temples, one 
large and one small, covered with hieroglyphics and 
images of deities. The literary men not only copied the 
drawings, but carried away the whole ceiling of the small 
temple, and when it reached Paris, ardent archaeologists 
hastily scanned it ; they applied to certain marks in the 
inscription some principles of astronomical calculation, 
and inferred that the time at which the temple was 
erected was 17,000 years before the Christian era! 
There was great excitement; volume followed volume 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 279 

on the subject; pamphlets and newspapers discussed the 
theme as the great discovery of the eighteenth century. 
Hundreds of thousands flocked to the National Library 
in Paris to see the antediluvian monument ; and when 
Charles X., in order to save it from destruction, placed 
it in a dark chamber, skeptics declaimed fiercely against 
keeping the people from becoming enlightened, and railed 
against belief in a Deluge or in Creation as stated in the 
Bible, and especially against the impositions of a "wily 
priesthood." "Now you can see," they said, "that the 
Old and New Testaments contain, from beginning to end, 
a series of lies." 

In the temple of Esneh, another of the "Zodiacs" was 
discovered, and on being brought to France and examined, 
it also had an antiquity of 1 7,000 years assigned to it. 
The dates, however, were not indisputable, for M. Jom- 
ard made one of them 1923 b. c, M. Dupuis made it 
4,000 years old, while the popular inference was that of 
M. Gori, who assigned 17,000 years as assuredly the 
right age. When scholars who had precisely the same 
data came to conclusions so widely different, we should 
have supposed that comparatively little importance would 
have been attached to the proof in favor of great antiquity ; 
but it was otherwise. Their reasoning made a deep 
impression, not only in France, but in Britain, and in the 
whole of Europe, and the oldest date found the fullest 
acceptance. 

For a time there was no answer; but it came. Dr. 
Young, in 18 19, published the results of his patient and 
laborious investigations, in the "Supplement to the 



2 So BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Encyclopaedia Britannica," under the article Egypt. A 
beginning in the right direction was made, and in a short 
time, through the labors of Dr. Young and Champollion, 
the Rosetta Stone's threefold inscription became the key- 
to open up many of the Egyptian secrets. 

After almost incredible toil, Champollion, having 
deciphered the hieroglyphics, read in the famous inscrip- 
tion on the temple of Denderah, the name and titles of 
Augustus Ccesar! showing that it could be no older than 
the time when Christianity was introduced ; and in that 
of the temple at Esneh, the name of Antoninus ! proving 
that, instead of being built 17,000 years before the 
Christian era, it was about 140 years after it ! There 
was a sudden and strange collapse over all Europe of the 
inflated opposition to the Bible, which this, and similar 
discoveries, had temporarily sustained ; and it is now 
indisputable that all the six Zodiacal representatives 
which have been discovered in Egypt, are traceable to 
the time when the country passed through the hands of 
the Greeks, and that their origin is within two hundred 
years of the Christian era. 

As we thus closely follow archaeological guidance to 
the clearer or historic side, is it not instructive to observe 
how, at the outset, mistakes have been committed similar 
to those which we noticed on the geologic side ? and how 
correction has proceeded from the very science whose 
principles have been misapplied in promoting error? 

The exposing of erroneous conclusions was only part 
of the important work that followed the acceptance of 
the methods of interpretation which Young and Cham- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 281 

pollion had introduced. Rosellini, Lepsius, Sir G. 
Wilkinson, Birch, and others, have also rendered invalu- 
able service in deciphering inscriptions, and the result 
has been the total displacement of the old notion regard- 
ing the remote antiquity of the monuments themselves. 

It has been indisputably ascertained that they are all 
of comparatively recent date. The Rosetta Stone itself 
is no older than 190 years b. c, and bears on it the well- 
known names of "Ptolemy and Berenice, the Saviour 
gods." It ascribes divine honors to Ptolemy, and praises 
him for various acts of liberality and wisdom in the 
earlier years of his reign. 

An obelisk which has been brought from Philae to 
England, contained, like the Rosetta Stone, an inscrip- 
tion in hieroglyphics and in Greek; about the latter 
there was no difficulty, and the hieroglyphic section has 
been found to be its counterpart — " a supplication of the 
priests of Isis, residing at Philae, to King Ptolemy, to 
Cleopatra his sister, and Cleopatra his wife." The in- 
scription brings the date of the obelisk near to the time 
of Christ, and the oldest remains in Philae are supposed 
to be only about 390 b. c. 

The large hieroglyphic tablet of Abydos — "the 
Doomsday Book of Egyptian chronology," gives a gene- 
alogical list of the immediate predecessors of Rameses 
the Great, the Sesostris of Herodotus, who ascended the 
throne as late as 1473 b. c. 

Much has been written regarding the temples of 
Karnac and their inscriptions; but we have at present 
to do merely with the dates of their erection — we have to 

24* 



282 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

question them only as to the past. The oldest remains 
discovered have been connected with the period of 
Osirtesen I., about 1750 b. c, near the time of Joseph; 
while the principal obelisks and the avenue of the sphinxes 
are attributed to the kings who reigned about 1380 b. c. 

Luxor — rendered in the hieroglyphic language, the 
palaces — represents in its ruins, buildings originally of 
surpassing grandeur. It was connected by avenues with 
Karnac, and the date of its palaces has been proved by 
inscriptions to be that of Pharaoh Amenophis III., who 
reigned about 1430 b. c. 

These brief notices afford no more than a glimpse of 
inscriptions appearing everywhere amid ruins, which, in 
their extent and magnificence, are the wonder of the 
world. We must refer to works on the subject for details 
as to "the services of Aahmes-Penneben at the beginning 
of the eighteenth dynasty ; the Eilethyian inscription 
recording the wars against the Hykshos ; the tablet of 
Karnac containing the annals of Thothmes III.; the 
treaty between Rameses II. and the Khita ; the records 
of making tanks or wells for miners at the gold washings ; 
the records of the star risings in the tomb of Rameses 
V. ;"* and others of various dates, till the time of Cambyses 
and Darius Hystapes. Enough has been stated for our 
argument, that the monuments were raised within the 
period determined for the oldest pyamid. As the origin 
of these ancient ruins seemed to be lost in a mysterious 
and dateless past, the urgency with which infidel archae- 
ologists and historians demanded that the Christian 

* " Egyptian Hieroglyphs," by S. Birch, p. 270. 
I 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 2S3 

student should yield the books of Moses as a worthless 
fable, was not unnatural ; but faith and patience have 
been rewarded by a triumphant settlement of the question 
as to all the old monuments coming easily within the 
Bible record. 

A careful examination of many papyrus-rolls has 
educed similar results. When they refer to historical 
events, it is to such as are noticed on the monuments ; 
and while some contain genealogies of kings or revenues 
of temples, and some give details of the foreign conquests 
of the ancient kings of Egypt, others are filled with 
repetitions of the funeral ritual or prayer for the dead. 
One or two illustrations or specimens must suffice. In 
the Papyrus No 36, of the Royal Museum at Turin, it is 
written: "In the 36th year, on the 18th of the month 
Athyr, of the reign of the sovereigns Ptolemy and Cleopatra 
his sister, the children of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, gods 
Epiphanes ;" and this is followed by a contract for the 
sale of the profits of certain religious offerings. In 
another papyrus fragment in the same Museum, there is 
a list of fifty-four kings in the order of their succession 
till the twelfth dynasty. In one of the papyri, there is 
a metrical account of the campaign of Rameses II. 
against the Khita, written in the tenth year of his reign ; 
and in another, "a series of communications relating to 
certain transactions in Egypt in the reign of Apepi, as a 
shepherd king ; and Tanaaken, a king of the seventeenth 
dynasty, relative to a political and religious controversy."* 

* For a list of papyrus records, see "Egyptian Hieroglyphs," by S. 
birch, pp. 276, 279. 



284 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Some papyrus-rolls, which were originally supposed to 
have been written at a very early period in Egyptian history, 
have been assigned by modern critics a very recent age. 
We may mention, for instance, the Ritual for the Dead, 
which was at one time regarded as extremely old, but is 
now considered to be only of the age of the Ptolemies, or 
even later. A translation of this long funeral papyrus is 
given by Bunsen, in 146 chapters, to which those may 
turn who desire to study one of those strange documents 
which shed light on olden religious experiences and 
aspirations.* 

Of the Demotic writing, or that once common dialect 
which, in Egypt, superseded the sacred language, it is 
almost unnecessary to give any account. Although not 
introduced until the time of the Psammetici, about 664 
years before the Christian era, it passed away about the 
middle of the third century after Christ, having had a course 
of rather more than 900 years, and strangely enough, it 
is now less known than that by which it was immediately 
preceded, and its comparative recency renders its testi- 
monies regarding the earliest ages of Egyptian history 
of little value. 

Out of those materials to which reference has been 
made, the lists of kings on the monuments and in the 
papyrus rolls, with the historical arrangements and com- 
ments of the historians, Manetho and Eratosthenes, sys- 
tems of chronology have been constructed by such dis- 
tinguished scholars as Bunsen, Boeckh, and Rodier ; but 
the evidence is inadequate, and their conclusions have 
* "Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. 5, pp. 161, 333. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 285 

therefore been unsatisfactory. As it is impossible to 
say, in many instances, what kings were contemporary, 
and when they represent successive dynasties, no depen- 
dence can be placed even on such systems as have been 
most carefully elaborated. 

Bunsen, in his great work, " Egypt's Place in Uni- 
versal History," in giving a " Synopsis of the Four Ages 
of the World," claims for the First Age from 20000 to 
iooco b. c. ; and for the Second, from 10000 to 2878 
b. c. : and he enters into details regarding the republi- 
can period, the succession of sacerdotal and hereditary 
kings, and the formation of language. Boeckh is singu- 
larly exact with his chronological system ; its first peri- 
od, beginning July 20, 30522 b. c, reaches down to July 
20, 5703 b. c. ; and thereafter we have historic times. 
Rodier makes definite history begin 24000 b. c. ; but he 
assumes a previous long indefinite history, in which the 
dates cannot be determined. After the year 24000 b. c, 
the dates of great events, as he supposes, can be "rigor- 
ously verified." 

Let any one take the pains to master in detail these 

systems of chronology, and he will find he has engaged 
in a most profitless task. The chronologists do not agree 
among themselves. Who is to be preferred ? Whom 
are we to follow ? Bunsen has said of Boeckh, " We be- 
lieve that no Egyptologer has ever ventured upon so many 
and such bold alterations in the dates of Manetho as Boeckh 
was obliged to propose, in order to make good his as- 
sumption that Manetho's chronology was an artificial 
system of applying cyclical numbers to Egyptian histo- 



286 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ry."* And Bunsen's own method has been severely yet 
justly handled, by no less an authority than Sir G. C. 
Lewis. After referring to Sesostris as the great name 
of Egyptian antiquity, and as dwarfing into insignificance 
the builders of the Pyramids, he adds, " Nevertheless, his 
historical identity is not proof against the dissolving and 
recompounding processes of the Egyptological method. 
Bunsen distributes him into portions, and identifies each 
portion with a different king. Sesostris, as we have 
stated, stands in Manetho's list as third king of the 
twelfth dynasty, at 3320 b. c. ; and a notice is appended 
to his name, clearly identifying him with the Sesostris of 
Herodotus. Bunsen first takes a portion of him, and 
identifies it with Tosorthrus, (written Sesorthrus by 
Eusebius,) the second king of the third dynasty, whose 
date is 5 119 b. c, being a difference, in the dates, of 
seventeen hundred and ninety-nine years, about the same 
interval as between Augustus Caesar and Napoleon. He 
then takes another portion, and identifies it with Seson 
chosis, a king of the twelfth dynasty ; a third portion of 
Sesostris is finally assigned to himself. It seems that 
these three fragments make up the entire Sesostris."! 

In making this quotation regarding Bunsen's sys- 
tem of Egyptian chronology, we are not to be held as 
undervaluing his wonderful scholarship, nor the noble 
service which he has rendered to Philosophy and Chris- 
tianity ; but when we have wandered with Egyptologists 

* "Egypt's Place in Universal History," vol. 5., p. 119. 
t " Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients," by Sir G. C. Lewis, 
p. 369. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 287 

through centuries and millenniums, and have in vain 
sought for some solid resting-place in historical evidence, 
when we have struggled to obtain some gleams of light in 
the midst of an obscurity which is never broken by the 
best efforts of our guides, we heartily say "Amen" to 
Sir G. C. Lewis' conclusion : " Egyptology has a his- 
torical method of its own. It recognizes none of the or- 
dinary rules of evidence ; the extent of its demands upon 
our credulity is almost unbounded. Even the writers 
on ancient Italian ethnology are modest and tame in 
their hypotheses, compared with the Egyptologists. 
Under their potent logic all identity disappears ; every- 
thing is subject to become anything but itself. Suc- 
cessive dynasties become contemporary dynasties ; one 
king becomes another king, or several other kings, or a 
fraction of another king ; one name becomes another 
name ; one number becomes another number ; one place 
becomes another place.""* 

The only subject remaining to be noticed as having 
given rise to much discussion, are the sculptured figures 
which represent the negro head and features. As they 
appear on some of the earliest monuments, it has been 
assumed either that there were originally distinct races 
of men, or that there was a greatly longer period than 
had hitherto been supposed between the Flood and the 
first evidences of Egyptian civilization. We have already 
considered the alleged diversity of origin for the human 
race,f and have shown the doctrine to be not only theo- 

* " Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients," p. 36S. 
t Chapter 8. 



2S8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

retically unnecessary, but unsupported by facts, and we 
have advocated the opinion that a much longer period 
did elapse between the Flood and the visit of Abraham 
to Egypt than the ordinary systems of chronology have 
allowed. But accepting even the period given in the 
Septuagint, and taking into account the rapid changes 
which are produced in the human color and countenance 
in such a climate as that prevailing in parts of Africa, 
no special difficulties exist about the facts represented 
on the olden monuments. Whatever reluctance may be 
felt in accepting the changes within that briefer period, 
may be removed by the probability of a longer time hav- 
ing run its course than the common chronology has 
allowed. 

It is obviously a flagrant violation of those principles 
which regulate the advance of nations, to suppose that 
six or seven thousand years were necessary to give the 
degree of civilization which is assumed for the start of 
the first dynasty under the first king Menes. We do not 
require precision or definiteness regarding the exact 
number of centuries which passed between the Flood and 
the entrance of Abraham into Egypt ; but it is of impor- 
tance to ascertain definitely the harmony of the facts 
which are recorded in Scripture, and referred to in other 
histories. In this harmony alone consists the strength 
of the historical argument. 

Christian apologists have shown unnecessary anxiety 
as to exactness in dates. The admitted elasticity or dif- 
ferences in Bible chronology, should make us willing to 
grant a liberal margin. What specially concerns us is 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 289 

the harmony of histories. While exact dates are in their 
own place most valuable, they are not to supersede the 
cumulative evidence which the recognized harmony of 
profane with sacred history is bringing- to the side of 
the Christian apologists. No one can recall the perpet- 
ually recurring depreciation of the Bible through the 
greater part of the last half century, on the plea that its 
historical statements were either mythical, or, when valid, 
had been written out after other histories had been pub- 
lished, without deep thankfulness for the striking vindi- 
cation of all its statements which contemporary histories 
have of late been giving. 

To the positive evidence for the truth of Scripture, 
which has been in many instances unexpectedly adduced 
through historical and philological investigations, we 
shall next direct attention as fully as is consistent with 
our present aim. 



25 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE BIBLE A LIGHT AMONG ANCIENT RECORDS — EGYP 
TIAN, CHALDEAN, AND ASSYRIAN TESTIMONIES TO THI 
TRUTH OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

The oldest and most authentic record of the primeval state of the 
world is unquestionably the Scripture history ; and though the origin of 
its early inhabitants is only traced in a general and comprehensive man- 
ner, we have sufficient data for conjecture on some interesting points. — 

SIR J. G. WILKINSON. 

The Bible unfolds the oldest history in the world. 
No other comes within sight of its earliest records. The 
Pentateuch was written by Moses a thousand years be- 
fore Herodotus recited his history at the public games 
of Greece and the boy Thucydides wept lest he might 
fail in future rivalry, and more than twelve hundred years 
before the two Egyptian writers, Manetho and Eratos- 
thenes, endeavored to explain the revolutions of their 
country. Ctesias and Berosus, the one thirty and the 
other a hundred and fifty years later than Herodotus, 
followed him with their somewhat conflicting accounts 
of Chaldaean and Assyrian struggles and triumphs. The 
earliest Greek historian was thus the contemporary of 
Ezra and Nehemiah ; and, long before Manetho had ar- 
ranged the details of Egyptian dynasties, the prophet 
Malachi had closed the Old Testament record. The his- 
torical distance between Moses and the earliest profane 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 291 

writers is so great as to be distinctly visible, and there- 
fore indisputable. 

The references in the Bible to Egypt and other an- 
cient monarchies, although often merely incidental, are 
yet so minute, and at times so comprehensive, that, if 
erroneous, nothing should be easier than to expose their 
inaccuracy ; and there can be, perhaps, on the other 
hand, no more convincing argument for the historical 
reliableness of the Bible than that which is dependent 
on the ascertained correctness of its allusions to those 
other nations with which the Israelites were, in the earli- 
est ages, more or less closely associated. 

The ancient testimonies which monuments and writ- 
ten documents have most opportunely supplied within 
the present century, indeed, in a large measure, within 
the present generation, have not only demolished all the 
old reasoning against the Bible, but have so vindicated 
its historical trustworthiness, that " Moses and the Proph- 
ets " are now left in undisturbed possession of the watch- 
towers from which, many centuries ago, they spoke to 
the Israelites, and through them to the whole world. 
The very first historical sections of the Bible, so long 
held in contempt, have of late not only attracted the 
attention of the greatest scholars, but have won their hom- 
age. No unbiased student will now dare to scoff at the 
tenth chapter of Genesis, and pronounce it meaningless. 

Although Max Midler has claimed for the Vedas of 
India a like antiquity with the writings of Moses, he ad- 
mits that they are not history ;* and neither he, with all 
* "Chips from a German Workshop," vol. 1, p. 5. 



292 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



his enthusiasm on their behalf, nor any one else, will now 
assign to them an ethnological value at all comparable 
with that of the Pentateuch. In the oldest histories there 
is nothing that approaches in universality and explicit- 
ness the tenth and eleventh chapters of Genesis. To the 
tenth chapter, as an ethnological table, scholars of oppo- 
site religious tendencies have united in paying homage. 
" It is as essential to an understanding of the Bible," 
says Professor T. Lewis, " and of history in general, as is 
Homer's Catalogue in the Second Book of the ' Iliad ' to 
a true knowledge of the Homeric poems and the Homeric 
times."* The light which it sheds on the origin and 
subsequent relations of tribes and nations, has not only 
continued undimmed by distance, but is becoming 
brighter as accurate investigation is gradually removing 
the haze of prejudice or apathy by which it has been 
long encircled. 

In the genealogy which it outlines there is nothing 
mythical, nor is there anything which is specially flatter- 
ing to the Israelites. There is no national vanity dis- 
played, nor is there the least indication of what might 
have been in part expected, a decided preference for the 
Shemitic race. No special preeminence is assigned them 
in a history which is remarkable for its mingling of mi- 
nute references with comprehensive outlines. In closely 
examining the tenth chapter, we find such diversity of 
history as precludes exact classification, but its general 
statements are beginning to admit of comparatively easy 
historical exposition. While, for example, in some of the 

* "Lange's Commentary on Genesis," p. 352. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 293 

lists of the descendants of Noah, the record ends with 
the second generation, in others it extends to the third 
or fourth generation ; and while in some instances the 
founder only without the tribe is named, in others the 
tribe without the founder is given, and in others it is 
difficult to say whether the founder or the tribe is 
meant ; but through all that is yet inexplicable, there are 
minute historical references of so much importance as to 
command the attention of ethnologists. In the study of 
the earliest monarchies — the Egyptian, the Chaldaean, 
and the Assyrian — historians thankfully turn to the Book 
which was long scoffed at by those who plumed them- 
selves on their varied scholarship. It sheds so much 
light on the first movements of different peoples, and on 
the foundation of empires, that it cannot be repudiated 
without injury to historical science. 

In immediate connection with the origin of nations, 
the sacred historian has placed the confusion of tongues 
at the building of the Tower of Babel ; and in thus ac- 
counting for the diversity of languages, the Bible deals 
at the very outset with a remarkable subject which does 
not seem, for many ages, to have awakened, in Greece or 
elsewhere, the least interest or attention. In the sim- 
plicity of the Bible narrative is its strength. There is 
no date for the building of the tower. Generally viewed, 
it stands as the boundary between the unity of the prim- 
itive world and the conflicting movements of diverse 
tribes in subsequent ages. It explains what otherwise 
would have remained inexplicable — a manifold diversity 
of language, with a singular unity of apparently original 

*5* 



294 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

structure. The moral cause of the dispersion has been 
thus stated: "The unity which had hitherto bound to- 
gether the human family was the community of one God, 
and of one divine worship. This unity did not satisfy 
them ; inwardly they had already lost it ; and therefore 
it was that they strove for another. There is therefore 
an ungodly unity which they sought to reach through 
such self-invented, sensual, outward means ; while the 
very thing they feared, they predicted as their punish- 
ment."* Their purpose was defeated by the confusion 
of their tongues, or rather by the sudden use of three 
languages instead of one. The introduction of three 
tongues or languages would cause such confusion as 
would put an end to the undertaking. It would have 
been inconsistent with the method of the Divine govern- 
ment, so far as we can judge, to introduce a multitude of 
dialects, and make each man unintelligible to his com- 
panion ; and it appears from the record itself that the 
confusion was orderly or regulated, for we are told antici- 
patively in the tenth chapter, that the descendants of 
Japheth, of Ham, and of Shem, were divided " after their 
families, after their tongues, in their lands, after their 
nations." Of each of the three, successively, is the 
same account given. Gen. 10:5, 20, 31, 32. Is it not 
very significant to find the descendants of Japheth, Ham, 
and Shem, separately described as peopling the earth 
"after their families and after their tongues" '? From 
these families, it would seem, have all the languages in 
the world been gradually evolved ; and is it not perfectly 
* "Delitzsch," p. 310. "Lange's Commentary," p. 353. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



295 



consistent with this Bible statement to find eminent 
philologists of all ranks concurring' in the conclusion, 
that the languages and dialects of the world are reduci- 
ble to three distinct families or groups — the Aryan, the 
Semitic, and Turanian ? " Comparative Philology," says 
Bunsen, "would have been compelled to set forth as a 
postulate the supposition of some such division of lan- 
guages in Asia, especially on the ground of the relation 
of the Egyptian language to the Shemitic, even if the 
Bible had not assured us of the truth of this great his- 
torical event. It is truly wonderful — it is matter of 
astonishment : it is more than a mere astounding fact, 
that something so purely historical, and yet divinely 
fixed — something so conformable to reason, and yet not 
to be conceived of as a mere natural development — is 
here related to us out of the oldest primeval period ; and 
which now, for the first time, through the new science of 
philology, has become capable of being historically and 
philosophically explained." 

The tenth and eleventh chapters cannot be separated 
without lessening their light. They are both singular in 
their delineation of secrets, which would otherwise have 
been for ever hidden — their historical statements, though 
at first flowing separately, afterwards so far merge into 
each other as to become mutually illustrative. 

In their combination they shed light, for example, on 
those statements which long perplexed Bible students 
regarding the origin of the Chaldaean Empire, and they 
have dispelled a delusion which scholars persisted in 
maintaining against the direct teaching of the Bible. In 



296 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

this tenth chapter — "the most authentic record that we 
possess for the affiliation of nations,"* " the Book of the 
generations of the sons of Noah" — it is said, "The sons 
of Ham were Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, and Ca- 
naan. . . . And Cush begat Nimrod. . . . And the be- 
ginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and 
Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar." What is 
here noteworthy is, that while Mizraim, one of the sons 
of Ham, went to Egypt and gave to the country its 
name, and Phut inhabited Central Africa, and Canaan 
peopled Palestine, the Babylonian line is directly con- 
nected with them. They are all Cushite by blood. " It 
is," says Professor Rawlinson, " the simplest and the best 
interpretation of this passage, to understand it as assert- 
ing that the four races — the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Liby- 
ans, and Canaanites — were ethnically connected, being 
all descended from Ham ; and further, that the primitive 
people of Babylon were a subdivision of one of these 
races — namely, of the Cushite or Ethiopians, connected 
in some degree with the Canaanites, Egyptians, and 
Libyans, but still more closely with the people which 
dwelt upon the Upper Nile."f 

This idea of an Asiatic Cush or Ethiopia, was scouted 
by scholars of the greatest name, as created by the imagi- 
nation of interpreters, and as " the child of their de- 
spair."^: They limited the Biblical Cush to Egypt alone ; 

* "Journal of the Asiatic Society," vol. 15, p. 230. 
t "The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World," b> 
George Rawlinson, M. A. Vol. 1, p. 64. 

X Bunsen's " Philosophy of Universal History," vol 1, p. 191. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 297 

but this was done at the expense of Bible history ; for 
nothing can be more direct than the descent from Noah 
of Ham, Cush, and Nimrod ; and nothing can be clearer 
than the declaration that Nimrod "began to be a mighty 
one in the earth .... and the beginning of his kingdom 
was Babel." This is the beginning of the Chaldsean 
monarchy ; but is not its origin Hamitic, and also Egyp- 
tian — for Ham begat Mizraim, and Mizraim in Egypt be- 
gat Cush, and Cush this Nimrod, who must have moved 
eastward to found an Ethiopian empire in Asia ? There 
can be no escape from these plain historical issues repre- 
sented in the Scriptures, and the question is, What sup- 
port have they, if any, from other sources ? Until very 
recently, the evidence was not forthcoming, and Christian 
interpreters were satisfied by giving Egypt to the de- 
scendants of Ham, and assigning them a subordinate 
national place as the " servant of servants." By an easy 
or superficial reading of Scripture, the general inference 
was accepted that no great Asiatic empire could possibly 
be connected with the descendants of Ham, because of 
the supposed extent of their prophetic doom ; but the 
fact that such an empire did exist has been established 
in harmony both with Bible statements and the princi- 
ples of prophetic interpretation, by a series of very strong, 
if not, indeed, indisputable proofs. As a very general 
outline of the evidence is all that can be given here, we 
refer.for a fuller discussion of the subject to Professor 
Rawlinson's invaluable work, "The Five Great Monar- 
chies of the Ancient Eastern World."* 

* Vol. 1, chapter 3, pp. 47-60. 



298 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

i. By classical and other traditions, Ethiopians have 
been described as dwelling on the Persian Gulf, and as 
being associated, at the same time, with the inhabitants 
of the Nile Valley.* Without attaching much impor- 
tance to Homer's early statement by itself, regarding the 
Ethiopians as "divided" and dwelling "at the ends of 
the earth towards the setting and the rising sun,"f on 
account of the conflicting criticism to which it has been 
subjected ; it must be conceded that it has much weight 
when connected with Strabo's reference to the Ethiopi- 
ans having been understood, according to the " old opin- 
ion" of the Greeks, to occupy the south coast of both 
Asia and Africa, and to be divided by the Persian Gulf 
into two branches, the Asiatic and African. This refer- 
ence is all the more important, because taken from Eph- 
orus, and because regarded by Strabo himself as indica- 
tive only of the ignorance of the Greeks. 

Again, tradition connects Memnon, king of Ethiopia, 
on the one hand, with the founding of Susa in Asia, and 
with the leadership of combined Susianans and Ethio- 
pians for the assistance of Priam in Troy ; and, on the 
other hand, with the Ethiopians on the Nile, under the 
Egyptian name of King Amunoph III., whose statue be- 
came known as "the Vocal Memnon." There were pal- 
aces called "Memnonia" both in Egypt and Susa, and 
the supposition that Memnon built them is very plausi- 
ble. As Professor Rawlinson observes, " Memnon. thus 
unites the Eastern and Western Ethiopians; and the 
less we regard him as an historical personage, the more 
* Homer's " Odyssey," x, 23, 24. t Ibid. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 299 

must we view him as personifying the ethnic identity of 
the two races."* 

Other traditions show that the Greeks had, at one 
time, an unquestioning belief in an Asiatic Ethiopia ; and 
whatever allusions have been made to the subject by the 
earliest historians, have confirmed that belief. Hesiocl, 
Herodotus, and Eusebius have been cited as witnesses 
to the same prevailing ideas ; but there were others be- 
sides the Greeks — as, for instance, the Armenians — who 
cherished similar traditions; and although these wide- 
spread convictions varied, and, considered separately, may 
seem to have little weight, yet, when associated, they 
constitute valid proof that, in accordance with Scripture, 
the Chaldaeans were originally Hamites, not Shemites — 
Ethiopians, not Aramaeans. 

2. As the evidence from tradition, which we have 
placed in the foreground, was long almost balanced by 
conflicting statements from other sources, scholars were 
much divided in opinion ; but the question has been con- 
clusively settled in favor of the Bible, by unexpected 
proofs from another quarter. By the results of research 
in languages, what some thought was only apparently 
established by concurrent traditions, has been placed 
altogether beyond dispute. After the explorations in 
Assyrian mounds had yielded to the student of history 
many precious documents, with ample evidence of a later 
well-defined Babylonian language, the smaller and less 
attractive mounds of " Chaldsea Proper" were carefully 
searched ; and, to the surprise and delight of every phi- 

* " The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient World," vol. I, pp. 59, 60. 



3 oo BLENDING LIGHTS. 

lologist, there turned up the remains of another form of 
language, differing from that which the Assyrian mounds 
had previously revealed, and showing closer relations to 
the older language of Susiana, whose early inhabitants 
tradition had described as Hamitic. Its vocabulary, 
according to Sir H. Rawlinson, "is decidedly Cushite or 
Ethiopian," and the modern languages to which it makes 
the nearest approaches are those of Southern Arabia and 
Abyssinia. The old traditions have thus been confirmed 
by comparative philology, and both are side-lights to 
Scripture." A Chaldaean or Babylonian kingdom existed 
long before another empire was founded by the descend- 
ants of Shem, and thus " An Eastern Ethiopia, instead of 
being the invention of bewildered ignorance, is proved to 
be a reality, which, henceforth, it will be the extreme of 
skepticism to question; and the primitive race which 
bore sway in Chaldaea proper is demonstrated to have 
belonged to this ethnic type."* 

The very earliest historical announcements in Scrip- 
ture, after having been long twisted out of their natural 
course by Christian as well as by other interpreters, have 
at last not only been freed from perversion, but have 
received the most signal acknowledgments of their per- 
fect accuracy. The brief, yet definite, Bible intimations 
regarding the origin and the relations of the Egyptian, 
Chaldaean, and Assyrian empires, have not only had no 
parallel in any other history, but they have become the 
key to open what would otherwise have been for ever 
hidden or obscure. 

* "Ancient Monarchies," vol. I, p. 65. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 301 

In passing over some of the more general intimations 
in the tenth chapter of Genesis — as, for instance, those 
referring to Shem, Elam, Eber, and Asshur — we omit 
much that is valuable in evidence, that we may have the 
opportunity of more fully noticing those broader state- 
ments on which comparatively recent discoveries have 
shed much light. 

Our first view of Egypt is obtained when Abraham, 
who had been living a patriarchal chief in Palestine, was 
constrained by famine to seek support in Egypt for both 
himself and his household. And we find that, even in 
that early age, there was a king Pharaoh ; that Egypt 
had a settled government, with "princes" who acted as 
the king's subordinates ; and that the country was rich 
enough in agricultural resources to provide assistance to 
neighboring tribes in the time of famine. That these 
facts are in harmony with profane history no one can 
doubt, who remembers that, even then, some of the great 
Pyramids were in existence as witnesses indirectly con- 
firming the Bible reference to a comparatively advanced 
civilization. 

A remarkable historical sketch of the capture of Lot, 
Abraham's nephew, and of his rescue from the hands of 
Cherdorlaomer, king of Elam, although assisted by his 
five vassal kings, reveals the rise of a new or Elamitic 
power, which was displacing the old Babylonian or Ham- 
itic kingdom ; and of the overthrow or breaking up of 
this early kingdom, decided indications have been given 
in documents recently disinterred from the mounds of 
Mesopotamia, In them, incursions and plunderings have 



3 o2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

been recorded, which were the evident forerunners of 
greater distresses and of ultimate ruin, and the recovery 
of tablets is expected, which will determine the date of 
Abraham's contest with Chedorlaomer, and, consequent- 
ly, of his visit to Egypt ; and to such recovery Bible stu- 
dents look not with anxiety, bat with the most hopeful 
interest. About two hundred years after the time of 
Abraham, the history of Joseph brings Egypt under 
review, with a pictorial vividness- which has its parallel 
in no other record for at least more than a thousand 
years. When we combine the scattered references in 
the later chapters of Genesis, they represent a remarka- 
bly compact organization. The light falls on no strictly 
primitive people, nor barbarous customs, but on a very 
highly civilized community, skilled in agriculture, social 
in habit, and accomplished in various branches of art. 
The monarchy which we noted in Abraham's time con- 
tinues, and the king still bears the title of Pharaoh. He 
is absolute, or nearly so, committing men to prison, and 
releasing them ; or, if he please, ordering their execu- 
tions, appointing officers over the whole land, and taxing 
it apparently at his pleasure ; raising a foreigner sudden- 
ly to the second position in the kingdom, and requiring 
all, without exception, to render him obedience. " At 
the same time, the king has counsellors, or ministers, 
elders of his house, and others whose advice he asks, 
and without whose sanction he does not seem to act in 
important matters." He had a body-guard under "a 
captain," a " chief confectioner," a " chief cup-bearer." 
He rides in a chariot, and all pay him homage. There 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 303 

are distinct classes of soldiers, priests, physicians, sacred 
scribes, magicians, and herdsmen. As betokening the 
stage of civilization which had been reached, there is 
mention made of fine linen, golden chains, silver drink- 
ing-cups, wagons, chariots, embalming, and coffins. In 
addition to these glimpses, we have it stated that they 
carried burdens on the head ; that they sat at meat, and 
did not recline, as was the common custom in the East ; 
and that " every shepherd was an abomination unto the 
Egyptians." Gen. chaps. 37-47. All these peculiarities 
are fully represented in the monuments, but especially is 
the last made prominent. Sir J. G. Wilkinson tells us 
that the artists delighted on all occasions in representing 
the shepherds as "dirty and unshaven;" and that, on the 
tombs near the Pyramids of Geezeh, they are " carica- 
tured as a deformed and unseemly race."* 

A fuller and minuter series of facts will be found in 
a most instructive little volume by Professor Rawlinson, 
who adds : " It may be broadly stated that, in this entire 
description, there is not a single fraction which is not in 
harmony with what we know of the Egypt of this remote 
period from other sources. Nay, more, almost every 
point in it is confirmed, either by the classical writers, by 
the monuments, or by both."f 

In the Book of Exodus there is a very remarkable 
history, some of the details of which have received stri- 
king confirmation in monuments, and by profane writers. 
They afford unmistakable indications of the departure of 

* "Ancient Egyptians, vol 2, p. 16. 

t " Historical Illustrations of the Old Testament," pp. 41, 42. 



3 o 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

the Israelites. There are passages in the writings of 
Manetho and Chaeremon, Egyptian priests of high schol- 
arship, which, though somewhat confused and contradic- 
tory, are yet so specific as to the names of Moses and 
Joseph, and, in some instances, so minute as to facts, 
that the following conclusions may be held established : 
(i) That there was a tradition of an Exodus from Egypt 
of persons whom they regarded as unclean ; (2) that they 
connected this Exodus with the names of Joseph and 
Moses ; and (3) that they made Canaan their country, 
and placed the event in the reign of Amenophis, son of 
Rameses, about the year b. c. 1400.* 

The indirect testimonies to the historical truth of 
Exodus as dependent on the usages of Egypt, are, in some 
respects, more valuable than the more positive statements 
which have been adduced. Among these, there is men- 
tion made of brick-making without straw, under taskmas- 
ters, who made the lives of the Israelites bitter with hard 
bondage ; of the use of papyrus for boats, furnaces, knead- 
ing-troughs, hand-mills ; of the use of chariots in war ; 
of the king leading his horses to battle ; of the king and 
his princes fighting from chariots ; of the king hearing 
complaints in person ; in short, the allusions to public, 
social, and domestic modes of life in that early period are 
so numerous in Scripture, and have been found to be so 
literally exact, that the reasoning of rationalists, on the 
plea that they were all mythical, has been generally aban- 
doned ; and we might at once proceed to another section 
in this field of inquiry, were it not that it may be of ad- 

* " Historical Illustrations," pp. 59, 61. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 305 

vantage to some Bible students to notice two or three of 
the more prominent facts which rise, distinct and colum- 
nar, in the parallel lines of sacred and secular records. 

1. From three to four hundred years after the Exo- 
dus, Egypt in the West, and the other kingdoms in the 
East, had little or no direct intercourse with the Israelites, 
who were under the necessity, during that long period, 
of struggling with the Ammonites, Moabites, Amorites, 
Canaanites, and Philistines, races whose literature, if 
they had any, has been lost. Egypt and Assyria, during 
the same period, had great military resources ; but, as is 
evident from their records, they had undertaken no ex- 
peditions which brought them into contact with the ter- 
ritory of the Israelites. They therefore say nothing re- 
garding them, and this silence is in accord with the 
absence, in the Israelitish history, of all reference to 
either Egypt or Assyria. This is itself a most impor- 
tant incidental proof of the historical reliableness of 
Scripture. 

2. After the Exodus, the first and most outstanding 
fact is the grandeur of Solomon's reign, and the extent 
of his dominion, as it ranged from the Mediterranean sea 
to the Euphrates. Under David the kingdom was great- 
ly extended, but by Solomon it was consolidated and 
adorned. Between two hitherto powerful and menacing 
monarchies, the Hebrew kingdom rose rapidly in splen- 
dor, and for more than half a century dazzled them both 
into dimness. To those accustomed to study only the 
slow growth of Western nations, that period may seem 

short in the history of empires ; but in the East, such a 

26* 



306 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

sudden outcome of imperial power and splendor was not 
uncommon. While admitting this, it seems almost 
incredible that this comparatively weak and insignificant 
kingdom should have attained such supremacy ; and it 
can only be accounted for on the supposition that the 
two great monarchies on each side of Solomon's domin- 
ions had been weakened by internal troubles or by for- 
eign aggression, or had sunk into that national effemi- 
nacy which luxury almost invariably creates. Had ei- 
ther Assyria or Egypt been as powerful as formerly, the 
Judaean triumphs in David's reign, and the peaceful 
grandeur of Solomon's sway would not have been possi- 
ble. The greatness of the Hebrew kingdom, therefore, 
presupposes corresponding weakness in both Egypt and 
Assyria ; and it was so. Evidence has been obtained 
from the monuments of both countries, which clearly 
proves that, at the very time when the Israelitish power 
was in the ascendant, they were both under a cloud and 
enfeebled. For nearly two centuries their historians are 
silent, and the very names of their monarchs remain 
unknown. Egypt began to wane about 1200 b. c, and 
Assyria about 1100 b. c. ; but about 990 b. c. they had 
largely recovered their lost position. It was throughout 
this period the triumphs of the Hebrew monarchy were 
gradually achieved ; they fit exactly into its circumstan- 
ces ; and through the Assyrian and Egyptian gloom 
which hovered on both sides of Palestine, the student of 
history can easily discern the splendor of Solomon's 
reign. In the arts and architecture of that Hebrew 
kingdom, he can see the image, or rather the repetition, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 307 

of all that was best in Egyptian and Assyrian models. 
The ruins of Nineveh and Palestine are mutually illus- 
trative, and they explain the magnificent edifices with 
which Solomon adorned Jerusalem. He gathered_from 
the East and the West all that was imposing in outline, as 
well as all that was intricate or delicate in art ; and re- 
produced them in felicitous combinations. The works 
in which he excelled could only have been accomplished 
in times of peace, and when access was easy to those 
great buildings which were hallowed by antiquity, and 
enriched by all that was attractive to what at that peri- 
od was " Modern taste." The feebleness of Assyria and 
Egypt accounts for their comparative obscurity, and not 
only for the general extension of the Hebrew dominions, 
but for the possibility of his carrying on and comple- 
ting, in presence of naturally jealous monarchs, those 
great works which are thus described in the Bible : "And 
it came to pass, at the end of twenty years, wherein Sol- 
omon had built the house of the Lord and his own 
house, that the cities which Huram had restored to Sol- 
omon, Solomon built them, and caused the children of 
Israel to dwell there. . . And he built Tadmor in the 
wilderness, and all the store-cities which he built in 
Hamath. Also, he built Beth-horon the upper, and Beth- 
horon the nether, fenced cities with walls, gates, and 
bars ; and Baalath, and all the store-cities that Solomon 
had, and all the chariot-cities, and the cities of the horse- 
men, and all that Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, 
and in Lebanon, and throughout all the land of his do- 
minion." 2 Chron. S : 1-6. 



3 o8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

The ruins of Tadmor — or Palmyra, as Alexander the 
Great named it — are to this day " the wonder" of travel- 
lers in the East ; and as this city was within about twen- 
ty miles of the Euphrates, it is evident that Assyria had 
lost its jealousy or its strength, for otherwise Solomon 
could not have found there opportunity and scope for 
such a magnificent architectural enterprise. Judging 
from the facts recorded in the Bible, the student of his- 
tory was led to infer that both Assyria and Egypt were 
at that time weak, and this opinion has received abun- 
dant confirmation from such records as these two coun- 
tries have of late supplied. 

3. Towards the close of Solomon's reign, Egypt be- 
gan to revive under the vigorous administration of Shi- 
shak, the " Sheshonk" of the hieroglyphics and the 
Sesonchis of Manetho. Jeroboam having fallen under 
the suspicion and displeasure of Solomon, fled to him 
for protection. " Solomon sought, therefore, to kill Jer- 
oboam ; and Jeroboam arose, and fled into Egypt, unto 
Shishak king of Egypt, and was in Egypt until the death 
of Solomon." 1 Kings 1 1 :4c After Solomon's death, when 
Rehoboam, his son, was running his career of despotism 
and folly, Shishak, as the Bible has told us, " came up 
against Jerusalem, with 12,000 chariots, 60,000 horsemen, 
and people without number." The date is very distinct- 
ly given, "And it came to pass, that, in the fifth year 
of king Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up 
against Jerusalem, because they had transgressed against 
the Lord. . . . And he took the fenced cities which 
pertained to Judah, and came to Jerusalem. ... So 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



3°9 



Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, and 
took away the treasures of the house of the Lord, and 
the treasures of the king's house ; he took all : he car- 
ried away also the shields of gold which Solomon had 
made." 2 Chronicles 12 : 2, 4, 9. 

Two things are here worthy of special notice, the 
first is, that in this distinct statement as to time, we have 
the first fixed point which historians can use for the es- 
tablishment of chronological data ; and the second is, 
that this portion of Bible history has received the fullest 
confirmation, by its narrative having been reproduced, 
with wonderful exactness, in the only memorial of Shi- 
shak's invasion which is known to be in existence. It was 
found in one of the courts of the great palace of Karnac 
at Thebes. In the inscription there is a hieroglyph, 
which Champollion has thus translated : " Pharaoh, gov- 
ernor of Lower Egypt, approved of the sun, the beloved 
of Amoun — Sheshonk" (Shishak). 

A Jewish figure is represented, as part of Shishak's 
triumphal procession, with a tablet on his breast, and a 
hieroglyph which has been thus rendered, " Iouclah Ma- 
lek," i. e., King of Judah. That itself is a very decided 
testimony to the truth of Scripture from an unexpected 
quarter, and it is still further borne out in the inscrip- 
tions connected with the same history, in which there 
are represented the chiefs of more than thirty nations ; 
and the names in the list of the " fenced cities" taken by 
Shishak have their counterpart in a number of the cities 
of Judah. It is true that, in the list of Shishak's cap- 
tive cities, there are some which might be supposed to 



3io BLENDING LIGHTS. ' 

be favorable to Jeroboam, as their territory is that of the 
Ten Tribes, and they should of course, have had Shi- 
shak's protection ; but the fact is only an additional proof 
of Scripture history, for in the territory of the Ten 
Tribes there were those, chiefly among the Levites, who 
favored Rehoboam, and resisted Shishak's protege,. It is 
evident that Shishak had passed into the territory of the 
Ten Tribes, and had discriminatively punished those 
towns and " suburbs" of which the Levites might be 
said to have possession. Their preference for Rehoboam 
is thus noticed in 2 Chronicles 11:13, 14: "And the 
priests and the Levites that were in all Israel resorted 
to him [Rehoboam] out of all their coasts ; for the Le- 
vites left their suburbs and their possession, and came to 
Judah and Jerusalem ; for Jeroboam and his sons had 
cast them off from executing the priest's office unto the 
Lord." This inscription, which has at last yielded up 
all its truth, has, by its minute record of the cities taken, 
incidentally confirmed the brief history of Shishak's 
movements as it has been given in the Bible. 

Without further following this twofold record of the 
Egyptian connection with Palestine, we may notice the 
recent very singular evidences of the truth of Bible his- 
tory which have attracted the attention of the civilized 
world, through the discovery (1) of the cities of Bashan 
and (2) of the Moabite Stone. 

1. Few can have read the following verses in Deuter- 
onomy without wonder, or without the notion that a mis- 
take had occurred in transcribing the numbers : " So 
the Lord our God delivered into our hands Og also, the 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 311 

king of Bashan, and all his people ; and we smote him, 
until none was left to him remaining. And we took all 
his cities at that time ; there was not a city which we 
took not from them, threescore cities, all the region of 
Argob, the kingdom of Og in Bashan. All these cities 
were fenced with high walls, gates, and bars ; beside un- 
walled towns a great many." Deut. 3:3-5. "Sixty 
cities ! ! " " Fenced, and with high walls !" " Impossi- 
ble, it surely means six, or at most sixteen. It is almost 
inconceivable to have sixty cities within the bounds of 
so small a territory !" Such, doubtless, have been the 
thoughts, if not the expressions, of many humble yet 
earnest readers of the Bible. " Often, when reading the 
passage," says Dr Porter, in his fascinating work, " I 
used to think that some strange statistical mystery hung 
over it, for how could a province measuring not more 
than thirty miles by twenty, support such a number of 
fortified cities, especially when the greater part of it was 
a wilderness of rocks ? But mysterious, incredible as 
this seemed, on the spot, with my own eyes, / have seen 
that it is literally true. The cities are there to this day. 
Some of them retain the ancient names recorded in the 
Bible. The bbundaries of Argob are as clearly defined by 
the hand of nature as those of our own island home. These 
ancient cities of Bashan contain, probably, the very old- 
est specimens of architecture now existing in the world."* 
Although some have doubted the antiquity of these 
buildings," the evidence is in favor of Dr. Porter's con- 

* "The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria's Holy Places," by the Rev. 
J. M. Porter, M. A. 1S69. pp. 13, 14. 



3 i2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

elusions ; but apart from the question of age, the crowd- 
ing together of so many cities, which seemed impossible, 
has been established as a fact, and it therefore nullifies 
the reasoning of the skeptic. 

Although within comparatively easy reach of Euro- 
pean travellers, Bashan was till lately comparatively un- 
known, and Christians read of it in the Bible with half 
listless wonder. Although not named in the New Testa- 
ment, its scenes are inwrought with its history. " It was 
down the western slopes of Bashan's high table-land that 
the demons, expelled by Jesus from the poor man, chased 
the herd of swine into the sea of Galilee. It was on 
the grassy slopes of Bashan's hills that the multitudes 
were twice miraculously fed by the merciful Saviour. 
And that 'high mountain' to which he led Peter, and 
James, and John, and on whose summit they beheld 
the glories of the transfiguration, was that very Hermon 
which forms the boundary of Bashan."* It is strange 
that desolation so complete as that by which the cities of 
Bashan have been overwhelmed, should have been so 
long concealed. The "poet prophets" of Israel have 
described the stateliness of its oaks, the magnificence of 
its scenery, the luxuriance of its pastures, the fertility of 
its plains, and the qualities of its flocks and herds ; and 
modern travellers have confirmed to the letter the accu- 
racy of their glowing delineations. 

While the varied aspects of Bashan's landscapes con- 
tinue in the main unchanged, its cities are deserted, and 

* " The Giant Cities of Bashan and Syria's Holy Places," by the Rev. 
J. M. Porter, M. A. 1S69. p. 16. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 313 

the stillness of death pervades them. While the ancient 
cities and villages of western Palestine, with a few excep- 
tions, have been so destroyed, that not one stone remains 
above another, and in some instances their very site is 
unknown, and while Jerusalem itself has lost its ancient 
architectural grandeur, " the state of Bashan is totally 
different ; it is literally crowded with towns and large 
villages; and though the vast majority of them are de- 
serted, they are not ruined. . . . Many of the houses in 
the ancient cities of Bashan are perfect, as if only fin- 
ished yesterday. The walls are sound, the roofs unbro- 
ken, the doors and even the window-shutters in their 
places." It is astonishing to learn that, in some of these 
ancient cities, from two to five hundred houses have been 
found perfect, but without a solitary inhabitant. From 
the battlements of the Castle of Salcah, Dr. Porter count- 
ed no fewer than thirty towns and villages dotting the 
vast plain, many of them perfect as when first built, and 
" yet, for more than five centuries, there has not been an 
inhabitant in one of them." 

All that has been recently discovered has completely 
established the descriptions in the writings of Moses and 
the prophets. To the very letter their statements have 
been vindicated by architectural remains, which are with- 
out a parallel. In how many instances, in all parts of 
the world, have cities been founded, have flourished, been 
demolished, rebuilt, and a second time swept off, so that 
their very site is forgotten and lost ? And how has 
Bashan escaped ? Why are the cities, their walls, and 
their houses still perfect, their stone roofs unmoved, and 

27 



3 i 4 BLENDING LI GUI'S. 

their stone doors hanging on their hinges ? Why are the 
streets tenantless and silent as a city of the dead ? The 
purposes of God in all this we cannot know ; but may we 
not believe it to be at least probable that, in his provi- 
dence, they have been preserved as witnesses to the truth 
of this portion of his blessed Word, when skepticism and 
infidelity are casting discredit on its statements regarding 
this strange giant people and their crowding cities ? 

2. After the kingdom of Israel had been convulsed 
by successive revolutions, and disgraced by the assassi- 
nation of two of its kings, "All Israel made Omri, the 
captain of the host, king over Israel." I Kings 16:16. 
No sooner did he gain the throne than he began to rule 
with an unrelenting hand, until he at last succeeded in 
so consolidating his kingdom, with Samaria as its capital, 
that he won the respect of neighboring monarchs, and 
Assyrian records bear testimony to the homage paid him. 
To these records we can only allude, as our object is, in 
the meantime, to fix attention on that strange witness to 
the truth of Scripture, whose voice in the solitudes of 
Moab unexpectedly aroused the scholarship, the skepti- 
cism, and the Christianity of the world. The circum- 
stances in which the discovery of the " Moabite Stone," 
on the site of the ancient Dibon, was first made, are too 
generally known to require here a detailed account. The 
Rev. Mr. Klein, a Prussian, employed by the Church 
Missionary Society, first saw it, when it was unbroken ; 
but no sooner did the Arabs observe the peculiar interest 
which was taken in it, than, jealous of the interference of 
the Franks and Turks, they broke it, and concealed its 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 315 

fragments. By the judicious and persevering efforts of 
Captain Warren, R. E., the agent of the Palestine Explo- 
ration Fund, the fragments have been recovered. The 
inscription is in the Phoenician character, and the lan- 
guage itself is scarcely distinguishable from the Hebrew. 
The translation which has been published represents the 
contest of the Moabites with Omri, and their ultimate 
triumph. Between Israel and Moab, according to the 
Scriptures, there was a perpetual struggle during the 
thirty-four years' successive reigns of Omri and his son 
Ahab ; and to this the inscription very clearly refers. 
Moab had for a long period the worst of it, 2 Kings 
3 :4-27, and 2 Chron. 20, and paid heavy tribute to Omri 
and Ahab ; but Mesha put an end to it. The Bible thus 
speaks of the oppressive tax paid : " And Mesha king of 
Moab was a sheep-master, and rendered unto the king of 
Israel 100,000 lambs and 100,000 rams, with the wool. 
But it came to pass, when Ahab was dead, that the king 
of Moab rebelled against the king of Israel." 2 Kings 

3:4, 5- 

It is perhaps unnecessary to quote more than the fol- 
lowing sentences in the inscription: "I, Mesha, son of 
Jabin, king of Moab. My father reigned over Moab 
thirty years, and I reigned after my father. I erected 
this altar unto Chemosh, who granted me victory over 
my enemies, the people of Omri, king of Israel, who, to- 
gether with his son, [Ahab~\ oppressed Moab a long pe- 
riod — even forty years. For though Chemosh was angry 
against the land, during my reign he was favorable to 
Moab, as well as to the Temple, which Israel had con- 



3 i6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

tinually wasted. The men of Gad dwelt in the district 
of Kiriathaim from olden times, and there the king of 
Israel built a fortress for himself, which Chemosh bade 
me go and take from him. Then I went in the middle 
of the night, and fought against Israel from break of day 
until noon, and slew all the people in the town, to the 
delight of Chemosh, the god of Moab. I took from them 
all the sacred vessels of Jehovah, and offered them to 
Chemosh, my god, instead."* 

The reference to Che7nosh, the national deity of Moab, 
is quite in harmony with the Bible allusion to Chemosh 
as the abomination of Moab, i Kings 1 1 : J ; and the 
whole inscription betokens the long subjection of Moab, 
and the final triumph of the Moabites. For sixty-five 
years, there is in the Bible no further notice of the Moab- 
ites — not until after Elisha's death, when, as we are told, 
"the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the 
coming in of the year." 2 Kings 13 : 20. The silence of 
Scripture on this subject is itself an acknowledgment of 
the Moabitish success and independence. The inscrip- 
tion further gives an account of Mesha's triumph, and of 
his reorganizing and strengthening his long-oppressed 
and sorely-wasted kingdom. This testimony is altogether 
singular, and cannot be set aside or modified by any pos- 
sible ingenuity of mere criticism. 

After this period, the historical illustrations of Scrip- 
ture are so numerous, that only a few can be noticed ; 
but these, taken in connection with the evidence which 

* See " Recovery of Jerusalem," p. 496 ; and Dr. Ginsburg's Essay on 
"The Moabite Stone." 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 317 

has been already adduced, constitute an insuperable bar- 
rier to that destructive criticism in which rationalists 
have long taken great delight. 

Without dwelling on the intermingling evidence from 
the Bible and Assyrian records regarding the general 
condition of Syria, and the leagues of contending tribes, 
a difficulty may be noticed which has been created 
through the introduction in the Bible history of the 
name of the Assyrian monarch " Pul," who is not ac- 
knowledged in any one of the Assyrian records of that 
period. He is described in 2 Kings 15 : 19, and 1 Chron. 
5 : 26, as having compelled Menahem, king of Israel, to 
pay him a thousand talents, being the condition of with- 
drawing his troops from his territory, and as having been 
historically associated with " Tiglath-pileser," in carrying 
the Jews into captivity, " even the Reubenites, and the 
Gadites, and the half tribe of Manasseh." While it is 
interesting to observe that this is the first notice of As- 
syria in the Bible since the time of Nimrod, and that Pul 
is the first Assyrian invader of the Jewish territory, it is 
necessary to inquire how it is that, while Tiglath-pileser 
is named in the Assyrian records, Pul is not. 

Although the Assyrian annals, so far as discovery has 
yet reached, do not recognize Pul as one of their kings, 
he is distinctly named by Berosus, the earliest and most 
reliable historian to whom appeal can be made, as reign- 
ing at this time — not, however, as an " Assyrian," but as 
a CJialdcean monarch.* As he reigned at Babylon, and 

* It is interesting to learn that despatches have been found which were 
written by an Assyrian officer who bore that name, and that one of his let- 

27* 



3 i8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

not at Nineveh, he is not acknowledged to be an Assyrian 
ruler. But why, it may be asked, did the Bible histori- 
ans not correctly designate him "King of Babylon"? 
Professor Rawlinson has fully considered this anomaly 
in his " Ancient Monarchies," and has more briefly sta- 
ted, in his recent little work, " Historical Illustrations," 
what appears to be the true solution of the difficulty. 
The Jews, after the rise of the Assyrian empire, did not 
minutely discriminate between what was strictly As- 
syrian and what was the older, or Chaldcsan authority. 
Besides, there was evidently much imperial confusion at 
this time ; it is clearly shown by the annals that the As- 
syrian empire was temporarily disorganized ; some of the 
provinces had broken off from the royal sway in Nine- 
veh ; and as the monarchs there may have held the reins 
of government with a slack hand, a bold and ambitious 
Babylonian prince, like Pul, supported by some of the 
revolted Assyrian provinces, and ruling over that part of 
Assyria which was nearest to them, would naturally 
enough be regarded and spoken of by the Jews as an 
Assyrian king. " He was a Chaldaean who, in the troub- 
lous times that fell upon Assyria about b. c. 763-760, 
obtained the dominion over Western Mesopotamia ; and 
who, invading Syria from the quarter whence the Assyrian 
armies were wont to come, and being at the head of As- 
syrian troops, appeared as much an Assyrian monarch as 
the princes that held their court at Nineveh."* The 

ters is in the new collection. Probably they were written before he ascend- 
ed the throne. See "Assyrian Discoveries," by George Smith, p. 448. 
Edition, 1875. 

* " Historical Illustrations," pp. 122, 124. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 319 

designation of Pul as king of Assyria, although he may- 
have been only a pretender, is not only intelligible, but, 
when taken in connection with the fact that Pul, accor- 
ding to Berosus, did reign as king of Chaldasa exactly at 
this time, is one of those indirect or incidental testi- 
monies to the truth of Scripture which every one ac- 
cepts. 

Tiglath-Pileser is closely associated with Pul, and 
the records of his life interweave with those of the Bible 
regarding Azariah and Ahaz, Menahem, Pekah, and Ho- 
shea. When Azariah was king of Judah, Pekah was king 
of Israel ; and " In the days of Pekah king of Israel, came 
Tiglath-pileser, king of Assyria, and took Ijon, and Abel- 
beth-maachah, and Janoah, and Kedesh, and Hazor, and 
Gilead, and Galilee, all the land of Naphtali, and carried 
than captive to Assyria." 2 Kings 1 5 : 29. 

Soon after this war, another followed which lasted for 
several years. Damascus and Samaria, with their kings 
Pekah and Rezin, uniting, declared war against Ahaz, 
who in his turn applied to Tiglath-pileser, and pleaded 
for help against the kings of Syria and Israel. " And 
Ahaz took the silver and gold that was found in the 
house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's 
house, and sent it for a present to the king of Assyria. 
And the king of Assyria hearkened unto him : for the 
king of Assyria went up against Damascus, and took it, 
and carried the people of it captive to Kir, and slew 
Rezin." 2 Kings 16:7-9. 

This, in the end, proved disastrous policy on the part 
of Ahaz, for it not only closed the history of Syria as a 



3 2o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

separate kingdom after it had extended through ten gen- 
erations, but it led to the commencement of the captivity, 
and stimulated the desire of the Assyrian king to obtain 
more of that gold which the weakness of the Jewish mon- 
arch had exposed to view. Although Ahaz went to 
Damascus to congratulate Tiglath-pileser on his success, 
and adopted the plan of an idolatrous altar, which had 
pleased him, he afterwards had the mortification of find- 
ing himself left unaided in the struggle to recover the 
places which had been taken, during this war, by the 
Philistines and the Edomites. "And Tiglath-pileser 
king of Assyria came unto him, and distressed him, but 
strengthened him not." 2 Chron. 28 : 20. Ahaz aban- 
doned principle, and was enfeebled by policy ; he went 
from one depth of infamy to another in idolatrous meth- 
ods, and when he died he was not brought " into the 
sepulchres of the kings of Israel." There is a notice of 
the defeat and death of Rezin in one of the inscriptions 
now in the British Museum,* and Tiglath-pileser himself 
records the fact, that previously, in the fifth year of his 
reign, he had defeated a great army under Azariah, king 
of Judah. There are references, also, in recently inter- 
preted tablets to the siege of Damascus, the conquest 
of the Philistines, the death of Pekah, and the accession 
of Hoshea, which are of the greatest interest as confirm- 
ing the very details of Bible history. 

To the Bible alone are we indebted for a distinct ac- 
count of the movements of Shalmaneser,! as successor 

* "Ancient Monarchies," vol. 2, p. 132; second edition. 

t The Shalmaneser of Scripture is Shalmaneser II. of Assyrian his- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 321 

of Tiglath-pileser. The annals of his kingdom were all 
destroyed by the usurper who followed him ; but satis- 
factory evidence from other sources has been forthcom- 
ing to show that his reign fits into the place which the 
Bible assigns him. From both the Phoenicians and the 
Greeks, we learn that Shalmaneser not only did reign in 
Assyria, but that he contended with the Phoenicians both 
by land and sea ; in short, that he overran the whole of 
Phoenicia, with the exception of Insular Tyre, which he 
besieged for no less than five years. For this informa- 
tion we are indebted to Menander of Ephesus ;* and in 
the minute exactness of its references to Shalmaneser we 
have a fresh proof of the historical value of the Bible. 

The blank which occurs in the Assyrian annals has 
been filled up by such direct announcements in Scripture 
as the following: "Against him [Hoshea] came up Shal- 
maneser, king of Assyria ; and Hoshea became his ser- 
vant, and gave him presents. And the king of Assyria 
found conspiracy in Hoshea : for he had sent messengers 
to So, king of Egypt, and brought no present to the king 
of Assyria, as lie had done ytzx by year ; therefore the 
king of Assyria shut him up, and bound him in prison. 
Then the king of Assyria came up throughout all the 
land, and went up to Samaria, and besieged it three 
years. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria 
took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria, and 

tory, B. c. 860. Shalmaneser I., king of Assyria, B. c. 1300, built a palace 
in Nineveh, and made that city the seat of government. Smith's " Assyr- 
ian Discoveries," pp. 72, 91. 

* Menand., Eph. ap. Joseph. Ant., Ind., 9, 14. See "Ancient Mon« 
archies," vol. 2, p. 405. 



322 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

placed them in Halah, and in Habor by the river of Go- 
zan, and in the cities of the Medes." 2 Kings 17:3-6. 

In the course of the three years' siege, there were 
evidently stirring scenes in the Assyrian empire. A 
new power was at work behind Shalmaneser's besieging 
army, and in some way it became connected with it be- 
fore Samaria ; for in the next chapter, at the ninth verse, 
it is said, "And it came to pass in the fourth year of king 
Hezekiah, which was the seventh year of Hoshea, son of 
Elah, king of Israel, that Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, 
came up against Samaria, and besieged it. And at the 
end of three years they took it." . . . Let it be observed 
that it is not he (Shalmaneser) took it ; which would 
have been the most natural expression, and most in ac- 
cordance with the style of the narrative. It is also wor- 
thy of remark that, in the sixth verse of the preceding 
chapter, when Hoshea is named, and when we should 
have expected with similar directness the name Shalma- 
neser, it is dropped, and " The king of Assyria " is sub- 
stituted. It is clear that some disturbing force had come 
suddenly into the midst of Shalmaneser's movements ; 
but hozv ? or whence ? none could answer. It does not 
appear from the historical books that any king reigned 
between Shalmaneser and Sennacherib. In the twenti- 
eth chapter of Isaiah there is a formal reference to Sar- 
gon, as having spread terror and desolation far and wide 
in Syria and in Egypt ; but as the name occurs nowhere 
else in Scripture, critics were divided in their conclu- 
sions ; while some held Sargon to be the same as Shal- 
maneser, others held him to be identical with Sennache- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 323 

rib, and others with Esar-haddon. For two thousand five 
hundred years, Isaiah's mention of Sargon remained in- 
explicable ; but the mystery has been at last removed, 
and the historical delineation by the prophet Isaiah has 
been proved to be literally accurate. Sargon, as a usurp- 
er, had taken advantage of Shalmaneser's absence at the 
siege of Samaria, and having gained successes with his 
army, he came up to Samaria, and the result was, as 
stated above, "they took it;" hence the next announce- 
ment, that the king of Assyria, implying Sargon, whose 
name or position may not have been very clearly under- 
stood by the historian at the time, took Samaria ; and 
having carried Israel captive, placed the prisoners in 
Halah and Habor, and "in the cities of the Medes." 

There can be no hesitation now in admitting both the 
accuracy of Isaiah's statements, and the scrupulous atten- 
tion to facts shown by the historian of 2 Kings, for the 
name of Sargon is found on the Assyrian monuments, 
and the fullest accounts of his reign are given. As he 
was the supplanter, not the lawful successor, of Shal- 
maneser, he naturally attempted to blot his name alto- 
gether out of the Assyrian annals, and he so far accom- 
plished his object that for a considerable time no trace of 
Shalmaneser's reign could be found. But recently inter- 
preted sculpture and inscriptions have assigned him his 
rightful place in Assyrian records, showing his relation 
to Jehu of the Bible, and fixing the very year when he 
received tribute from him, and they also refer to the 
additions which he made to his father's works at the pal- 
ace and the temple of Nineveh 



3 2 4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Through the labors of M. Botta, it has been placed 
beyond dispute that Sargon was the builder of the palace 
of Khorsabad, and in its ruins full details of his reign are 
given. He had seized and annexed to Assyria some of 
the towns of Media, and hence the minute reference in 
Scripture to what, in such circumstances, would be most 
natural — his sending Hebrew captives " to the cities of 
the Medes." Although the inscription which contained 
an account of his campaign against Samaria has been 
almost completely destroyed, there is another which has 
been well preserved, in which it is stated that he carried 
27,280 Israelites into captivity "from Samaria and the 
several districts or provincial towns dependent on that 
city,"* and there is some evidence of his having com- 
pelled the kings of Egypt to pay him tribute.f 

It is agreeably surprising to find a minute reference 
to a comparatively insignificant fact in a great campaign, 
like that made by Isaiah to the taking of Ashdod by 
Sargon, fully confirmed by the Assyrian records. The 
description by Isaiah, in the twentieth chapter, of the 
approaching humiliation of the Egyptians and the shame 
of those who put their trust in " their glory," is strikingly 
verified by Sargon's account of his campaign against 
Ashdod. In his annals, Egypt is described "as a weak 
power, always stirring up revolts against Assyria," yet 
unable to help the revolters when attacked. Egypt was 
then truly a "broken reed," and "trust in the shadow of 
Egypt was confusion."! There can be little doubt that 

* Layard's " Nineveh and Babylon," p. 618. t Ibid., p. 620. 

J See "Assyrian Discoveries — Inscriptions of Sargon," pp. 2S8-294. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 325 

the description in the tenth chapter of Isaiah has refer- 
ence to Sargon as having been the conqueror of Carche- 
mish as well of Samaria, and evidence is adduced from 
an inscription found at Nineveh, in which, among other 
things, it is said, "The mighty king Sargon waged war 
against the wicked, and having overcome Pisiri, king of 
Syria, placed a governor in the city of Carchemish." 

Sennacherib, it is admitted, was Sargon's successor, 
and there is a remarkable correspondence between the 
account in the Bible and the recently discovered Assyrian 
annals. Of the outset of his movements, it is said in the 
Bible : " Now, in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, 
did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the 
fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And Hezekiah 
king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish, 
saying, I have, offended ; return from me : that which 
thou puttest on me will I bear. And the king of Assy- 
ria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hun- 
dred talents of silver, and thirty talents of gold. And 
Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the 
house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king's 
house." 2 Kings 18:13-15. In the inscriptions which 
have been translated, the Bible references to "all the 
fenced cities of y-itdah" and to the thirty talents of gold, 
have their counterpart. The following statement by 
Sennacherib thoroughly coalesces with that of the Bible : 
" Because Hezekiah king of Judah would not submit to 
my yoke, I came up against him, and by force of arms, 
and by the might of my power, I took forty-six of his 

strong fenced cities ; and of the smaller towns which were 

28 



326 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

scattered about, I took and plundered a countless num- 
ber ; and from their places I captured and carried off as 
spoil 200,150 people, old and young, male and female, 
together with horses and mares, asses and camels, oxen 
and sheep, a countless multitude. And Hezekiah him- 
self I shut up in Jerusalem, like a bird in a cage, build- 
ing towers round the city to hem him in, and raising 
banks of earth against the gates to prevent escape. . . . 
Then, upon this Hezekiah there fell the fear of the power 
of my arms, and he sent out to me the chiefs and the elders 
of Jerusalem with thirty talents of gold, and eight hun- 
dred talents of silver, and divers treasures — a rich and 
immense booty. . . . All these things were brought to 
me at Nineveh, the seat of my government, Hezekiah 
having sent them by way of tribute, and as a token of 
submission to my power."* 

The eight hundred talents as against the three hun- 
dred specified in the Bible include, obviously, all the 
silver which was obtained at first from every source, 
while the three hundred constituted the annual tribute. 
Is not the coincidence of these two descriptions very re- 
markable ? The agreement of the Bible statement with 
the annals is still more striking when the passages in 
Isaiah are collated with those of the historical books. 
Of the above passage there is a slightly different transla- 
tion by Dr. Hincks, in Layard's " Nineveh and Baby- 
lon," but substantially the agreement is such that the 
two may be held as one.f 

* "Ancient Monarchies," vol. 3, pp. 161, 162. 
t Layard's "Nineveh and Babylon," pp. 143, 144. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 327 

Sennacherib undertook a second expedition to Jerusa- 
lem, and it would seem that in both he occupied La- 
chish, 2 Kings 23 : 14, 17 ; 19 : 3 ; Isa. 29 : 1-8 ; 24, and in 
either the one or the other a serious resistance to his 
arms was made, but in vain. Sennacherib triumphed, 
and in his annals there is an inscription confirmatory of 
his attack on Lachish, as it is stated in the Bible : "Af- 
ter this did Sennacherib king of Assyria send his ser- 
vants to Jerusalem, (but he himself laid siege against 
Lachish, and all his power with him,) unto Hezekiah 
king of Judah, and unto all Judah, that were at Jerusalem," 
&c* 2 Chron. 32 :g. In the Assyrian annals it is said, 
"Sennacherib, the mighty king, king of the country of 
Assyria, sitting on the throne of judgment, before the 
city Lachish, (Lakkisha,) I gave permission for its 
slaughter."* 

In his expedition directed chiefly against Egypt, he 
was disastrously unsuccessful. He bent his arms towards 
Jerusalem, and " was purposed to fight against" it, but 
Hezekiah made most vigorous preparations for its de- 
fence. In the nineteenth chapter of 2 Kings, there is an 
almost matchless description of the arrogance, the pride, 
and the blasphemies of the Assyrian king and his repre- 
sentatives, which led to the profound heart-pleadings of 
Hezekiah with the God of Israel ; and all this is followed 
by Isaiah's defiant scorn, and his prohetic denunciations 
of the Assyrian king and his hosts. " Therefore thus 
saith the Lord concerning the king of Assyria, He shall 
not come into this city, nor shoot an arrow there, nor 

* Izard's "Nineveh and Babylon," p. 152. 



328 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

come before it with shield, nor cast a bank against it. By 
the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and 
shall not come into this city, saith the Lord. . . . And 
it came to pass that night, that the angel of the Lord 
went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians a 
hundred fourscore and five thousand : and when they 
arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead 
corpses. So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and 
went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh. And it came 
to pass, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch, 
his god, that Adrammelecb and Sharezer, his sons, smote 
him with the sword, . . . and Esar-haddon, his son, reigned 
in his stead." To the very letter in every particular has 
this striking statement been confirmed. 

How sudden and complete this overthrow of Sen- 
nacherib, when success seemed certain ! His plans were 
laid with skill, and prosecuted with energy. As Sethos, 
one of the native princes, was near with his army, Sen- 
nacherib had" resolved to crush him before the great 
Ethiopian monarch, Tirhakah, could un ; te forces with 
him. Bui this terrible disaster overwhelmed his army 
and humbled his pride. The Egyptians ascribed his 
overthrow to the power of their own gods and added to 
his humiliation by harassing his straggling forces as they 
fled. 

The Assyrian annals, as was the practice, take no 
notice of this fearful calamity ; but the Egyptian his- 
torians record the disaster : they account for it in their 
own way, and the priests informed Herodotus that Sethos 
erected a monument in commemoration of the event, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 329 

which they pointed out to him. It was the statue of a 
man, and bore the inscription, " Look on me, and learn 
to reverence the gods." 

The Bible historians, of course, did not regard it as 
within their scope to record the subsequent wars and 
triumphs of Sennacherib. From other sources we hear 
of the conquests which he made ; and it is interesting to 
observe that, with all his recruited energies, he did not 
renew his attack on Jerusalem or Egypt ; he accepted 
the terrible warning which the Lord God of Israel had 
given him, and turned his energies to other achievements. 
The Bible relates, however, his sad and inglorious end 
by the hand of his own sons ; and, in so far as historical 
evidence goes, this account of his death has been con- 
firmed. 

Esar-haddon, the son of Sennacherib, was his suc- 
cessor, 2 Kings 19:37, and carried on several extensive 
campaigns but in only one important particular does his 
history touch the Bible record. He was the contempo- 
rary of Manasseh, king of Judah ; and being displeased 
with his disaffection or revolt, he sent the captains of 
his host, who took Manasseh "among the thorns, and 
bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon." 
2 Chron. 33:11. Treated severely, his affliction led him 
to penitence, to humbling himself before God, and sub- 
sequently to his restoral to his throne by Esar-haddon, 
on condition of subjection. 

Esar-haddon, it is to be borne in mind, was the first 

of the Assyrian line who was king of Babylon as well as 

of Assyria. Sargon took the title of both, but Esar- 

28* 



33© BLENDING LIGHTS. 

hacldon had built there a palace for himself, in which, 
no doubt, he would sometimes reside.* It is to Babylon 
he was brought, and not to Nineveh, as was the custom. 
This is the first Assyrian king with whom such a desti- 
nation for any prisoner was possible. Is it not very sin- 
gular to find that Manasseh is said to have been brought 
to Babylon, and can any degree of exactness more com- 
pletely testify to the truth of the Bible ? As soon as the 
king is resident in Babylon, the Bible tells us that tJiith- 
er the captive was brought. 

That Manasseh was made his prisoner cannot be 
doubted ; the annals of Esar-haddon attest the fact. In 
the inscription bearing on the capture of prisoners, it is 
said : " I count among the prisoners of my reign twelve 
kings of the Hittites, who dwelt beyond the mountains — 
Bahlon, king of Tyre, Manasseh, king of jfndea, together 
with the kings of the Isles of the Mediterranean Sea."f 
A more explicit statement cannot be desired. 

In some of the new texts discovered by Mr. Smith, 
there are references to Esar-haddon's wars with Tirhakah, 
king of Ethiopia and Egypt, and with the Tyrians who 
had joined him, which fit in with Isaiah's statement re- 
garding Tirhakah. Esar-haddon, who was one of the 
most powerful of the Assyrian monarchs, prosecuted 
against Ethiopia and Egypt the war in which his father 
had been engaged, and which the terrible calamity that 
befell his army before Jerusalem compelled him to aban- 

* "Ancient Monarchies," vol. 2, p. 196; Second Edition, 
t " Revue Archeologique," 1S64. Quoted by the Rev. B. R. Savile in 
" The Truth of the Bible," p. 289. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 331 

don. These new inscriptions shed light on this hitherto 
obscure part of Bible history. 

As it would occupy greatly more space than the lim- 
its of this work admit, to follow closely the series of inci- 
dental testimonies which the prophetic writings contain, 
a few brief notices may suffice to complete this general 
argument. 

While the children of Israel were pining in captivity 
by " Babel's streams," and had apparently closed their 
history, they are not only preserved by God as a separate 
people, but distinguished by the steady light which the 
character of Daniel sheds on them. Though in captivity, 
they are brought to the foreground, and their history 
rises in importance above that even of their conquerors. 
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, is made all the more 
conspicuous by his relations to the prophet Daniel and 
to this people. The mutual relations of Daniel and 
Nebuchadnezzar are so well known, that it is needless to 
refer to them minutely ; but there are several coinci- 
dences which are too striking to be omitted. Nebuchad- 
nezzar contributed so much to the extension and adorn- 
ment of the city, that, naturally, as recorded in Scripture, 
" he walked in the palace of the kingdom of Babylon," 
and said, " Is not this great Babylon that I have built 
for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, 
and for the honor of my majesty ?" In the clear " Stand- 
ard Inscription of Nebuchadnezzar," his account of what 
he did is in every sense only an amplification of the 
above brief announcement: "The double enclosure 
which Nabopolassar, my father, had made, but not com- 



332 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

pleted, / finished. . . . The great double wall of Babylon 
/finished. . . . /strengthened the city. . . . Across the 
river to the west / built the wall of Babylon with 
brick. . . . The reservoir of Babylon, by the grace of 
Merodach, / filled completely full of water. ... / made 
the way of Nana, the protectress of her votaries. . . . 
These gates / raised. . . . For the delight of mankind, / 
filled the reservoir. Behold ! besides the Inerur-Bel, the 
impregnable fortification of Babylon, / constructed in- 
side Babylon, on the eastern side of the river, a fortifica- 
tion such as no king had ever made before me, viz., a 
long rampart, 4,000 ammas square, as an extra defence. 
/ excavated the ditch ; with brick and mortar / bound 
its bed ; a long rampart at its head / strongly built. / 
adorned its gates. The folding doors and pillars / plated 
with copper,"* and so on. Can any historical light more 
vividly reveal the accuracy of the photograph of Nebu- 
chadnezzar as it is set in the Book of Daniel ? 

Sir Henry Rawlinson has borne important testimony 
to the reality of Nebuchadnezzar's influence and his ex- 
tensive improvements, when he said, " I have examined 
the bricks in situ, belonging, perhaps, to a* hundred towns 
and cities in the neighborhood of Bagdad, and I have 
never yet found any other legend than that of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, son of Nabopolassar, king of Babylon." 

In the same inscription there is a passage in which it 

is believed there is an allusion to the calamity which 

Daniel has described as befalling Nebuchadnezzar, when 

he. was driven from the haunts of men until "seven 

* "Ancient Monarchies," vol. 3, p. 524; second edition. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 333 

times " should pass over him, and he should acknowledge 
God ; but as difference of opinion has, of late, been 
shown regarding it, we shall quote the passage merely as 
Sir Henry Rawlinson rendered it, in the hope that his 
translation may yet be fully verified, and that the remark 
of Professor Rawlinson in his " Bampton Lectures" may 
be vindicated, that " the whole range of cuneiform litera- 
ture presents no similar instance of a king putting on 
record his own inaction," notwithstanding his having 
withheld this conclusion as now doubtful, in both his 
"Ancient Monarchies" and his "Historical Illustrations 
of the Old Testament." " For four years .... the seat 
of my kingdom in the city, which .... did not rejoice 
my heart. In all my dominions I did not build a high 
place of power ; the precious treasures of my kingdom I 
did not lay up. In Babylon, buildings for myself and for 
the honor of my kingdom I did not lay out. In the wor- 
ship of Merodach, my lord, the joy of my heart, in Baby- 
lon, the city of his sovereignty and the seat of my em- 
pire, I did not sing his praises, I did not furnish his 
altars with victims, nor did I clear out the canals." 

The blanks at the beginning represent words which 
have baffled the deciphering skill of Sir Henry, but obvi- 
ously, if its meaning has been rightly apprehended, the 
whole passage exhibits a complete revolution in the life 
of Nebuchadnezzar, and is in striking contrast with the 
energetic action exhibited in the first part of the inscrip- 
tion, which we quoted. 

The "seven times," mentioned by Daniel, does not 
necessarily mean seven years, and accordingly an expla- 



334 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

nation to the following effect has been offered. It was 
common in Persia and Chaldsea to divide the year into 
two seasons only, summer and winter, and thus we have 
three and a half solar years, which would, in the main, 
correspond with the seven times, or three and a half 
years. But as critical difficulties, in the meantime, lie 
in the way of accepting this view of the inscription, we 
do not press it, because it is most undesirable where there 
is so much that is thoroughly definite, to weaken our 
argument by introducing what is doubtful. We give the 
opponents of the Bible the benefit of the doubt, and we 
merely submit the probable rendering of the passage, be- 
cause it is not inappropriate to evidence from other 
sources bearing on the same great fact of Nebuchadnez- 
zar's temporary seclusion. The reign of a queen is 
placed in this period by some historians, and it is not in 
the least improbable that she conducted public affairs 
while Nebuchadnezzar was temporarily, unfit to take any 
interest in them. It is also distinctly intimated that he 
" fell into a state of infirm health " some time before his 
decease ; and Professor Rawlinson has quoted from Aby- 
denus a remarkable passage,* containing an account of 
the last words and the death of Nebuchadnezzar, which 
he regards as of importance in connecting the commence- 
ment of Nebuchadnezzar's malady, not only with the 
roof of the palace, as it is implied in Daniel 4 : 29, but 
with his disappearance from among men, and with such 
prophetic power as was mysteriously imparted to him, 
according to the account by Daniel. 

* "Historical Illustrations," pp. i68, 169. 1 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 335 

In the Scripture narrative of the sudden destruction 
of the Babylonian kingdom, there were two minute state- 
ments against which rationalistic writers long urged 
strong objections, and on which they rested demands for 
the rejection of the book of Daniel as "full of historical 
errors ;" and the result reminds us of what has often 
happened in supposed contradictions of the Bible by 
perverted facts in natural science. The first statement, 
which was sneered at as erroneous, is that which de- 
scribes Belshazzar as king of Babylon ; and the second, 
is that which intimates that Daniel was to receive the 
reward of being made third instead of second in the 
kingdom, in accordance with custom. 

The objections pressed against Daniel's statement 
that Belshazzar was king, had apparently such weight, 
that Bible students were long greatly perplexed. Some 
of the ancient historians, as Herodotus and Berosus, to 
whose opinions deserved deference has always been paid, 
have stated that not Belshazzar, but Nabonnedus,* (or 
Labynetus,) was king of Babylon when it was taken by 
the Medo-Persians — that this Nabonnedus was not in 
the city of Babylon when it was overthrown — that he 
was not slain — that he was taken prisoner in a contest 
outside the city, and was generously treated by Cyrus. 
To meet these statements, there was no answer beyond 
that which faith in the accuracy of the Bible suggested. 
But a most interesting discovery of clay cylinders by Mr. 
Taylor, when he was making excavations in Ur of the 
Chaldees under the superintendence of Sir H. Rawlin- 

* Or Nabonidus, or Nabonadius. 



336 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

son, has put an end to the cavils of the skeptic and the 
difficulties of the Christian. The cylinders bear inscrip- 
tions which Sir Henry, to his delight, has found to con- 
tain an account of the reign of this very Nabonnedus, a 
discovery of the utmost importance for the illustration of 
Scripture. "The most important facts, however, which 
they disclose," says Sir Henry, in a most instructive let- 
ter in the " Athenaeum," " are that the eldest son of Na- 
bonnedus was named Bel-shar-ezar, and that he was ad- 
mitted by his father to a share in the government. This 
name is undoubtedly the Belshazzar of Daniel, and thus 
furnishes a key to the explanation of that great historical 
problem which has hitherto defied solution. We can 
now understand how Belshazzar, as joint king with his 
father, may have been governor of Babylon when the 
city was attacked by the combined forces of the Medes 
and Persians, and may have perished in the assault which 
followed ; while Nabonnedus, leading a force to the relief 
of the place, was defeated and obliged to take refuge in 
the neighboring town of Borsippa, (or Birs-i-Nimrud,) 
capitulating after a short resistance, and being subse- 
quently assigned, according to Berosus, an honorable 
retirement in Carmania. By the discovery, indeed, of 
the name Bel-shar-ezar, as appertaining to the son of 
Nabonnedus, we are for the first time enabled to recon- 
cile authentic history (such as it is related by Herodotus 
and Berosus, and not as we find it in the romances of 
Xenophon or the fables of Ctesias) with the inspired 
record of Daniel, one of the bulwarks of our religion."* 

* "Athenaeum," 1854, p. 341. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 337 

In further sketching the memorials of the latter kings, 
Sir Henry says that of " Nabonnedus they were finding 
relics in all quarters." "The walls of Babylon on the 
river face, erected by this king, were completely exposed 
during a late fall of the river, and the bricks of which the 
wall was composed were found to be uniformly stamped 
with his name and titles." The evidence of the father's 
reign and influence is complete, and the incidental testi- 
mony to Belshazzar being co-regent, in addition to the 
direct statement by the father in his annals, is such that 
it cannot be set aside. A co-regency was not uncom- 
mon ; Nabopolassar shared his government with his son 
Nebuchadnezzar, Xerxes with his son Artaxerxes, and 
Augustus with Tiberius. 

We thus find that there were two kings, father and 
son, associated in the rule of the kingdom ; that Nabon- 
nedus was not in the city, but in its neighborhood de- 
fending it, while Belshazzar was within the city, as Daniel 
has written, and that he perished in its ruins. 

This record has not only removed the difficulty as to 
Nabonnedus being king and not Belshazzar, but it has 
disposed of the objections which have been raised in ref- 
erence to Daniel having been assigned the third place 
instead of the second. Belshazzar offered the third place 
to any interpreter of the handwriting on the wall, because 
he could not offer the second, for the very reason which 
has at last been ascertained through the discovered in- 
scription, that he was himself second, his father Nabonne- 
dus being first. Is not this another striking testimony 
to the exactness of the sacred record ? That which was 

29 



33 3 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

long a stumbling-block to ignorance, has, in the light of 
recent discoveries, proved a source of strength to the 
Bible student, and it carries with it an emphatic warning 
against hasty conclusions unfavorable to the Word of 
God. The seeming historical inaccuracies in Daniel, of 
which some German critics have complained so loudly, 
have been turned into an impregnable defence of its 
claims to a reliableness which, in even minute details, no 
other ancient history can profess and establish. 

When we move along the line of Jewish history after 
the time of Daniel, we have Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, 
detailing events which extend over rather more than a 
hundred years beyond the return from the Babylonish 
captivity. A new empire spreads out before us. Cyrus, 
Ahasuerus, Artaxerxes, Darius, Artaxerxes, pass in suc- 
cession through changes which have an important bear- 
ing on the destiny of Jews. Not only in the general but 
in the minuter statements of both the sacred and the sec- 
ular historians of this period, are there very striking coin- 
cidences ; and those illustrious rulers to whom we have 
referred have, in their histories, touched Jewish interests 
in so many points, that, for rationalists, nothing should 
be easier than the detection and exposure of errors, if 
any did exist; but in this their failure has been complete, 
and they have been forced to accept, in many instances, 
as true what they once denounced or ridiculed as false. 

Some difficulties remain, but they are comparatively 
insignificant, and the preponderance of exactly corre- 
sponding records is such as to render the historical 
argument unanswerable. Testimonies have been unex- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 339 

pectedly forthcoming to vindicate the Scriptures along 
the whole line of their history, whenever and wherever 
serious doubts have been raised and assaults made. 

From the earliest announcements regarding the Del- 
uge,* Noah and his sons, and Abraham in Ur of the 
Chaldees or in Egypt, down through every vicissitude to 
the very close of the Old Testament history, fuller light 
is being shed on every other record when it comes into 
contact with the Bible; and much that would have other- 
wise remained obscure, has thus been made definite and 
intelligible. To the general historian, the Bible is prov- 
ing of priceless value ; and some of those who have 
most indulged in sneers at seeming inaccuracies, have 
been constrained to confess their error, and to pay to its 
authority a not ungenerous homage. 

In the rapid progress of archaeological discoveries in 
the East, there is everything to warrant the anticipation 
of Sir Henry Rawlinson, that scholars will soon be able 
so to classify both the Chaldaean and Assyrian kings, 
and so to spread out their annals, that "they shall have 
an historical tableau of Western Asia, ascending to the 
twentieth century b. c, or anterior to the exodus of 
Abraham from Chaldaea, far more determinate and con- 
tinuous than has been obtained for the sister kingdom,"! 

* See "Assyrian Discoveries," chapter 10, " Flood Series of Legends," 
pp. 165-222. "It appears," Mr. Smith says, "that at that remote age the 
Babylonians had a tradition of a flood which was a divine punishment for 
the wickedness of the world ; and of a holy man who built an ark and 
escaped the destruction ; who was afterwards translated, and dwelt with 
the gods." These and similar coincidences in the records are in some 
respects very remarkable.. \ "Athenaeum," 1S54, p. 343. 



340 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Egypt. The recent successful labors of Mr. G. Smith 
add interest and emphasis to this expectation ; and is it 
not marvellous to find the Bible, in its earliest and in its 
latest historical intimations, shining with increasing splen- 
dor as archaeologists and historians translate conjecture 
into fact, and displace myths by universally acknowledged 
realities ? 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 341 



CHAPTER XIV. 



BIBLE HISTORY IN RELATION TO PROPHECY — THE EVIDENCE 
OF PROPHECY THE IDEA OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN- 
SEPARABLE FROM IT. 

History is the occasion of prophecy, but not its measure ; for prophecy 
rises above history, borne aloft by its wings, which carry it far beyond the 
present, and which it derives, not from the past occurrences of which his- 
tory takes cognizance, but from Him to whom the future and the past are 
alike known. It is the communication of so much of His own supernat- 
ural light, as he sees fit to let down upon the dark movements of history, 
to show whither they are going. — principal fairbairn. 

Although we have hitherto examined the Bible and 
other ancient histories in precisely the same way, we 
cannot leave them as if no marked differences appeared. 
Our work is but half finished. No one can carefully 
study the Bible for its historical information alone, with- 
out discovering that its History has at times assumed an 
entirely distinctive character. It anticipates the future. 
Prophecy becomes history, as the mystery of prediction 
passes into the light of fulfilment. History records 
prophecies before their accomplishment ; traces the prog- 
ress of events ; and, at last, separates such as. have been 
indisputably fulfilled from those which have not. Proph- 
ecy and history thus act and react on each other ; they 
are inseparable ; they blend as lights. 

29* 



342 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

I. BIBLE HISTORY IN RELATION TO PROPHECY. 

While prophecy embraces two departments, the moral 
or doctrinal and the predictive, it is with the latter we 
have at present to do chiefly, and with that only in its 
specially distinctive character. Some exalt the one and 
depreciate the other ; but both have their value. Com- 
prehensively, prophecy includes all those truths, or se- 
crets, which men could not, in the circumstances of their 
age, ascertain by their own unaided energies. It was 
the privilege of those who were appointed by the Great 
Revealer, to proclaim them, whether the truths unfolded 
had reference to the past, the present, or the future, or 
to all combined ; and, be the form or substance what it 
may, it was still a revelation. If we even restrict our 
view of prophecy to the moral alone, as fundamental, we 
discover so much that is distinctive, that the Bible can- 
not be classed with other histories. The laws of God, 
his dominion, his providence, his majesty, his holiness, 
justice, and mercy ; man's obligation of obedience to him, 
and his duties to his fellow-men, are all set forth with a 
vividness and an authoritativeness which are elsewhere 
unequalled. So thickly are the pages of prophecy strewn 
with the original principles of morality and religion,* 
that no unprejudiced student can fail to be arrested by 
them. 

And if we adopt the view in which prophecy is 
regarded as merely predictive of events which could not 
possibly have been foreknown by any science or wisdom 

* " Davidson on Prophecy," p. 28. 187a 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 343 

of man, but which must have been revealed by the Om- 
niscient Ruler, there is that which is so singular that it 
raises the Bible above all the ordinary histories by which 
it has ever been tested. 

As the older prophets, one after another, traverse the 
sphere of Bible History, the observant student recog- 
nizes in each an accredited "Man of God." Their mes- 
sages, their looks, their tones, are so singular that they 
cannot be classed with even the greatest actors in the 
world-histories. Their place and their function are pe- 
culiarly their own. In their fervent unselfishness, in their 
lofty aspirations, in their intuitional insight, they are 
peerless. In following their footsteps, the student real- 
izes an ennobling companionship, and cherishes impres- 
sions which were hitherto unknown to him. 

Although there are exceptions to this general state- 
ment, in such instances as those of Balaam and Caia- 
phas — the one an unwilling, and the other an uncon- 
scious, instrument* — and although it must be slightly 
modified to meet such a faltering of faith, and love, and 
submissiveness as Jonah temporarily exhibited, or such 
selfishness and hardihood as the old prophet at Bethel 
showed, they only the more strikingly manifest the gen- 
eral rule of the Divine procedure as in harmony with the 
sovereignty of the Divine purpose. The greatness of the 
prophets of the old as well as of the New Testament is 
distinctly visible, not so much in their unfolding present 
truth and instructing the people, as in their insight of the 
distant future, regarded as an evolution from the present. 
* " Fairbairn on Prophecy," p. 499. Second edition. 



344 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

The truths revealed, and the spirit of the revealers, 
separate the prophets from all other men. Their oracles 
are a phenomenon which cannot be overlooked. They 
are alone, they arrest attention, and educe a feeling of 
awe. The twofold function of prophecy, while it per- 
vades Bible history, and unites all its parts so as to con- 
stitute an organic whole, is itself an evidence of the truth 
of the Bible, which encourages the believer to rest with 
confidence in the controlling wisdom and power of God. 
Our Lord himself hath said, "Now I tell you before it 
come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that 
I am he." John 13 : 19. 

The apparent vagueness of some of the prophecies is 
no valid reason for rejecting them. While some are 
confessedly difficult of interpretation, there is a necessity 
for vagueness, because the definite revelation of future 
events would arrest the activity and mar the peace of 
nations or communities ; and their approach, therefore, is 
so enveloped in allegory, that the accomplishment of the 
prophecy becomes its clearest and most satisfactory ex- 
position. " Prophecy must thus, in many instances, have 
that darkness which is impenetrable at first, as well as 
that light which shall completely dispel every doubt at 
last ; and as it cannot be an evidence of Christianity 
until the event demonstrate its own truth, it may remain 
obscure till Jiistory become its interpreter, and not be 
perfectly obvious till the fulfilment of the whole series 
with which it is connected."* But with the obscure 
prophecies it is unnecessary here to occupy time, while 

* " Evidence of Prophecy," by the- Rev. Dr. Keith, p. 7. 1868. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 345 

so much that is indisputable is at hand. Let it be under- 
stood, however, that while some are detached from the 
others for the purposes of our general argument, all the 
prophecies are to be held related to one another ; they 
converge to one centre, Christ, and they spread from this 
centre, outwards, over his extending kingdom, until it is 
completely encircled. It will be enough to place to- 
gether, by way of illustration, two or three prominent 
examples of fulfilled prophecy, as indicating a line of 
proof which, to many minds in all ages of the Church, 
has been as a fountain of water in a withering wilderness. 

II. THE EVIDENCE OF PROPHECY. 

Sacred History and Prophecy, blending at the very 
commencement of Revelation, still continue to illustrate 
the principles of the Divine Government. The words 
of the Great Ruler, spoken after the fall of our first pa- 
rents, are distinctly explanatory of the misery in the 
world, and of the happiness in the church. "And I will 
put enmity between thee and the woman, and between 
thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou 
shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, I will 
greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception ; in sor- 
row thou shalt bring forth children ; and thy desire shall 
be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee. And 
unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto 
the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which 
I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it : 
cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou 
eat of it all the days of thy life." Gen. 3:15—17. 



346 BLENDING LIGHTS. . 

In this brief statement is the germ of all history. 
Every Messianic prophecy is traceable to it ; and in it 
are the secrets of human sorrow and Christian joy. In 
its light we can more easily comprehend the universal 
social and moral turmoil, the struggles for salvation, the 
triumphs of holiness, and the certainty of victory when 
" the head" of the serpent is bruised, and the evil prin- 
ciple has become powerless, by which man was seduced 
to his fall. No sooner had man lost the high position 
assigned him, and passed into the gloom of condemna- 
tion, than the first prediction beamed in mercy upon him. 
Its light is the dawn and dayspring of prophecy, showing 
that " Man was not excluded from Paradise till prophecy had 
sent him forth with some pledge and hope of consolation."* 

Within this wide view may be collected all the proph- 
ecies of the Old Testament ; and there is not a subordi- 
nate prediction which does not find its meaning and vin- 
dication in this briefly unfolded plan of redemption. 
While the whole body of ancient Prophecy is intimately 
related to the way of salvation, and while, with history 
as its channel, it seems to end in the crucifixion and resur- 
rection of the Lord Jesus, it reappears in the extension of 
Christianity, and in its prospects of illimitable blessedness. 

After this twofold sentence of condemnation and of 
promise, Prophecy appears in two distinct forms, the 
one prediction in words, and the other prediction in ac- 
tions ; it often sets forth the same truths, now verbally 
and now in types. While they are mutually illustrative, 
and while there is abundant evidence of supernatural in- 

* " Davison on Prophecy," p. 53. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 347 

fluence, it will be sufficient to limit this part of the 
argument to two or three of those more comprehensive 
prophecies whose fulfilment history is still exhibiting 
with a breadth and distinctness which cannot be either 
ignored or despised. 

1. The first comprehensive and far-reaching prophecy 
after the flood, comes to us in the words of Noah, " And 
he said, Cursed be Canaan ; a servant of servants shall 
he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the 
Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. 
God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the 
tents of Shem ; and Canaan shall be his servant." Gen. 
9:25-27. For more than three thousand years this 
prophecy has been historically tested and verified. The 
rebuke that fell on Canaan still rests on his race ; and 
the blessings promised to Shem and Japheth are still 
spreading among their descendants. 

The sacred historical delineations of each family de- 
scending from Noah, and of their different settlements, 
afford to us the means of ascertaining whether this 
prophecy is holding good or not. 

Japheth and his descendants had, for their territory, 
Europe, or the countries beyond the Mediterranean. 
"By these were the isles of the Gentiles divided in their 
lands ; every one after his tongue, after their families, in 
their nations." Gen. 10:5. The descendants of Ham had 
Africa and the southwest of Asia for their portion. 
" And the sons of Ham ; Cush, and Mizraim, and Phut, 
And Canaan. . . . and afterward were the families of the 
Canaanites spread abroad. And the border of the Ca- 



348 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

naanites was from Siclon." Gen. 10 :6, 18, 19. Tyre, and 
Carthage also, whose position in ancient history was so 
distinguished, were their cities. The sons of Shem and 
their families had their home in the East. "And their 
dwelling was from Mesha, as thou goest unto Sephar, 
a mount of the east." Gen. 10:30. The respective ter- 
ritories of Japheth, Ham, and Shem, are distinctly out- 
lined ; and while very many changes have passed over 
their separate " families," or divisions of the human race, 
these old distinctions remain as deep as ever. Although 
cursory readers regard the tenth chapter of Genesis as 
valueless, it is the most remarkable historical document 
in existence ; remarkable, because associated with facts 
in the past which have been established, and with facts 
in the future which could only be known to one super- 
naturally instructed. No page of history can be made 
parallel with it. The records of succeeding centuries con- 
firm it, and the present condition of the world is its 
commentary. The descendants of Ham, in Africa, are 
" the servant of servants," although, at the beginning 
of their history, they had a glorious career in Asia, with 
Babylon as their centre ; and another triumphant career 
when the Carthaginians, with Hannibal as leader, almost 
made Rome and Europe their servant. Similarly, at the 
close of their history, or near it, grander triumphs, be- 
cause moral and spiritual, may give lustre to their his- 
tory, when they own the Saviour's sway, and are, with 
Japheth and Shem, " the servants" of the Lord alone. 

Now, is not Japheth " enlarged" everywhere by ex- 
tending intellectual and political influence ? Does not 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 349 

every emigrant vessel from Europe, as it carries to dis- 
tant lands the foundation of new colonies, fulfil and 
establish this olden prophecy ? And are not the advan- 
ces of Britain in India on the one side, and of Russia on 
the other, the fulfilment, in even a literal sense, of the 
declaration that Japheth " shall dwell in the tents of 
Shem" ? " What simile, drawn from the simplicity of 
primeval ages, could be more strikingly graphic of the 
numerous and extensive European colonies in Asia? 
And how much have the posterity of Japheth been en- 
larged within the regions of the posterity of Shem ? In 
how many of their ancient cities do they dwell ? How 
many settlements have they established ? while there is 
not a single spot in Europe the colony or the property 
of any of the nations whom the Scriptures represent as 
descended from Shem, or who inhabit any part of that 
quarter of the world which they possessed. And it may 
be said in reference to our own island, and to the immense 
extent of the British Asiatic dominions, that the nations 
of the isles of the Gentiles dtvell in the tents of the East ! 
Whence, then, could such a prophecy have emanated, 
but from inspiration by Him whose presence and whose 
prescience are alike unlimited by space or by time ?"* 

2. There are prophecies which require historical con- 
ditions for their fulfilment so opposite that they cannot 
possibly be reduced within the sphere of the merely 
natural, and to some of these alone we shall restrict our 
proof. The following tests are not only applicable to 
them, but separate them from all that the most keen- 

* " The Evidence of Prophecy," by Dr. Keith, p. 523. 
30 



35 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

sighted sagacity could predict : " That the prediction be 
known to have been promulgated before the event ; that 
the event in question be such as could not have been fore- 
seen, at the time when it was predicted, by any effort of hu- 
man reason ; and that the event and prediction correspond 
together in a clear and adequate accomplishment."* It 
is sufficient for our argument to examine only those 
prophecies which have reference to three nations whose 
histories are so singular, and to three cities whose over- 
throw and destruction were brought about by means so 
diverse, that they cannot possibly be explained by any 
natural prescience, however vivid. 

Two of the earliest and less general prophecies, the 
one referring to the Ishmaelites, the other to the Israel- 
ites, are in fulfilment, so diverse, that no unaided human 
being could have even planned such a future as in the 
least degree probable. 

i. The prediction regarding Ishmael is remarkably 
clear and intelligible. "And thou shalt bear a son, and 
shalt call his name Ishmael. . . . And he will be a wild 
man ; and his hand will be against every man, and every 
man's hand against him ; and he shall dwell in the presence 
of all his brethren. . . . Twelve princes shall he beget, 
and I will make him a great nation." Gen. 16:12; 17 : 20. 

It may be objected that this prophecy was not pro- 
mulgated till the time of Moses ; but taking the facts as 
they lie before us since that distant time, they constitute 
strongly presumptive evidence that the prophecy was 
uttered before Ishmael's birth, and was preserved in the 

* "Davison on Prophecy," p. 34S. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 35 r 

traditions and writings of the people, until Moses gave 
it a permanent place in the Scripture record. 

This prophecy has, in every particular, proved true ; 
it has photographed a national character which, for more 
than three thousand years, has continued unchanged. 

In all ages, historians have described the Bedouin 
Arab as a " wild man," or wild ass-man ; as roving, pred- 
atory, engaged in ceaseless feuds with his neighbors, 
reckless of the milder restraints of civilization, and set- 
ting at defiance those international laws which regulate 
the intercourse of surrounding nations. The Ishmaelites 
or Arabians have ever held fast by the same country. 
Anchored in one land, they have swung over surrounding 
communities, only to settle, at last, in their own appoint- 
ed territory, and to retain precisely the same character- 
istics. The " wildness," which in other tribes and nations 
has been first softened, then effaced, has, in their fea- 
tures, never been even lessened by the lapse of ages. 
Not dispersed by conquest, nor wasted by migration, they 
dwell still "in the presence of all their brethren," a 
strange national spectacle, utterly inexplicable by those 
laws which regulate other races. Comparatively fugitive 
and unstable as are the general characteristics of nations 
while the influences of centuries sweep over them as 
tidal waves on the shore, the Ishmaelites remain the 
same as when this strangely-expressed prophecy was first 
uttered by the angel of the Lord. 

The more powerful national influences, the attractions 
of fairer lands, and the luxury of indolent races, utterly 
failed to change in the least their characteristic features, 



352 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

during that splendid period when their empire extended 
from the borders of India to the Atlantic. Through all 
they stood forth a perpetual representation of the facts 
predicted in their history, and their present condition 
harmonizes with that of many ages ago. 

2. In contrast with this prophecy, there are those 
which delineate the marvellous future of the Jews with 
such depth and distinctness that they arrest the most 
careless reader. Moses foretold their future when their 
prospect was brightened by the increasing light of ful- 
filled promises, as they neared the land of Canaan. Their 
history, at the present day, cannot be written in more 
truthful and striking terms than in those which Moses 
used three thousand years ago : " I will scatter you among 
the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you ; and 
your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste. . . . 
And upon them that are left alive of you, I will send a 
faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies ; 
and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them ; and 
they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword ; and they shall 
fall when none pursueth. . . . And ye shall have no 
power to stand before your enemies. . . . And yet for 
all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will 
not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy 
them utterly." Lev. 26:33, 3&> 37> 44- "The Lord 
shall bring thee, and thy king, which thou shalt set over 
thee, unto a nation which neither thou nor thy fathers 
have known. . . . And thou shalt become an astonish- 
ment, a proverb, and a byword among all nations. . . . 
And the Lord shall scatter thee among all people, from 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 353 

the one end of the earth even unto the other." Deut. 
28 : 36, 37, 64. Long afterwards, the prophets wrote in 
the same strain. " I will cause them to be removed into 
all kingdoms of the earth. ... I will cast you out into 
a land that ye know not." Jer. 15:4; 16:13. "For 
lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel 
among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet 
shall not the least grain fall upon the earth." Amos 9 :g. 
These are merely examples of many predictions 
which might be quoted ; they have the clearness of his- 
tory, and they have now the emphasis of a fulfilment 
which is mysterious in its antecedent process, but clear 
as noonday in its results. By the laws of amalgamation 
or extinction, we can account for the changes which ap- 
pear in the smaller as well as vaster nations of the world ; 
we can trace the causes by which Hungary and Poland 
have been prostrated, and by which Russia is still rising 
and extending in her colossal strength ; we can see in 
the ruin of France, in the triumph of Prussia, and the 
gradual collapse of the Turkish Empire, various forces at 
work which have often reappeared in history ; we can 
trace in the slow amalgamation of races in America, and 
in the rapid disappearance of Indian tribes, laws definite 
almost as those which regulate the planetary system ; 
we have a sound philosophy of history, whose great aim 
is not the mere aggregate of many facts, but the exposi- 
tion of their causes, and we are satisfied with the conclu- 
sions which have been reached ; but in the Israelites we 
have a people which baffle historical adjustment, and 
whose characteristics are not reducible within any com- 

30* 



354 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



monly-recognized classification. They remain a' marvel- 
lous isolation. In Britain, the distinctions of Norman 
and Celt and Saxon are fast disappearing ; but the Jews 
are everywhere "scattered," and yet everywhere retain 
not only their physical features, but their intellectual, 
moral, and religious conformation. Apart from the Bible, 
unaided reason has failed to solve the problem of a peo- 
ple scattered and down-trodden by the nations for nearly 
two thousand years, yet universally preserved. 

What a terrible past has been theirs ! What a mys- 
terious present ! " Plucked from off their own land," 
and "smitten before their enemies," they yet survive, not 
obscurely, but with historical lustre, as in a mirror's scat- 
tered fragments, and with a prominence which the world 
owns. Adrian made it death to the Jew to set his foot 
amid the ruins of Jerusalem ; Justinian abolished the 
synagogues ; Mahomet sought the destruction of every 
Jew ; the Church of Rome has done her best for their 
extirpation, and has failed ; the thunders of her excom- 
munication have rolled over every land which her influ- 
ence could reach ; " the Jews " were everywhere the 
objects of popular insult, of almost intolerable oppres- 
sion, and frequently of a general massacre. No mode of 
cruelty was deemed unjustifiable. Again and again were 
they banished from France ; they were driven from 
Spain ; England, during the Crusades, gathered her for- 
ces to destroy them ; the barons, to win popular favor 
during their struggle with Henry III., slaughtered seven 
hundred of them, and plundered their houses ; Edward I. 
seized all their property, and drove them in misery from 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 355 

the kingdom, and four hundred dreary years elapsed ere 
they ventured to return. There is no history which is 
not darkened by their wrongs, and there is none un- 
stained by their blood. Most fearful has been the fulfil- 
ment of the prophecies that they shall be a " proverb," 
an "astonishment," a "byword," a "taunt," and a "hiss- 
ing among all nations."* The Jew is, at this moment, a 
wanderer in every land, with a home in none. In no 
country is he unknown, from Norway to Japan, from 
Spain to Southern Africa ; and no social grade in the 
East or the West is without his presence. In Shiraz, as 
Dr. Wolf has told us, young men, old men, and women, 
sit on the streets begging. With head bowed down, and 
hand stretched out, they cry piteously to the stranger: 
" Only one penny, only one penny, I am a poor Israelite, 
I am a poor Israelite." "I wonder not," he adds, "that 
their harp is mute." From that sunken state in the 
East, and from similar obscurity and apparent helpless- 
ness in every one of our great cities, they rise through 
every social stage, until they sit honored amid the proud- 
est. In London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, they are the 
money-holders of Europe, deciding the questions of peace 
and war, and giving impulse or restraint to the commerce 
of the world. Although inwrought with the whole fabric 
of society, they are yet not of it ; they are truly a " pecu- 
liar people," resisting almost all those social, intellectual, 
and moral agencies by which communities are changed. 
Their preservation seems all the more astonishing 

* See "Keith on the Evidence of Prophecy," and Hallam's History, 
vol. 1. 



356 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

when we remember that locality was part of their reli- 
gious system. Jerusalem was essential to it. The Chris- 
tian may build his church, or the Pagan his temple, wher- 
ever he pleases ; but the Jew may build his nowhere save 
in the Holy City. Thus, their religion was localized ; 
but they still cleave to the past, and still look wistfully, 
yet with brightening hope to the future. For more than 
sixty generations have they thus mingled with the Gen- 
tile races, yet they have kept aloof, they have eaten the 
passover, and have been sandalled for the expected fulfil- 
ment of many prophecies. How account for these strange 
facts ? How explain the movements of Jewish history ? 
The philosophy of history has hitherto failed. The con- 
dition of this mysterious people has proved inexplicable 
by any of the ordinary laws of human history. By the 
Scriptures alone we are guided to the right solution. 
The Jews are dispersed, but not destroyed ; because the 
Lord of Glory, by whom they have been condemned, has 
purposes yet unfulfilled. But how explain the fact, ex- 
cept by admitting the supernatural ? That these condi- 
tions have been actually foretold so many centuries before, 
cannot be disputed, for the prophecies have a place in 
the oldest writings in the world. Similarly dark sayings 
have been spoken in succeeding ages. Results, unim- 
aginable by human wisdom, have been boldly predicted, 
and they have appeared mysteriously in the manner anti- 
cipated. As the human mind often vacillates regarding 
even the nearest events and their issues, is it in the least 
degree probable that it could have ever so penetrated the 
secrets of time as accurately to anticipate Jewish history ? 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 357 

Is there not fullest evidence in all that bears upon the 
condition of the Jews, that a higher knowledge than 
man's has been making their future known ? The pro- 
phetic record is not made up of random conjectures or 
gloomy forebodings. "There is not only foresight, but 
foresight of a most impartial and discriminating kind, 
capable alike of descrying the darker and the brighter 
aspects of the future ; dwelling even with painful empha- 
sis on the coming evil, and reiterating it, yet without ever 
losing sight of the coming good ; and even when the 
clouds of present trouble gathered thickest, only proceed- 
ing with a clearer eye and a more assured step to reveal 
the glorious and blessed future that lay beyond. Most 
remarkably have both parts of the prospective outline 
been fulfilled."* It " seems undeniable that most stri- 
king fulfilments have taken place of what no merely hu- 
man eye could have foreseen, nor the shrewdest intellect 
anticipated."! And we reassert that the argument has 
all the greater weight, when we contrast the future of 
Ishmael with the future of Israel, and the dissimilar 
agencies by which their destiny has hitherto been deter- 
mined. Ishmael still localized in Arabia, and Israel dis- 
persed over the whole world, are separate yet steadfast 
witnesses of a ruling hand behind their extraordinary 
histories. 

3. Older than the Ishmaelites and the Israelites, civ- 
ilized and powerful before their different races had any 
appreciable influence on the world, the Egyptians had 
maintained their matchless powers ; and the splendors of 

* " Fairbairn on Prophecy," p. 222. I Ibid., p. 223. 



358 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

their early empire are still seen, though dimly, in Thebes 
and Memphis, in Heliopolis and Phibeseth, in pyramids, 
obelisks, and sphinxes. Everything in Egypt's early 
history betokened a continuance of her power ; in subse- 
quent centuries, temporary reverses were soon corrected, 
and yet, in the midst of abounding evidences of stability, 
prophets foretold a national history altogether peculiar, 
and in striking contrast with that of either Ishmael or 
Israel. Through the same laws of human foresight or 
sagacity, the rationalist cannot possibly account for pre- 
dictions so widely varying, as those which describe the 
future of the Arabians, the Jews, and the Egyptians. 

National changes, that are utterly inconsistent with 
those anticipations which the previous course of Egyp- 
tian history should have suggested, were foretold with 
the most fearless confidence. The minuter, as well as 
the more general prophecies, have been notably fulfilled ; 
but it is necessary for our present object to refer only to 
two or three of those more prominent predictions which 
describe Egypt's future state. 

" And they shall be there a base kingdom. It shall 
be the basest of the kingdoms ; neither shall it exalt 
itself any more above the nations : for I will diminish 
them, that they shall no more rule over the nations." 
Ezekiel 29:14, 15. "And there shall no more be a 
prince of the land of Egypt : and I will put a fear in 
the land of Egypt." Ezekiel 30 : 13. 

The condition of Egypt is so different from that of 
the Jews or Ishmaelites, that " he who runs may read 
it ;" the former are scattered and without a home, and 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 359 

the latter are independent and free as they were three 
thousand years ago : but Egypt has sunk to be base 
among the nations, and to be ruled by foreigners or 
strangers. That kingdom which was long the most pow- 
erful and most honored among the nations of the world, 
has become the helpless victim of successive oppressors. 
Assyria first rivalled her splendor, and, after lessening 
her power for a season, humbled her. Three hundred 
and fifty years before the Christian era, the Persians re- 
duced her to a comparatively degraded condition, and in 
succession the Macedonians, the Romans, the Saracens, 
the Mamelukes, and the Turks, have trodden her fertile 
plains and greatly embarrassed her. 

Although Egypt temporarily revived under the vig- 
orous rule of the Ptolemies, they were "foreigners," and 
the predictions held true, " There shall no more be a 
prince of the land of Egypt:" "The sceptre of Egypt 
shall depart away." For more than two thousand years 
the degradation of the kingdom has been painfully visi- 
ble amid a profusion of nature's benefits. Its compara- 
tively ignominious state, its acknowledged baseness 
among nations in the midst of which it is still lingering, 
enfeebled and paralyzed, so distinctly fulfil the bold 
prophecies of Isaiah and Ezekiel, that we are justified 
in demanding the acceptance of supernatural teaching 
as the explanation of Egypt's' varying history. Every 
fact which travellers describe, and the past and the pres- 
ent historical photographs by which modern inquiries 
have assisted the student of prophecy, so vindicate and 
confirm the truth of the predictions, that no one can 



360 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

escape without difficulty from the impression that the 
prophets were supernaturally guided by the Spirit of 
God to the truths which they have written.* 

There is another series of prophecies minuter, and in 
some of their aspects more specific, which yet, in detail 
and results, are so different that no rationalistic theory 
can possibly harmonize and explain them. The predic- 
tions regarding Tyre, Nineveh, and Babylon, are so dis- 
tinct, and they have been so literally fulfilled, that it is 
almost inconceivable how any unprejudiced student can 
repudiate the idea of a deeper insight and a surer guid- 
ance than man's. 

The prophecies were uttered when these great cities 
were basking in the light of prosperity, and there was no 
likelihood of ruin. With our knowledge of ages of his- 
tory, and, consequently, of those laws that determine the 
growth and decay of nations, we might anticipate with 
tolerable accuracy the upbreaking of an empire, or the 
overthrow of a city ; but this experience was not pos- 
sessed by the prophets, and even if they had possessed 
such knowledge of national history as men now enjoy, 
they could not possibly have described with such exact- 
ness ruins so different as are those of the cities to which 
reference has just been made. Not only are the prophe- 
cies general in their outline, but they state such distinct 
particulars as no mere human foresight could have dis- 
covered. Let us notice them briefly in detail. 

i. Those predictions which relate to Tyre are very 
clearly embodied in the writings of Isaiah and Ezekiel. 

* See " Fairbairn on Prophecy," pp. 208, 209. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 361 

While Tyre was the very centre of the commerce of the 
civilized world, and Carthage, the rival of Rome, was 
one of her colonies, Isaiah, one hundred and twenty-five 
years before her overthrow, with almost overwhelming 
earnestness, foretold her approaching fate; and with sin- 
gular vividness Ezekiel wrote beforehand the details of 
her devastation. " Therefore thus saith the Lord God, 
Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many 
nations to come up against thee, as the sea causeth his 
waves to come up. And they shall destroy the walls of 
Tyrus, and break down her towers : I will also scrape her 
dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It 
shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of 
the sea : for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God ; and 
it shall become a spoil to the nations. And they shall 
make a spoil of thy riches, and make a prey of thy mer- 
chandise ; and they shall break down thy walls, and de- 
stroy thy pleasant houses : and they shall lay thy stones 
and thy timber and thy dust in the midst of the water. 
And I will make thee like the top of a rock : thou shalt be 
a place to spread nets upon ; thou shalt be built no more : 
for I the Lord have spoken it, saith the Lord God. I 
will make thee a terror, and thou shalt be no more ; 
though thou be sought for, yet shalt thou never be found 
again, saith the Lord God." Ezek. 26:3-5, I2 > T 4> 2I - 

These predictions have been literally fulfilled, but at 
intervals of time. Looking at lights in a straight line, 
we suppose there is only one shining, but no sooner is 
the one passed than we discover others in succession : 
so is it in this prophecy : its lights are separate yet con- 



362 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

tinuous ; part was fulfilled at one time, and part at an- 
other. For thirteen years Nebuchadnezzar plied the 
siege of Tyre, " the head became bald," and " the shoul- 
der peeled." Sorely pressed, the Tyrians, having trans- 
ferred their families and their wealth to an island close 
to the shore, abandoned old or continental Tyre to the 
army of the besieger. Enraged by finding that the citi- 
zens and their treasures had been removed beyond their 
reach, they completely destroyed the city ; they left it an 
utter ruin ; and they appear to have carried into captivity 
the Tyrian royal family. The subjection continued until 
the end of " the seventy years " referred to by Isaiah 
2 3 : 1 5—1 7, when the Babylonian monarch was set aside 
by the Persians. Not until Alexander the Great carried 
his conquests eastward was insular Tyre attacked, and 
as "the stones and the timber and the dust" of old Tyre 
were cast into the sea to form a passage from the shore 
to new Tyre, for Alexander's troops, the old prophecy 
was literally fulfilled. Thus, the very city was " cast into 
the sea," and is " no more ;" though sought for " it cannot 
be found." The desolation is complete. Insular Tyre 
fell beneath the relentless arm of Alexander the Great, 
and it is now literally, as travellers describe it, " a place 
for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea." 

2. The prophecies regarding Nineveh differ much 
from those which describe the overthrow of Tyre. Taken 
literally and apart from what has been recently ascer- 
tained by mound-explorers, they appear to be unlikely, if 
not contradictory, in their reference to the means by 
which the city was to be destroyed. The accounts of 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 363 

Nineveh in other writings than the Bible, confirm its 
delineations of its strength and grandeur. Heathen 
historians have described its walls as a hundred feet in 
height, sixty miles in circumference, and defended by 
fifteen hundred towers, which were two hundred feet 
high. With marvellous force and vividness does the 
prophet Nahum proclaim the means by which this great 
city would be overthrown, and the permanence of its 
desolation. By two opposite elements — the flood and 
the fire — was its overthrow to be achieved ; though vast 
in its extent and commanding in its power, it was yet to 
be covered with abominable filth, and " made vile ;" and 
though glorious in its position among the nations, it was 
destined to become " a gazing stock." " But with an 
overrunning flood he will make an utter end of the 
place thereof." Nahum 1:8. " The gates of the rivers 
shall be opened, and the palace shall be dissolved." 
Nahum 2 : 6. But fire also was to be a worker for the 
destruction of this 'doomed city. " For while they be 
folden together as thorns, and while they are drunken as 
drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry." 
Nahum 1:10. "The fire shall devour thy bars." Na- 
hum 3 : 13. "There shall the fire devour thee." Nahum 
3:15. To a heathen witness are we indebted for evi- 
dence of the fulfilment of these seemingly incongruous 
predictions, and that evidence is complete. He has told 
us that after the Assyrian king had gained these great 
victories over his enemies, and their power seemed ut- 
terly broken, he and his soldiers abandoned themselves 
to revelry. But the Medes and Persians having rallied 



364 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

their scattered forces, and having received in the Bac- 
trians a new ally, suddenly fell on the Assyrian monarch 
and his army, when they had given themselves as slaves 
to drink, and they so completely overwhelmed them that 
the Assyrian king had to betake himself to the city and 
remain shut within its walls as a captive. Thus was the 
prophecy fulfilled, "While they are drunken as drunkards 
they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry." Completely 
crushed by an overwhelming force, they were in their 
weakness " folden as thorns." For two years the As- 
syrian monarch was secure within the strongly-fortified 
city, but in the third year, when he had made vigorous 
preparations for retrieving his position, an unexpected 
inundation of the river Tigris broke down the massive 
wall and carried away about twenty furlongs of it ; "the 
gates of the river were opened " " with an overrunning 
flood," a breach was made ; and the king, feeling that 
all was now lost, made for himself and his associates a 
large funeral pile of wood, and placing on it his gold and 
silver and apparel, he perished with them. Most unlikely 
as was the combination, the fire also did its predicted 
work, and thus the palace was dissolved, or literally 
" molten." 

The same heathen historian has told us that many 
talents of gold and silver which were preserved from the 
fire and found throughout the city, were carried off by 
the enemy to Ecbatana, and from recent sources we have 
learned that the implements of war, the robes, the orna- 
ments, the ear-rings, the bracelets, the vases, the chairs, 
the tables, the ordinary articles of domestic furniture, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 365 

were designed with such consummate taste as "to rival 
the productions of the most cultivated period of Greek 
art." And does not this explain the prophetic injunction, 
" Take ye the spoil of silver, take ye the spoil of gold ; 
for there is none end of the store and glory out of all 
the pleasant furniture." Nahum 2 : 9. 

The completeness of the destruction and the per- 
manence of the desolation were foretold with such bold 
distinctness, as to give the impression that Nahum's 
language was merely hyperbolical, but the results have 
proved to the very letter its historical accuracy. The 
Lord "will make an utter end of the place thereof." 
"Affliction shall not rise up the second time." "She is 
empty, and void, and waste." "Nineveh is laid waste: 
who will bemoan her ?" Nahum 1 : 8, 9 ; 2:10:3:7. And 
Zephaniah, with a boldness no less arresting and impres- 
sive, proclaimed Nineveh's destruction and ruin. " The 
Lord will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a 
wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of 
her, all the beasts of the nations : both the cormorant 
and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; 
their voice shall sing in the windows ; desolation shall be 
in the thresholds ; for he shall uncover the cedar work." 
" How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to 
lie down in !" Zeph. 2:13, 14, 15. 

Fearfully and most convincingly have all these predic- 
tions been fulfilled. Nineveh has gone down in " utter 
ruin." "Affliction has not risen up a second time." 
The very ruins were lost. Mounds of " abominable filth" 
were cast on the place where her palaces stood, making 

31* 



2 66 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

her " vile ;" and all that Layard, Botta, and others have 
done in opening her ruins and exposing her long-buried 
treasures, have given a new fulfilment to the prophecy 
by making her "a gazing stock" to the whole civilized 
world. 

3. No less distinct were the prophecies regarding the 
destruction of Babylon, but the means of the overthrow 
were so different from those by which Nineveh was over- 
whelmed, that the prediction carries within itself indirect 
evidence of its truth. One hundred and sixty years 
before an enemy approached the city, its doom was fore- 
told. Isaiah and Jeremiah, with startling vividness, and 
yet in tones of deepest sadness, delineate the future of 
Babylon at the time when its glory and strength bade 
defiance to every prediction. Most mysteriously have 
the springs of history been touched, and most distinctly 
have prophetic results been brought out. Long descrip- 
tive passages in the Bible might be quoted, but two or 
three will be sufficient for our argument. "Behold, I 
will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not 
regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in 
it. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of 
the Chaldees' excellence, shall be as when God overthrew 
Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, 
neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation : 
neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there ; neither shall 
the shepherds make their fold there ; but the wild beasts 
of the desert shall lie there ; and their houses shall 
be full of doleful creatures ; and owls shall dwell there, 
and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 367 

the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons 
in their pleasant pelaces." Isa. 13:17, 19-22. Again, 
" And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling-place for 
dragons, an astonishment, and a hissing, without an 
inhabitant." Jer. 51:37. These and similar predictions 
of overthrow and utter ruin have been literally fulfilled, 
as every one knows who has even very cursorily read the 
history of the ancient eastern monarchies. No less 
strangely were the means announced by which this 
powerful city was to be overwhelmed, and no less exactly 
have the results come forth as predicted. 

For the taking of Nineveh, a river was to rise and 
make a breach ; but for the taking of Babylon a river was 
to be withdrawn, and its deserted bed was to be a high- 
way for the approach of Cyrus' soldiers. Thus saith 
the Lord "that saith unto the deep, Be dry; and I will 
dry up thy rivers." Isa. 44 : 27. " A drought is upon 
her waters ; and they shall be dried up." Jer. 50 : 38. 
"And I will dry up her sea, and make her springs dry." 
Jer. 51 : 36. The secrecy of the approach and the help- 
lessness of the ensnared Babylonians, were no less clear- 
ly taught in such predictions as these : " I have laid a 
snare for thee, and thou art also taken, O Babylon, and 
thou wast not aware : thou art found and ALSO 
caught, because thou hast striven against the Lord." 
Jer. 50 : 24. It is unnecessary to repeat the well-known 
facts of Cyrus having turned the river Euphrates from its 
course, and of his troops passing secretly into the city 
when Belshazzar was madly quaffing wine from the 
vessels of the sanctuary, until the mysterious handwri- 



3 68 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ting on the wall paralyzed him with terror. Babylon was 
"snared and caught." The soldiers having been taught 
by Cyrus that the doors of the houses were of palm-wood 
and covered with bitumen, secretly carried torches with 
them and suddenly set fire to the city,* fulfilling the 
prediction, " And her high gates shall be burned with 
fire ; and the people shall labor in vain, and the folk in 
the fire, and they shall be weary." Jer. 51 : 58. So 
complete was the stratagem of Cyrus, so sudden the 
seizure of the place, and so silent and sure its overthrow, 
that those in one part of the city did not know for some 
time what disasters had overtaken another portion of the 
inhabitants. In every particular have the prophecies 
been fulfilled, and they differ so completely in arrange- 
ment from those relating to Tyre and Nineveh as to 
remove them from any of the common efforts of that 
sagacity or foresight of which rationalism has recently 
attempted to make so much. 

In short, the details are so varied, and yet so accurate- 
ly stated regarding both the means by which these great 
cities were to be destroyed, and the permanence of their 
ruin, that it is difficult to conceive how any unprejudiced 
student can escape the impression that the prophets were 
supernaturally guided. 

* Xenophon, book 1, chap. 191. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 369 



CHAPTER XV. 

RECENT THEORIES REGARDING THE SUPERNATURAL AND 

THE REIGN OF LAW EVIDENCE IN NATURE OF THE 

SUPERNATURAL. 

The battle against the supernatural has been going on long, and strong 
men have conducted and are conducting it ; but what they want is a 
weapon. The logic of unbelief wants a universal. But no real universal 
is forthcoming, and it only wastes its strength in wielding a fictitious one. 

— THE REV. J. B. MOZLEY, B. D. 

The careful study of the Bible constrains those who 
are not wedded to some foregone conclusion, to acknowl- 
edge impressions or ideas of a supernatural influence such 
as are created by the perusal of no other book. The 
brief review which we have taken of history in its rela- 
tion to prophecy, has shown an enlightening and a con- 
trolling power which is not recognizable within the 
sphere of ordinary records. But in advocating the exist- 
ence of supernatural influences, we have to confront re- 
lentless opposition. 

Animated by an intense love of nature, and sensitively 
jealous of even the slightest reference to the supernat- 
ural, some influential writers are not only repudiating 
every agency which is independent of physical tests, but 
assigning to the laws of nature an executive or adminis- 
trative function. They are investing them with powers 
which can only be legitimately connected with intelli- 
gence and purpose ; and the scorn with which they repel 



370 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

every allusion to direct control by a personal Deity, is no 
less perplexing than it is saddening. The repudiation of 
the supernatural is, with them, axiomatic ; they put the 
cause out of court ; they can see in nature nothing more 
than a rigidly regulated system, and they limit the basis 
of their philosophy to those forces and phenomena with 
which alone physical science is conversant. They do 
not hesitate to assert that the Creator "cannot be ima- 
gined as acting on the line of cause and effect, and that 
even by his own hand no law can be deflected or reversed. 
He has not the liberty of acting, except within the lines 
of a fixed routine ; and in the moral government of the 
human race he is without freedom of volition apart from 
those laws which keep in harmonious movement the 
everlasting machinery of the universe. 

The enthusiasm with which researches have been 
prosecuted in physical science, has predisposed some to 
originate, and many to accept theories, of which nothing 
would have been ever heard if there had been similar 
earnestness in the counterpoise study of metaphysics. 
Opposite tendencies would have been balanced, and in 
the peaceful walks of science and philosophy we should 
not have been meeting bigotry and intolerance as nar- 
row, sharp, and unrelenting as have ever confronted the 
student of purely theological controversies. The conclu- 
sions which have found in Britain a large measure of 
sympathy, if not avowed acceptance, may be best estima- 
ted through the language of their advocates. A few 
statements may be sufficiently historical and expository 
not only to induce a careful examination of the tendency 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 371 

of British skepticism, but to show the probable effect of 
those concessions which some of our ablest Christian 
apologists are making in the struggle to counteract its 
progress. 

As the late Rev. Baden Powell, Savilian Professor of 
Geometry in the University of Oxford, was among the 
first to utter, with fearless emphasis, what others were 
holding " with bated breath," and as he expounded to the 
youth of one of the first universities in the civilized world 
convictions which were warmly welcomed, we at the out- 
set submit his conclusion : 

" It is the province of science to investigate nature ; 
it can contemplate nothing but in connection with the 
order of nature ; it cannot point to anything out of na- 
ture. The limits of the study of nature do not bring us 
to the confines of the supernatural."* " From the very 
condition of the case, it is evident that the supernatural 
can never be a matter of science or knozvledge ; for the 
moment it is brought within the cognizance of reason, it 
ceases to be supernatural. If nature could really termi- 
nate anywhere, then we should not find the szipematural, 
but a chaos, a blank — total darkness — anarchy — athe- 
ism."! " The supernatural is the offspring of ignorance, 
and the parent of superstition and idolatry ; the natural 
is the assurance of science, and the preliminary to all 
rational views of Theism. "$ 

Without carrying his demands so far as to exclude 
the supernatural as altogether unreal or unimaginable, ht 
insisted that a "theism of omnipotence, in any sense devi 
* "The Order of Xature," p. 231. t Ibid., p. 232. \ Ibid., p. 24S. 



372 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ating from the order of nature, must be entirely derived 
from other teaching," that is, from the Bible. While 
asserting that " creation," and the ideas we attach to it, 
are derived from the Scriptures, and demanding that they 
be not confounded with those ideas which are of purely 
scientific origin, he admitted their value, but traced them 
to faith. The school to which he belonged has moved 
considerably in advance of his opinions. Herbert Spen- 
cer, who may be regarded as among the foremost expos- 
itors of its present beliefs, rejects, as utterly " unthinka- 
ble " and " unknowable," that which Baden Powell, not- 
withstanding the fervor of his love for physical science, 
held fast as coming from another source. The supernat- 
ural in its highest relations, Spencer displaces and dis- 
owns as " unscrutable," and in reference to the forms of 
religion, he declares " that no hypothesis is even think- 
able."* 

The Deity is virtually, though not formally, excluded ; 
and the supernatural, in both its relative and absolute 
aspects, is consequently repudiated. What is unknow- 
able or unthinkable is equal to nothing, and the whole 
system must be ever destitute of emotional fervor and 
moral value. There is nothing in it to engage our sym- 
pathies, sustain our hopes, stimulate our services, and 
develop brotherly kindness. 

But the principles of this school demand logically a 
much wider application than British thinkers generally 
are disposed to make. There is evidently no resting- 
place short of that which French writers have taken and 

* " First Principles," p. 46. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 373 

defended ; but the former shrink from it as a course 
whose inevitable issue is Materialism. The boldness of 
continental reasoning sheds light on the end to which 
its logic is guiding the disciples of that school ; and its 
conclusion must be repudiated or accepted. 

" If we do not enter on this discussion," says M. 
Havet, "it is from the impossibility of doing so without 
admitting an inadmissible proposition, namely — the mere 
possibility of the supernatural. Our principle is to hold 
ourselves constantly from the supernatural — that is, from 
the imagination. The dominant principle of all true his- 
tory, as of all true science, is, that that which is not in 
nature is nothing, unless as an idea."* 

" Positive philosophy," writes M. Littr£, " sets aside 
the systems of theology which suppose supernatural 
action." 

M. Renan has said with equal boldness : " For my- 
self, I believe that there is not in the universe an intelli- 
gence superior to that of man ; the absolute of justice 
and reason manifests itself only in humanity ; regarded 
apart from humanity, that absolute is but an abstraction. 
The infinite exists only when it clothes itself in form."f 

These principles have been warmly welcomed and 
vindicated by some eminent physicists and metaphysi- 
cians who, although prosecuting different studies, and 
adopting in some instances contradictory propositions, 
have shown in their conclusions remarkable similarity. 

* Revue des Deux Mondes, August, 1S63. 

t Quoted in Pressense's "Jesus Christ: his Life and Times," pp. 
10. 11. 



374 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

At a recent meeting of the British Association in Edin- 
burgh, the dogma, " Nature is God," found a willing advo- 
cate ; and even where the avowal of the speculatist has 
not been direct, his statements have been sufficiently 
expository of the ideas that Law is supreme, and that it 
is fully adequate to the production of all that we can 
discover. The writings of Darwin, and the " General 
Conclusions " of Owen, on the side of natural science ; 
the writings of Mill, Herbert Spencer, and others, on the 
side of metaphysics and ethics, at least in their relation 
to natural theology ; the historical expositions of Sir John 
Lubbock and Mr. E. B. Tylor, uniting the physical and 
the metaphysical with the social and moral ; and the 
elaborate Address of Professor Tyndall, as president of 
the British Association, give the mournful impression, 
notwithstanding the surpassing interest of their reason- 
ings and their records, that they are, unintentionally, it 
may be, yet ruthlessly, attempting to sever the connection 
of the human spirit with its God, and to send it forth a 
cheerless and bewildered wanderer amid cold and inex- 
orable laws, with nothing in the future which hope can 
irradiate, and with no Being to whom now, or hereafter, 
the heart can permanently cling. 

Sir John Lubbock, it is true, as has been already 
noticed, page 214, does pay a kind of general homage to 
religion when he says, that it appeals so strongly to our 
hopes and fears, and is so great a consolation in times of 
sorrow and sickness, that he can hardly think any nation 
would ever abandon it altogether : but of what value it 
can be in the midst of such natural processes as he de- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



375 



scribes, it is difficult to conjecture. He too heavily taxes 
our credulity when he asks us to believe' that religion has 
its beginning in dreams, and that marriage and all other 
social relations have been slowly evolved through the 
history of savage and semi-savage tribes without, any 
reference to revelation. His admissions, however, in- 
volve two facts — the one, the existence of a future state ; 
the other, the influence of a supernatural Being, to whose 
service religion alone can bind us ; without both of which, 
indeed, religion is valueless, if not impossible. When 
religion is acknowledged, the attempt to escape from the 
supernatural is vain. Mill has seen this difficulty ; and, 
to meet it, has assumed the possibility of religion without 
a Deity. " Though conscious," he says, " of being an 
extremely small minority, we venture to think that a 
religion may exist without belief in God, and thai a reli- 
gion without a God may be, even to Christians, an in- 
structive and profitable object of contemplation."* 

Christians, of course, may profitably study religious 
systems or beliefs which are without revelation for their 
basis, and "without a God" as their object to adore and 
obey; but there is not a trace of reliable evidence to 
prove the existence of a religion with nothing higher 
than the natural for its basis. With the natural only as 
the source of successive evolutions, there can be no un- 
seen sphere into which to gaze, nor higher and spiritual 
Being with whom man may hold elevating intercourse. 
He is utterly isolated and unaided. This boldly unphilo- 
sophical banishment of the supernatural from the domain 

* "Comte and Positivism," p. 133. 



376 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

of both Reason and Faith, and the melancholy attempt, 
at the same time, to retain a place for religion and its 
consolations, very clearly show the insecurity and in- 
completeness of that philosophy by which these guides 
are themselves influenced, and by which, as with a rod 
of iron, they strive to rule others. The severity with 
which they denounce every one who refuses to unite 
with them in rejecting the supernatural even as an idea, 
or as an element of tentative reasoning, is absurdly in- 
consistent with that freedom of inquiry which they so 
eloquently claim for themselves ; but it is not without 
its gain to their side, inasmuch as it is leading some ear- 
nest Christian apologists to make concessions regarding 
Scripture principles which have no warrant whatever 
from physical science. It has become fashionable to 
acknowledge the reign of law to such an extent as to 
reduce the "Bible to the level of a somewhat confused 
and unreliable history, and to accept inferences which 
are telling disastrously on multitudes of our young men 
who have little leisure for study. While there has been 
too much assertion on the one side, there has been too 
much concession on the other. We propose, therefore, in 
the midst of this confusion, to mark some positions which 
Christian apologists may occupy with safety, in the hum- 
ble hope that, while some may be dissatisfied with our 
suggestions, others may be aided by them. 

On examining the writings of those Christian apolo- 
gists who have of late been discussing the relations of 
the natural and the supernatural, we have been perplexed 
by conflicting inferences. As they reason from widely 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 377 

different principles, they render it difficult to determine 
where the natural ends and the supernatural begins ; or, 
when either has begun, how much each embraces. The 
terms supernatural and superhuman, while suitably ex- 
pressing incidental distinctions, have contributed to our 
knowledge nothing that is essential and permanent. The 
"natural" has been variously represented: (1) It is that 
part of the material universe which is related to man, but 
not including him ; (2) it is the visible universe, inclu- 
ding man ; and (3) it is the visible universe, including 
not only man, but also some all-pervading, undefined, 
mysterious power. 

Principal M'Cosh, who has rendered the highest ser- 
vice to philosophy in its Christian aspects, has not shown 
his wonted breadth and clearness in discussing the su- 
pernatural in relation to the natural. After a careful 
perusal of his work, it is scarcely possible <to say, with 
any satisfactory degree of exactness, what are their 
boundary lines, or how much the one includes, and how 
much the other. The impression at one time is, that 
nature includes only the earth and the system of which 
it is a part ; at another, that it also includes man ; at 
another, that " in nature there is a Special Providence? 

The subject is much complicated by his introducing 
this last idea, as it is itself connected with the supernat- 
ural. Special Providence is, logically, suggestive of the 
supernatural rather than of the natural. The confusion 
is increased by the proposition, that "in nature there is 
a moral government," and also by the proofs and illus- 
trations which Principal M'Cosh gives, to the effect that 

32* 



378 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

" God encourages the morally good," and " will in the 
end punish offenders." To describe "special providence" 
and " the moral government of God " as " in the natural," 
and as part of it, is not only in itself incongruous, but it 
renders anything like a philosophical solution of this 
problem much more difficult, if not hopelessly intricate ; 
for while special providence works through natural laws, 
it presupposes an hitelligent overruling power. 

Similar difficulties are created by his general remarks 
on the supernatural. 

" We have seen," he says, " that in this world there is 
a set of objects and agencies which constitute a system 
or cosmos, which may have relations to regions beyond, 
but is, all the while, a self-contained sphere, with a space 
around it — an island separated so far from other lands. 
This system we call ' natural.' The beings above this 
sphere and the agents beyond it, though, it may be, act- 
ing on it, we call ' supernatural.' God, who created the 
cosmical agencies, and set them in operation, is himself 
supernatural." 

But subsequently he so associates others with God, as 
supernatural, that when any event which would be deem- 
ed supernatural occurs, it is beyond our power to say 
which of these supernatural beings has been its source, 
or whether God himself has directly caused it, either 
through higher laws brought specially into action, or by 
his own will. 

We are left in the dark as to how far angels may of 
themselves produce supernatural occurrences, and as to 
how many other beings may have the power of modifying 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 379 

the Reign of Law, and influencing human history. The 
application of the term supernatural, like that of the term 
natural, is so often shifted and so variously modified, that 
we can make little progress in ascertaining what is within 
the reign of law, and what is beyond it. The obscurity is 
not lessened when he writes of the " supernatural coming 
into the lower sphere and acting in unison with the agen- 
cies already there." What supernatural is it ? God, or 
other beings separate from him? Again, "the natural 
does appear operating and cooperating with the super- 
natural in not a few of the dispensations of God." This 
distinction between the supernatural and the dispensa- 
tions of God, it is not easy to apprehend. We question 
its reality ; or, admitting its reality, whether it is of the 
least practical value in this discussion, either with those 
who look exclusively to the reign of law as the explana- 
tion of all anomalies, or with those who advocate the di- 
rect reign of God. 

Dr. Bushnell, in his elaborate and eloquent work, 
" Nature and the Supernatural," defines nature to be 
" that created realm of being or substance which has an 
acting, a going on, a process from within itself, under 
and by its own laws." Limiting it to the physical uni- 
verse, he describes it as " a chain of causes and effects, 
or a scheme of orderly succession determined from with- 
in the scheme itself." "That is supernatural," he says, 
"whatever it be, that is either not in the chain of cause 
and effect, or which acts on the chain of cause and effect 
in nature from without the chain." By this definition 
man is placed beyond this chain ; he acts on it, he inter- 



380 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

feres with its adjustments, and is therefore to be regard- 
ed as supernatural. While this is so far true, it is defec- 
tive, as representing only a part of the system of the 
universe. He presses vigorously the view than man has 
" properly a supernatural power," that he stands " out 
clear and sovereign as a being supernatural," and that 
he is able so to act from without " on the chain of cause 
and effect, as to produce results which the laws of nature 
would never have produced but for his interference." 
u The very idea of our personality is that of a being not 
under the law of cause and effect, a being supernatural. 
Man is an original power, acting not in the line of cau- 
sality, but from himself." In these statements a principle 
is assumed, which, in his use of it, must be much restrict- 
ed ; for man is, in his own sphere, in a special sense, con- 
stantly under the law of cause and effect ; and is, besides, 
subject to higher laws than are those economies beneath 
him which he subordinates to his purposes. 

" The supernatural," he adds, " is that range of sub- 
stance, if any such there be, that acts upon the chain of 
cause and effect in nature from without the chain, pro- 
ducing thus results that, by mere nature, could not come 
to pass."* 

This somewhat indefinite " if any such there be" is 
too flickering a light to aid us reliably in traversing this 
intricate subject. "A range of substance, if such there 
be," is expected to produce what cannot possibly be ac- 
counted for apart from intelligence and purpose. With- 
out that purpose, substance left to itself could never so 
* " Nature and the Supernatural," p. 23. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 381 

act on substance as to educe extraordinary effects, and 
invest them with permanent meaning. Let effects break 
out at any time in such a form as to be obviously inde- 
pendent of ordinary laws, and be at the same time moral- 
ly influential through their connection with human his- 
tory, and they will remain inexplicable, except in relation 
to the regulating will of God. If we are to comprehend 
aright the moral government under which our responsi- 
bility is increasing as our knowledge of nature extends, 
we must go farther than to hidden laws and superior 
agents behind the known ; we must rise directly to his 
hand in whom all move and have their being. 

In his " Reign of Law," the Duke of Argyll has, with 
great fairness, tested the definitions and delineations 
which Principal M'Cosh and Dr. Bushnell have contribu- 
ted, and has himself presented valuable suggestions, yet 
he leaves the subject in somewhat perplexing ambiguity. 
While we accept his assertion that "the reign of law is, 
indeed, so far as we can observe it, universal," and that 
" nature, in the largest sense, includes all that is 

" ' In the round ocean, and the living air, 

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,'' "* 

we refuse to admit that law, in being universal, is abso- 
lute and exclusive, and that God acts only in and through 
its agency. Nor is his view of the supernatural so dis- 
tinctly unfolded as is necessary. His definitions are not 
free from the obscurity of which he justly complains in 
others, and he appears to restrict the "doings" of the 
supernatural more than the principles of Christianity can 

* " Reign of Law," pp. 4, 11, 



382 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

fairly admit. He touches the right spring, we believe, 
when he says, " By supernatural power, do we not mean 
power independent of the use of means, as distinguished 
from power depending on knowledge — even infinite 
knowledge — of the means proper to be employed ?" 
This power, independent of the use of means, is essential 
to the idea of creation. Its origin is the will of God. 
He gave existence to means, and then used them for his 
manifold purposes. The real difficulty — that which many 
say is inconceivable — lies, as his grace states, " in the 
idea of will exercised without the use of means — not in 
the idea of will exercised through means which are be- 
yond our knowledge or beyond our reach." But we are 
perplexed by the concession which he makes in the very 
next sentence : " Now, have we any right to say that be- 
lief in this is essential to all religion ? If we have not, 
then it is only putting, as so many other sayings do put, 
additional difficulties in the way of religion." Belief in 
this, that is, in God's will, exercised without means, is 
conceivable, and though not essential to all religions, it 
is essential to Christianity. His grace assumes that the 
Creator did first give existence to the means, and then 
did, and now does, use them for the accomplishment of 
ends. Will, then, must have been exercised without the 
use of means. This he appears to admit when he says, 
" But the very idea of a Creator involves the idea, not 
merely of a Being by whom the properties of matter are 
employed, but of a Being from whose will the properties 
of matter are derived." 

Surely belief in that is essential to Christianity. To 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 383 

refuse this is not only to put additional difficulties in 
the way of religion, but to bar altogether the acceptance 
of Revelation and the Gospel. He says truly, " But those 
who believe that God's will does govern the world, must 
believe that, ordinarily at least, he does govern it by the 
choice and use of means, which means were again pre- 
established by himself." On this there can be no differ- 
ence of opinion ; God does govern ordinarily by the use 
of means ; there is a reign of law, yet not a blind despot- 
ism of force. But in the next sentence his grace requires 
a concession which we cannot possibly make, when he 
says, " Nor have we any certain reason to believe that 
he ever acts otherwise." He has acted otherwise in 
creation, and what has been may be again. We should 
be sorry to misinterpret the views of one v/hose contri- 
butions in many respects we greatly value and admire, 
but we do think that he makes concessions which neu- 
tralize much of his best reasoning. If he fails anywhere, 
it is in discussing these fundamental principles. In a 
footnote in the fifth edition of his " Reign of Law," he 
accepts as satisfactory Mr. Lecky's reference to his views, 
as conveying " a notion of a miracle which would not 
differ genetically from a human act, though it would still 
be strictly available for evidential purposes ;" but in ac- 
cepting this restricted use of a miracle, he enunciates a 
principle which must hamper and enfeeble all his reason- 
ing, in reference not only to the supernatural, but to 
Christianity itself. "Beyond the immediate purposes of 
benevolence," he says, "which were served by almost all 
the miracles of the New Testament, the only other pur- 



384 BLENDING LIGHTS, 

pose which is ever assigned to them is an ' evidential 
purpose,' that is, a purpose that might serve as signs of 
the presence of superhuman knowledge, and of the work- 
ing of superhuman power. They were performed in 
short, to assist faith, and not to confound reason." 

It is strange to find one so acute in discriminating 
principles, and so comprehensive in reasoning, restricting 
the miracles of the New Testament to merely evidential 
purposes ; they serve that end, it is true, but in their 
profoundest connections they are more than evidential, 
they are eminently doctrinal. " The facts of Christianity," 
says Archdeacon Lee, " are represented by some as form- 
ing no part of its essential doctrines ; they rank, it is 
argued, no higher than its external accessories. It is im- 
possible to maintain this distinction." And Professor 
Bannerman, in his work on Inspiration, also refuses to 
separate the miracles from the dogmatic teaching of 
Scripture ; for they are, as he believes, to a large extent 
identical. " In many cases," he adds, " the miracles are 
nothing but doctrines rendered into facts, and the doc- 
trines only miracles interpreted into truths." 

I. THE RELATIONS OF THE SUPERNATURAL TO THE NATURAL. 

In determining the mutual relations of the super- 
natural and the natural, we must extend the sphere of 
the natural beyond that to which it has been limited, and 
endeavor to simplify the ideas prevalent as to miraculous 
agency. With much diffidence we follow the distin- 
guished writers to whom reference has been so freely 
made ; but the difficulties which remain are such, that, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 385 

notwithstanding all their concessions, and in large meas- 
ure because of them, the whole subject needs reconsider- 
ation. Eager and ingenuous inquirers, especially among 
young men, pausing at almost every step, have found ap- 
parent contradictions in some of their definite proposi- 
tions, and they are refusing to accept statements which 
have left vitally important questions in even greater ob- 
scurity than before. We enter on this part of the dis- 
cussion cherishing the hope that, if we fail to satisfy the 
philosophic inquirer on the side of Christianity, others 
more competent may undertake the task of exposition 
when they observe the special questions which continue 
to tax the reason and the faith of many thoughtful stu- 
dents. 

1. The Natural: Its Extent. 

Nature not only includes all that is in the physical uni- 
verse, at least in so far as it influences man, or may be 
known by him, but is expressive, in the widest sense, of 
all that is, as having come forth to be by the will of the 
Creator. Creation and the " natural" are synonymous 
or coequal, as now existent. Their origin is super- 
natural. There is nothing in nature to shew self-origi- 
nation. It could not of its own accord begin to be. All 
that is now natural was, in the beginning, the result of 
divine power. The will of God, omnipotent, sovereign, 
and inscrutable, is its source and stay. 

Some, restricting nature to what is material, cannot 
escape from the trammels of a purely physical philosophy ; 
while others, fixing exclusive regard on psychological 
truth, as having a reality and a certainty of at least as 

33 



3 S6 BLEXDIXG LIGHTS. 

much consequence as "the laws of the planetary motions 
and chemical affinities," hasten to the opposite extreme, 
and demand acknowledgment of the facts of their science 
as the only worthy foundation of philosophy and natural 
theology. Both err. In excluding either the one or the 
other, they act unnaturally ; they divide what God has 
joined in man, a body connecting him with the physical, 
and a soul connecting him with the spiritual. The fact of a 
spiritual nature in man is presumptive evidence of a spir- 
itual universe around him of which he is part, and the 
spiritual and the natural may be alike natural. Philoso- 
phy and natural theology must recognize both, because 
they really rest on both mental and material principles, 
psychology as well as physics. This view is so far held 
by the Duke of Argyll when he " takes the natural in that 
large and wider sense in which it contains within it the 
whole phenomena of man's intellectual and spiritual na- 
ture as part, and the most familiar of all parts, of the 
visible system of things." That is the limit which he 
reaches, but we go farther, for ethics cannot be excluded. 
The distinction to which Lord Brougham attempted to 
give permanent prominence between Ontology, or the 
science of what is, and Deontology, or the science of 
what ought to be, cannot be rigidly maintained here. 
The two sciences intermingle. The what is, for instance, 
in our physical condition, teaches what ought to be in re- 
gard to health, and has not only sanitary, but moral, 
obligations. Besides, conscience is part of what is ; its 
existence is universally acknowledged ; as a fact it has 
its place in ontology, but in function and influence it 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 387 

passes into the domain of deontology, or what ought to 
be. It regulates conduct, it invests with responsibility, 
it is a determining power, not only in individual life, but 
in national history ; it is the basis of religion, and pre- 
pares man for Revelation. 

Nor can we rest here. Philosophically, the natural 
must also embrace those higher rational or spiritual be- 
ings who have been created, and who in the divine gov- 
ernment are related to Man. Analogy in the visible, 
guiding us from lower to higher forms of life, and from 
the higher to the highest, Man, warrants our moving 
upwards through a still higher series in the invisible. 
Analogy forbids the arrest of our course when we are 
passing from the intellectual in man to the confines of the 
spiritual in the unseen ; and we cannot stop on this 
threshold without doing violence to the first principles of 
scientific investigation. What analogy has indicated, the 
Scriptures directly attest. This statement may, of course, 
be ridiculed by the physicist, but the philosopher who 
has any confidence in the lessons of analogy will admit 
the probability of other and higher existences ; and 
to the Christian who has faith in the Bible it is matter 
of certainty. "For by Him," the Son of God, "were all 
things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, 
visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or domin- 
ions, or principalities, or powers." Col. 1 : 16. The idea 
of an ascending series of rational and moral beings is 
familiar to every student of the Bible. And is it not 
illogical on the part of the mere physicist to be making 
perpetual reference to " higher laws" and " hidden laws," 



3 S8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

and to ''subtle or mysterious forces yet unknown," on his 
own side of the question, while he denounces as " mere 
imagination" or "superstition" all references on the oth- 
er side to those higher, hidden, and mysterious beings to 
whom analogy directs us, and whom the Bible describes 
as " ministering spirits," as " heavenly hosts" ? Is it not 
really more unphilosophical to deny than to admit the 
existence of " higher spiritual beings than man" ? Is it 
not more one-sided and less harmonious with our convic- 
tions to impose such a limit ? As man is connected with 
all life below him, is he not also connected with all life 
and intelligence above him ? 

Such an extending of the sphere of the natural, ren- 
ders easier of solution, we think, some of the more press- 
ing problems regarding the relations of law to the super- 
natural. 

2. The Supernatural. 

What is the supernatural ? Where does it begin ? 
What sphere does it fill ? How give it a definite charac- 
ter ? What is the source of its power ? 

The supernatural, we believe, can have no moral 
value to man except in its direct connection with the 
will of God. Apart, indeed, from such connection, the 
supernatural, about which so much has of late been writ- 
ten, is nothing more than the natural ; and although the 
distinction may be serviceable, it can relieve the mind of 
no anxiety ; it explains nothing. What we understand 
and what we cannot fully comprehend, may be thus sep- 
arated by appropriate terms, but both are natural, as de- 
pendent on the creational and the governing power of 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 389 

God. We acknowledge the reign of law everywhere as 
fully as any one can describe it ; we admit its prevalence 
above, around, beneath ; but we deny its absoluteness. 
It has vast sway, but still it is a subject. When such 
occurrences have to be explained, as iron swimming, 
when naturally it should sink, the mere reference to 
supernatural agencies or hidden laws explains nothing : 
it leaves us gazing in very helplessness into the dark. Be 
it that there is some hidden law which produced that 
effect, how came it to work at that juncture, and at no 
other ? Can any certain footing be gained until we refer 
the process and the result to the sovereign will of the 
great Ruler ; or can any adequate solution of the super- 
natural be found but in his wisdom and power ? 

W T hile we gladly acknowledge the aid which the Scrip- 
tures bring, it is only in the way of confirming a conclu- 
sion otherwise reached. To this course objections have 
been raised ; it is not fair, they allege, to begin the study 
of natural theology with the Bible in our hand, or to em- 
ploy its light in speculations as to supernatural agencies ; 
but this objection has been fully disposed of, we think, 
by the late Archbishop Whately in one of his letters to 
Baden Powell. 

"It is enough," he says, "if you can establish it as a 

strong probability that there may be a God, and that not 

such as we call God — the Author of all things — but 

simply an unseen, intelligent Being, exercising power 

over the world. And when it is admitted that there may 

be such a Being, there is no absurdity in proceeding to 

inquire what proofs there are of His having directly 

33* 



390 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

communicated with man. When this is established, we 
may justly infer from such his revelation, his having 
probably done so and so, and being so and so, of which 
again we may find confirmation by inspecting more close- 
ly the other volume — the Created Universe."* 

This appears to be a use of Scripture so perfectly 
fair, that we claim its aid in the same way and to the 
same extent, and accept its teaching as confirming the 
lessons of analogy. 

Those who insist on "the grand truth of the universal 
order and constancy of natural causes as a primary law 
of belief, and as so strongly entertained and fixed in the 
mind of every truly inductive inquirer that he cannot 
even conceive the possibility of its failure," and who 
assert that any results different from this established 
order are " inconceivable to reason," must prove two 
things ; first, that this primary law of belief renders it 
impossible to have intuitional evidence in favor of the 
supernatural ; and second, that there is no evidence 
whatever in the natural to train or guide the mind to any 
legitimate conception of a Being above all nature. 

In both they fail, and in both the Christian student 
finds support. Why should such results be inconceivable 
to reason? No evidence has ever been adduced to show 
that we are intellectually incompetent to reach or receive 
the idea of a supernatural Being, or that the idea is itself 
an outrage on any one of our intuitions. Principal 
M'Cosh has conclusively shown that our intuitions do 
not in the least sanction the conclusion that " nature has 

* "Life of Archbishop Whately," p. 148. Edition in one volume. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 391 

nothing but physical or mundane law ;" and he has shown 
that they are neither inconsistent with a miracle nor vio- 
lated by its history.* Our intuitions do not rigorously 
limit to natural agencies alone the causes of the effects 
which we examine, when they may possibly have a divine 
origin. The very evidence which leads us to recognize 
uniformity in nature, fosters, if it does not create the 
conviction, that there is a higher power at work than the 
natural exhibits. The assertion that " faith in the super- 
natural is the essence of all unreason," does violence to 
our intuitions. It sets aside a primary law of belief. The 
idea of the supernatural is not foreign to man ; its prev- 
alence is universal. To disown it is unphilosophical. 
The history of our race is its vindication. 

" You may interrogate the human race," says Guizot, 
" in all times and in all places, in all states of society and 
in all grades of civilization, and you will find them every- 
where, and always, believing in facts and causes beyond 
this sensible world called nature."! 

Although Sir John Lubbock and others have given 
their decision against the universal prevalence of a reli- 
gious sentiment, the general opinion is opposed to their 
inference. All known races, savage and civilized, are 
connected by the idea of the supernatural in some one 
form or other, and by some religious customs or habits, 
however vague or contradictory. 

* " The Supernatural," etc., p. 41. See also " Christianity and Posi- 
tivism." 

t " Meditations sur la Religion," p. 95. 



392 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

II. EVIDENCE IN NATURE OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

The rigid exclusion of the very idea of the supernat- 
ural, is unjustifiable. Its banishment does not harmonize 
with the tendencies and the guidance of nature, for we 
are trained to the idea by the economies which surround 
us. Not by intuition only, nor by human history alone, 
with its universal beliefs, but by the structure of the 
earth also, and by an ascending series of manifestations, 
are we constrained to look to the supernatural. In the 
facts of science is the basis of our argument, and their 
relations may be briefly described. 

I. In the inorganic fabric of our globe there is indi- 
rect yet impressive evidence of a power which has been 
at work beyond all that physical tests can touch. In the 
disposition and distribution of the materials which sur- 
round us there is abundant evidence of design. The 
superposition and the arrangements of the rocks and the 
metals, represent through long antecedent ages such ob- 
vious regard to the future constitution of man, that we 
cannot connect such a wonderful series of facts with the 
blind action of unintelligent law without doing violence 
to reason. No law has ever been even remotely indicated 
which would determine the place, the thickness, and the 
very texture of succeeding strata, or which would explain 
how the silver, the gold, the lime, the iron, and the coal, 
are so accessible to man, and therefore so promotive of 
civilization. In the disposition of the constituents of the 
oldest rocks, there is exhibited a minuteness of care, as 
well as a vastness of prophetic preparation, for which 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 393 

natural laws have indicated no explanation. How came 
all those inorganic substances, those indispensable ele- 
ments without which plants perish, to be so stored up, 
and to be so related to future agencies, that they give 
forth sparingly in their season, those nicely-balanced 
quantities which clothe the earth with green, enamel it 
with flovveis, and enrich it with fruit ? By what process 
of selection have the rocks established within themselves 
that delicately-varied texture which, with marvellous pre- 
cision, yields to the sunshine, and the dew and the storm 
and other wasting influences, those homoeopathic sup- 
plies which plants separately and unconsciously require ? 
Can this singular storage, long ages ago, of food for 
future plants, have been no more than the chance result 
of materials in chaos striving for the mastery ? No 
power in nature has been pointed out as possibly leading 
to these marvellous allocations. They are commensurate 
with our globe, and they compel us to look away from 
themselves for an explanation of their order. Our first 
step in physical inquiry thus brings us into the presence 
of what is supernatural, unless we are contented to sit 
shrouded in mysteries, which may be, at least in part, 
removed. 

2. As we proceed, another fact presents itself which 
natural law cannot explain. Not produced in any form 
by the harmonious preparations above referred to, but 
depending on them, and so acting on the substances pro- 
vided as to turn them to uses not within the range of in- 
organic matter alone — is Plant-life. Whence is it ? How 
has it appeared ? No facts have been yet discovered 



394 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

which "help us even in imagination to bridge the chasm 
from the nonliving to the living."* It is a result beyond 
physical law. Mark how it acts. Vital force overcomes 
the law of gravitation, and while it uses chemical combi- 
nations, is in origin independent of them. To all intents 
and purposes, plant-life is, in relation to the inorganic 
world, miraculous or supernatural. Higher laws are 
framed which suspend or modify chemical and mechani- 
cal forces. All that chemistry has achieved amid trans- 
formations which often startle, and always instruct us, 
has failed to organize a single form in which life may 
take up its abode. Life makes its own form, and plies 
its own force. Plant-life was a new thing in our world. 
It came into or upon it, supernatural ly, not from it. 

3. By another step we are brought to a new economy, 
that of animal-life, not educed, but supervened. Although 
animals and plants are more closely related than are 
plants and the soil, yet they are essentially distinct. 
While there are intermediate or apparently transitional 
forms between plants and animals, there is, as Professor 
Huxley admits, a great difference in these two divisions 
of lower life "of which nothing is at present known." 
Science has not connected them, nor is it likely that it 
ever will. While plants draw their nourishment from 
the inorganic, animals cannot ; they live on the organic ; 
they utilize the materials which plants elaborate ; they 
educe results altogether beyond the vegetable economy ; 
and they modify its laws to new ends — to ends which, in 

* " Protoplasm ; or, Matter and Life." By Dr. L. S. Beale, p. 377. 
Third Edition. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 395 

so far as plant power is involved, are supernatural. That 
" life can come only from life" has been generally accept- 
ed as an established truth. We anticipate the vindica- 
tion of a still more definite truth — that plant-life can 
come only from plant-life, and animal-life only from 
animal-life. Meantime, the question of spontaneous 
generation has been so far settled by the experiments of 
M. Pasteur,* that we cannot accept, at this stage of the 
discussion, from any less skilful analyst, mere elaborate 
theories as against his conclusions or results. 

4. Again, and higher, we have Man associated in 
physical conformation with the lower animals, yet pos- 
sessed of qualities peculiar to himself. Between man 
and the lower animals, near as they approach each other 
in some respects, there is a chasm which the utmost 
ingenuity has failed to bridge or fill. Neither Geology 
nor Travels have produced facts which accord with the 
reasoning of the derivationists. On their theory, man's 
origin should be traced to some region where he is most 
debased, and where, consequently, survival is, at first, 
most precarious. But " it is absurd," as Principal Dawson 
has justly observed, " to affirm of any species of animal 
or plant that it must have originated at the limits of its 
range, where it can scarcely survive at all."f Much 
more natural is it to suppose that Man's career did not 
commence at the extreme verge of possible existence. 
Even in those regions in which the apes nearest man 
* See p. 56. 

f See Principal Dawson's admirable work, "The Story of the Earth 
and Man," chapter 15. 



39 6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

are most fully developed, the conditions of his existence 
are such as to render very improbable the supposition 
that man is descended from them. But decidedly posi- 
tive testimony, as well as merely negative reasoning, is 
confirming the Scripture statements as to man's separate 
origin. Mr. Wallace has displaced Mr. Darwin's conclu- 
sions by demonstrating the " insufficiency of natural selec- 
tion" to account for the development of man's brain, his 
soft, naked, and sensitive skin, the structure of his foot 
and hand, and the conformation of his organs of speech ; 
and it has been frankly admitted by such as Professor 
Huxley, that man is immeasurably separated from the 
highest of the lower animals by his intellectual and 
moral nature. Professor Tyndall has ignored these con- 
clusions and asserted that he discerns " in matter the 
promise and potency of all terrestrial life,"* that " the doc- 
trine of evolution" which he accepts " derives man, in his 
totality, from the interaction of organism and environ- 
ment through countless ages past,"f and in particular, that 
" the human understanding is itself the result of play 
between organism and environment through cosmic 
ranges of time."f These assertions, as made by a presi- 
dent of the British Association claim respectful attention ; 
but, when it is found that inferences only, not facts, are 
adduced to support them, in the interests not of theology 
but of science, we reject them. While evolution reduces 

* Authorized Report of the Forty-fourth Annual Meeting of the Brit- 
ish Associntion for the Advancement of Science, held at Belfast in August, 
1S74, page xcii. 

t Ibid p. xciv. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 397 

man "in his totality" to a merely material fabric it 
utterly fails to account for the facts of human life, in 
their manifold relations, intellectual, moral and religious. 
Man, made capable of looking " to the Unseen and 
Eternal," cherishes the distinctive idea of immortality. 
His intellect, with its power of comparing ; his reason, 
with its grasp to generalize ; his imagination, with its 
faculty to invent and combine ; his conscience, with its 
recognition of right and wrong ; his memory, with its 
power of reproducing the past; and his conceptions of 
responsibility, obligation, virtue, and the sanctions of 
law — connect him with an economy which is utterly 
beyond the reach of the lower animals. In his intellec- 
tual, moral, and spiritual nature he is supernatural to all 
beneath and around him. The germs of this highest 
moral nature cannot be found in either inorganic masses 
or in the life-forms which abound beneath his sway. 

5. And must we stop here ? Is Man the first and 
last of rational and responsible beings ? Does the human 
race exhaust the range of intellectual and moral existence? 
Are there no higher beings in wider spheres, and subject 
to other laws than those which are known to us ? Does 
not the finger of analogy point upward ? And does not 
the Bible assure us that the inference is legitimate which 
sheds light on higher ranks of moral beings — angel, 
archangel, and seraph ? 

To examine the connections or minuter relations of 
the series of economies of which we form a part, is 
unnecessary. All that we insist on is, that by an ascend- 
ing series nature does train the inquirer to the idea 

34 



39 8 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

of the supernatural. The idea is not merely admissible, 
but necessary, and its repudiation is unjustifiable. Let 
us not be understood as claiming the acknowledgment 
of a frequent interference on the part of the Creator and 
Preserver with the laws which he has established. They 
fulfil their function in a twofold capacity : they act accor- 
ding to their special destiny, and also in accordance with 
those demands which are made on them by a higher and 
subordinating economy. It is in that sense we hold the 
one economy to be supernatural to the other — plant-life 
to the inorganic, animal-life to plant-life, and man to both. 
Enough has been said, not only to prove the legitimacy 
of the idea, but to show that its exclusion is unscientific. 
To assert that the supernatural is "inconceivable," or is 
" the essence of all unreason," does violence to the facts 
of nature and their logical interpretation. 

The bitterness with which the idea of the supernatural 
is hunted down, can be accounted for only by the undue 
influence which any single department of study, without 
its counterpoise, may exert over even the keenest and 
most powerful intellect. While all creation, visible and 
invisible, may be regarded comprehensively as "the 
natural" under the control of God, we are warranted in 
describing as a "supernatural" result each higher econ- 
omy in the ascending series which could not have been 
originated by that beneath it. That power which con- 
trols the subordinate, as the vital force in the plant con- 
trols the inorganic elements around it, is in its action 
relatively supernatural, but in origin it is absolutely 
supernatural. The two ideas are harmonious, though 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 399 

distinct. The relatively supernatural becomes the natural 
beneath the next higher economy in the ascending series. 
The plant economy, supernatural relatively to the in- 
organic fabric, becomes natural relatively to the animal 
economy ; and so on, upward through all stages and 
ranks, until we reach the great source of order and life — 
the Lord God Omnipotent reigning. 

But to acknowledge the reign of the Supreme Being, 
does not necessarily displace the reign of Law. Law has 
its sphere. It is universal ; but not absolute. This is 
not a new discovery ; it is a truth shining with as much 
clearness in every page of Scripture as in the " Principia" 
of Newton. Regarding this principle, both Science and 
Scripture are at one ; the difference lies in the variety 
and extent of its applications — a difference always de- 
pendent on the progress of scientific discovery. But 
while we acknowledge the prevalence of natural law, and 
admit that hidden laws may be applied by higher beings 
to produce what to us are supernatural results, we cannot, 
in homage to an imperfect philosophy, dissociate the 
Lawgiver from the works and the laws which he has 
framed. 

While admitting that the Divine Government pro- 
ceeds ordinarily by the use of natural agencies, we are 
justified in firmly refusing the statement already advert- 
ed to, "that there is no reason for believing that God 
ever acts otherwise," because the facts of science, as well 
as the intimations of Scripture, reveal actions without 
means. To institute means originally, is itself evidence 
of acting without means. To establish laws, is proof of 



4 oo BLENDING LIGHTS. 

work without laws. The reign of law is not self-origina- 
ted. God began it, and his Will must be the rule of its 
continuance. Proof is accumulating. Natural Philoso- 
phy has already demonstrated that the present cosmical 
system has not been eternal — that it began to be, and 
that it is passing on to change and overthrow, unless 
some power, not now acting, interpose. Geology has 
proved that there has been a commencement to our rock 
structure, and Biology has also attested for Life a begin- 
ning that is supernatural to all that previously existed. 
We are therefore justified in assuming that there are 
results without self-originating means ; and it does no 
such violence to our intuitions and our reason to connect 
them with the sovereign Will of God, as it does to throw 
back the beginning of all things into the mists of a meas- 
ureless eternity, and to assert that explanation is " incon- 
ceivable." 

Throughout the " Natural," in the fullest extent which 
may be claimed for it, there is abundant evidence of the 
introduction of Super natural influence; and if Christi- 
anity is indeed a system from the same hand which 
framed the heavens, it would not be in harmony with 
the facts which appear in the lower economies, if the 
manifestations of a supernatural presence in it were not 
at least equally distinct. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 401 



CHAPTER XVI. 

EVIDENCE OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN CHRISTIANITY — RE- 
SULTS IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY — CONCLU- 
SION. 

The truth which really and only accounts for the establishment in this 
our human world of such a religion- as Christianity, and of such an insti- 
tution as the Church, is the truth that Jesus Christ was believed to be 
more than man, the truth that Jesus Christ is what men believed him to 
be, the truth that Jesus Christ is God. — canon liddon. 

Having tested the historical statements in Scripture 
by evidence in other records, having noticed the peculi- 
arity with which prophecy and its fulfilment have invest- 
ed the Bible, and having traced in the " Natural " the 
mysterious tokens of a Power working in sovereignty 
behind its economies, we cannot escape the impression 
that the same Being who hath introduced into the physi- 
cal world new conditions of structure and life, and into 
mental history those ideas which strangely or superb. u- 
manly represented future facts, centuries before their 
realization, hath also placed in the higher world — the 
Mental, the Moral, and the Spiritual — those historical 
facts, those miraculous changes, and those doctrinal 
truths which lay beyond the reach alike of man's physi- 
cal and intellectual resources. Physical changes for 
which no known natural forces can account, and prophe- 
cies for which, in the domain of thought, no satisfactory 

explanation, apart from the Will of God, has ever been 

34* 



4 o2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

offered, constitute of themselves sufficient warrant foi 
receiving the Bible as a divine revelation, and Christian- 
ity with all its miracles as a divine system. Christianity 
claims to. be supernatural. It reveals truths beyond the 
range of human thought, and that is supernatural ; it 
records miracles, and they are supernatural. The two 
are inseparably inwrought with one another — the miracle 
of revelation itself, and the miracles which are recorded 
in the Scriptures. The proposal to accept the Bible 
without its prophecies, and Christianity without its mira- 
cles, is to deprive both of almost every vestige of moral 
value. The traces of the supernatural are so abundant 
in the Bible, and so distinctly characteristic of it, that to 
efface them or cut them out would be to render the book 
and its system of truth so utterly meaningless,' that it 
would become a piece of incongruous and useless patch- 
work, with no trace whatever of its connection with the 
works of God in Creation, and that union of the works 
and the word which has recently become better known in 
the light of science would be unappreciated. 

The systematic study of Nature alone creates a dis- 
position to look for and acknowledge the supernatural in 
any higher system of truth which might be brought with- 
in man's reach, and accordingly the Scriptures are so 
pervaded by tokens of a controlling presence above all 
that is merely human, that they harmonize with the evi- 
dence in Nature of the supernatural. That there is de- 
velopment in the life of every individual, and that there 
is evolution in separate systems or economies, every one 
admits ; but there is not the least evidence to prove, as 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 4 °3 

has been already fully stated, that the one system has 
been evolved from the other ; that the different systems 
of inorganic bodies, and of organized beings, have been 
evolved from some very simple beginnings ; and that the 
intellectual and moral nature of man has been evolved 
from either inorganic matter, or from some molluscous 
creature. 

But supposing that both development and evolution 
should be found to extend much more comprehensively 
in breadth and depth than we yet imagine, the result 
should not in the least degree affect our confidence in 
the dispensations of providence and the means of grace. 
There are higher laws than this material framework, 
with its plant and animal existences, can ever exhibit ; 
there is the Sphere of Providence as it regulates individ- 
ual, domestic, and national histories ; but beyond and 
above it there is the Economy of Grace, or the Plan of 
Redemption, and every student is responsible for an 
accurate knowledge of its doctrines and its duties. 

On turning our attention closely to the Word of 
God, that the economy of grace may be known aright, 
we naturally expect that the same method of manifesting 
truth will be exhibited which appears in God's works 
around us ; and we are not disappointed. The natural 
and the supernatural reappear in forms still more dis- 
tinctly recognizable, and the progressivencss which we 
have already described as apparent in the adjustments of 
the globe and in the development of life-forms, is still 
more obvious in the development of revealed truth and 
in the unfolded means of grace. At the very commence- 



404 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ment of the Bible, there is that profoundly comprehen- 
sive prophecy or promise to which reference has already 
been made, " I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall 
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." Gen. 
3:15. All that has transpired in the history of the 
world is morally an evolution from the twofold truth in 
that broad announcement. 

These facts at the very outset, taken in connection 
with what has followed, could not be a natural evolution 
of human thinking ; they must have been supernaturaliy 
communicated. The first distinctly recognized element 
in the revelation of truths which lie beyond the grasp of 
man is supernatural ; indeed, all the facts of grace must 
have a supernatural connection. The Bible carries in its 
pages abundant evidence of the supernatural, not only in 
its separate exalted truths, and in prophecies long mys- 
terious, but in the whole foundation and scope of Chris- 
tianity. The Plan of Redemption is itself supernatural, 
and the communication of that plan, be the means what 
they may, was ever dependent on the mind of a Being 
higher than man. If these views be refused on the plea 
of the universality of law, how account for those special 
facts, changes, and movements which have transcended 
all that has yet transpired within the sphere of the mate- 
rial, the intellectual, and the moral, in any of those lands 
in which the light of Scripture has never shone ? We 
challenge an answer. The review of " Religious Beliefs," 
which has been commenced, and which, we trust, will be 
sedulously prosecuted, cannot possibly prove that Chris- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 4°S 

tianity, with its ideas, doctrines, and precepts, is a mere 
evolution in the upward struggle of the religious senti- 
ment in man. Its origin is distinctly traceable to a time 
when, historically, it could not be an evolution ; and its 
character at the present moment is so confounding to all 
false religions, that they could not possibly give it origi- 
nating impulse and moulding process. If they did, why 
are they not now originating, apart from Christianity, a 
similar, or some other exalted scheme ? 

While rejecting the natural development of religious 
belief, some very able Christian writers are evidently 
much perplexed by the assertion of strenuous opponents, 
that the suspension of physical laws is inconceivable, and 
by their repudiating the possibility of spirit in any way 
interfering with material processes. Of the mode in 
which spirit so influences matter as to produce changes, 
we have no definite information or idea, but that spirit 
can and does thus work is a fact. Whenever we raise 
our arm, we affect that law of matter by which it would 
hang by our side ; whenever we cast a stone into the air, 
our spirit acts on matter ; and so also in a thousand dif- 
ferent ways. It does not, in the least, modify this con- 
nection of spirit with matter, that the human mind con- 
trols it in -a. manner distinct from that in which the Divine 
Spirit may be supposed to produce changes which are to 
us miracles in both cases. The mode of action, or the 
connection between two distinct existences, is inconceiva- 
ble. But, in reality, the action of the Divine Spirit in 
making the iron swim, or in the miracle of walking on the 
Sea of Galilee, presents in itself no greater difficulties 



4 o6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

than the action of the human spirit on the body, and, 
through the body, on the various objects by which it is 
surrounded. 

There is an obvious source of weakness in the con- 
cession by Christian writers of absolute supremacy to 
what has been not inappropriately designated the " Reign 
of Law." It is a mistake to be ever attempting to bring 
the higher movements of Providence and Grace within 
the limits of the lower material processes of Creation ; 
and it is no less an error to be ever reasoning as if all 
nature were stereotyped, fixed, unchangeable, incapable 
even of modification except by higher or hidden laws, 
which, in their own sphere, also, must be physical, or con- 
formable in nature to that on which they act. There is, 
of course, the prevalence of law ; there is the order of 
nature, and we count on its continuance ; what has been, 
we expect to be. By this principle, and its recognition, 
human life is regulated and utilized ; but what has been 
in. the past is not a logical warrant for dogmatically assert- 
ing that the past shall be invariably repeated in the future, 
and that change or reverse is in every form impossible. 
All that can be held by us as to the future, is an expecta- 
tion. The facts and the laws which make up what is 
called the constitution of our present complex physical 
system, depended at the beginning, solely on the sov- 
ereignty of the Creator; and the continuance of this 
system, or of any part of it, must ever be associated 
with the sovereignty of the same omnipotent Preserver. 
All that comes within the sphere of our observation jus- 
tifies our conclusions as to law being universal in the 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 407 

past, but it does not justify our so accepting that univer- 
sal law as to make it a proposition, rendering any change 
or modification in the future impossible.* Law in the 
past warrants no more than an expectation in the future — 
an expectation, it is true, that amounts to practical cer- 
tainty when no contrary is anticipated, but to no more, 
and therefore all reasoning as if it did amount to more is 
vitiated. It is by accepting the absolute certainty of the 
one aspect as if it equally covered what can be no more 
than mere practical certainty in the other, that many are 
led into error when interpreting Scripture and estimating 
the supernatural or miraculous. It is this really unphi- 
losophical view which has led to the attempt to reduce 
every miracle recorded in Scripture to the level of law, 
either open or hidden. To carry through their theory, 
its advocates are bound to explain all that is supernatural 
in Christianity. To leave outstanding facts unaccounted 
for, or to be explained by hidden laws, is to hinder, rather 
than help, those who are anxiously turning their atten- 
tion to this subject. 

The discussion has of late been conducted through 
phases that may well arrest and alarm the Bible student. 
Amid the demands of skepticism and the concessions of 
too generous Christian apologists, there is great danger 
of our losing sight of what is fundamental and essential 
in Christianity. The contest is being again narrowed to 
Hume's almost lately unheeded position. The reign of 
Law is held to be more powerful than the highest hu- 

* See Mozley's "Bampton Lectures on Miracles," chapter, Order of 
Nature, and Note 5. 



408 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

man testimony ; and the reasonings of Campbell, Paley, 
Chalmers, and others, are unfortunately forgotten or neg- 
lected by many who should add them to their armory, 
and wield them anew. While the phrase " reign of law" 
serves, with not a few, to cover their inveterate opposi- 
tion to the whole Christian system, it is influencing 
some prominent writers so much, that they appear to be 
hampered rather than aided by the miracles of the Old 
and New Testament ; and their chief concern seems to 
be, so to insphere them in a kind of speculative philoso- 
phy as to harmonize them, on the one hand, with a 
materialistic belief in the absolute reign of Law, and on 
the other, with an honest acceptance of the simple yet 
sublime records of Christianity. 

In ' illustration of this tendency, it may suffice to 
quote the following somewhat qualified statements : " Yet," 
says Principal Tulloch, "when we reflect that this higher 
will is everywhere reason and wisdom, it seems a juster 
as well as a more comprehensive view, to regard it as 
operating by subordination and evolution, rather than by 
'interference' or 'violation.' According to this view, the 
idea of. law is so far from being contravened by the 
Christian miracles, that it is taken up by them and made 
their very basis. They are the expression of a higher 
law, working out its wise ends among the lower and 
ordinary sequences of life and history. These ordinary 
sequences represent nature — nature, however, not as an 
immutable fact, but a plastic medium through which a 
higher voice and will are ever addressing us ; and which, 
therefore, may be wrought into new issues, when the 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 409 

voice has a new message and the will a special purpose 
for us."* 

The same view is advocated by the Duke of Argyll : 
" Assuredly, whatever may be the difficulties of Chris- 
tianity, this is not one of them,, that it calls on us to be- 
lieve in any exception to the universal prevalence and 
power of law. Its leading facts and doctrines are direct- 
ly connected with this belief, and directly suggestive 
of it."f And after quoting passages of Scripture to 
connect the Divine mission of the Saviour with a cer- 
tain inscrutable necessity, he adds, " Whatever more 
there may be in such passages, they all imply the uni- 
versal reign of law in the moral and spiritual, as well as 
in the material world : that these laws had to be — behooved 
to be — obeyed ; and that the results to be obtained are 
brought about by the adaptation of means to an end ; or, 
as it were, by way of natural consequence, from the in- 
strumentality employed."^ 

Doubtless, Jesus Christ was subject not only to nat- 
ural and moral laws, but to ail the requirements of 
Redemption, and the Gospel which his disciples preached 
is comformable to human necessities ; but to concede 
all that Principal Tulloch and the Duke of Argyll de- 
mand, is to involve the whole question of Revelation and 
the system which it unfolds — Christianity — in a confu- 
sion from which it cannot be extricated. If their claim 
be granted, that the idea of law is the "very basis" of 
Christian miracles, and that we are not called on " to be- 
lieve in any exception" to the universal prevalence and 

* " Beginning of Life," p. 85. t "Reign of Law," p. 51. % Ibid., p. 52. 

35 



4 i o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

power of law, it must suffice to explain all the facts 
which are placed before us. If it leave some outside 
their conclusion, it cannot satisfy us. Every miracle 
must be explicable by this principle, it must be ultimate- 
ly referable to law as the "basis ;" and what is the issue 
but this, chat the whole system may yet be reduced 
to the ordinary level of the natural, like the formerly 
unexplained mystery of eclipses, and we shall have no 
foundation on which to rest our hope as to the unseen 
and eternal ? Divested of all evidence of the supernatu- 
ral, or, in other words, of a personal controlling power, 
there is nothing to draw the mind upward, and give it 
stability and comfort. Is this theory tenable ? Is this 
result possible? We think not. We agree with Presi- 
dent M'Cosh when he says, 

" It should not be allowed for one moment that we 
are not at liberty to look upon an event as springing from 
the supernatural power of God, unless it can be shown 
to be a link in a concatenated combination. There is a 
loose and empty style of speaking in our day about mir- 
acles being, after all, referable to a higher law, which 
either has no definite meaning, or may be understood in 
a misleading sense, and, at best, is no way fitted to gain 
the opponents of supernaturalism, who by law always 
mean one consistent thing, and that is, natural law. If 
it is meant that miracles can all be referred to some high- 
er natural law, discoverable or undiscoverable, the im- 
pression may be left, that they are like meteors, or like 
mesmerism, simply mysteries which may yet come with- 
in natural explanation, and which cannot, therefore, be 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 411 

evidential of supernatural action. If it is meant that they 
can all be referred to some supernatural law, known or 
unknown, the assertion is made without a warrant from 
revelation. ... It is quite conceivable, indeed, that there 
may be some such law beyond our ken, but of what use 
can it be to appeal to a law unknown and unknowable. 
It is quite as conceivable that God may have wrought in 
our world an isolated occurrence, having no connection, 
physical, causal, or dependent, with any other mundane 
occurrence, except the profound relations which all things 
have one to another in the Divine Mind."* 

We may with perfect consistency go even farther 
than the supposition that " it is quite conceivable that 
God may have wrought in our world an isolated occur- 
rence," and assume the fact. We have a solid founda- 
tion on which to rest; the creation of the "heavens and 
the earth" is an isolated occurrence, the instituting of 
laws is an isolated occurrence, the origin of life is an 
isolated occurrence, the appearance of man as rational, 
moral, and responsible, is an isolated occurrence ; and we 
are warranted in denying the sufficiency of proof to the 
contrary. We do not claim belief that God ordinarily 
interferes with the processes of natural law. It has its 
reign. But he has interfered with law, he has interfered 
with the laws of the inorganic structure by the superven- 
tion of the laws of plant life, and so on upward through 
the stages which we have already described, until there 
is no resting-place for the observant inquirer lower than 
the Infinite and Sovereign Mind. 

* "The Supernatural,'" p. 16S. 



4 i2 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

If this is denied on the plea of universality of law, 
how account for even those facts of lesser import, which 
yet transcendently overtop the ordinary movements of 
material, intellectual, and moral being ? Among the sub- 
ordinate in the material, we have iron rising to the sur- 
face apparently by the will of the prophet, but really by 
a higher power operating through man's will as its medi- 
um, and reversing the law by which iron sinks. When 
the waters of the Jordan ceased their course to the Dead 
Sea until the Israelites passed over, there was more than 
hidden laws can conceivably explain. Among the sub- 
ordinate in the intellectual, we have prophecy. How 
possibly deduce that far insight into the future from law 
or evolution ? How have facts, centuries distant, been 
brought within man's grasp ? The prediction and its 
fulfilment, after an interval of many centuries, have been 
completely adjusted. While there are miracles in the 
Christian system which perfectly harmonize with its ex- 
alted truths and doctrines, they cannot possibly be all 
reduced within the range of laws either known or hidden. 
Although some of the miracles, it is true, may be directly 
associated with special ends, there are others of more 
comprehensive import which can be brought within the 
sphere of no law whatever, conformably to which God 
must necessarily act ; four may be specified which can- 
not be reasonably connected with any law in nature or 
behind it, apart from the directly controlling will of God : 
i, Revelation ; 2, the Incarnation of Christ ; 3, His 
Resurrection ; and 4, His Ascension. 

1. Revelation. It is in origin, absolutely super- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 413 

natural. " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God ;" 
" Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the 
Holy Ghost." As truth, it is relatively supernatural 
to those higher and highest truths which man himself 
can reach in the domain of human thought, and some 
of which, as natural, have been inwrought with what is 
the subject of direct revelation. All that is unfolded in 
Scripture as to redemption is, in origin, supernatural, al- 
though reaching us now through the ordinary channels 
of a written Word. 

2. The Incarnation of the blessed Redeemer is also, 
in its origin, absolutely supernatural. It can be reduced 
to no law. It is absolute as the origin of creation. But 
while the first movement of the Son in his incarnation, 
and in that humiliation which was to be specially his own 
in the economy of redemption, was absolutely supernatu- 
ral, it was relatively supernatural as to " the true body 
and reasonable soul," and also as to his life being holy 
and " separate from sinners." While he revealed God as 
he is, and man as he ought to be, he was in his human 
history subject like other men to the ordinary influences 
of material, mental, and moral laws ; and he thus com- 
bined in his life the natural and the relatively as well as 
the absolutely supernatural. 

3. The resurrection of Jesus Christ, the centre- 
doctrine of the Christian church, has been established 
by most convincing proofs. The apostles had seen him, 
they had eaten with him, they had touched him, they 
had in different circumstances verified their impressions ; 
and thereafter, " with great power gave the apostles wit- 

35* 



4 i4 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ness of the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus." Acts 4 : 33. 
No truth is more forcibly or more distinctly presented in 
the Word of God. It is the fact to which Christ himself 
appealed as warranting his claim to the homage of the 
world. So irresistible is the evidence of the literal resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ from the grave, that it is accept- 
ed as a fact, not only by orthodox churches, but even by 
some prominent rationalistic critics who discredit his 
other miracles of power, and also his ascension into 
heaven. As it is not, however, with the proof of the 
fact we have to do, but with the explanation by which 
some Christian writers attempt to bring this great mira- 
cle within the scope of hidden laws, we have to urge, in 
reply, that although such is in itself imaginable, there is 
not a vestige of proof to warrant the supposition, and it 
is utterly inconceivable and inadmissible, if it is meant 
thereby to dissociate the result from the directly origi- 
nating and guiding power of God. The attempt to ex- 
plain the resurrection of Christ by referring it to some 
unknown law, increases rather than lessens the difficulty, 
by constraining us to read the New Testament record in 
a different sense from that which is obviously implied. 
We cannot place the fact of the resurrection within the 
sphere of hidden laws without doing violence to plain 
historical statements, for Christ himself has expressly 
declared that he had power over life and death ; or, in 
other words, that he was above the sway of what we 
term Universal Law. " Therefore doth my Father love 
me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again. 
No man takcth it from me, but I lay it down of myself, 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 415 

I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take 
it again." John 10:17, ! 8- While our human nature 
has been given to us, he assumed this nature ; " He took 
to himself a true body and a reasonable soul." These and 
similar declarations reveal in Jesus a power absolutely 
independent of those natural laws or forces, which he 
used supernaturally or miraculously in accomplishing 
the great ends of his mission. 

4. In the ascension of the Lord Jesus we have an- 
other fact, dazzling in its splendor, and revealing super- 
natural action. His bodily ascension, in the presence of 
his disciples, while it overbore and set aside the univer- 
sal law of gravitation, has given us no glimpse of any 
other more powerful counteractive law, nor any warrant, 
indeed, for supposing that such a law has ever existed. 
The evidence of the fact itself is complete, and the man- 
ner with which it is described has singular impressive- 
ness. " And he led them out as far as to Bethany ; and 
he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. And it came 
to pass while he blessed them, he was parted from them, 
and carried up into heaven. And when he had spoken 
these things, while they beheld, he was taken up and a 
cloud received him out of their sight." Luke 24:50, 51 ; 
Acts 1 :g. There is no possible explanation of these 
words but that which their obvious meaning suggests. 
Jesus has ascended to glory ; and we think it unneces- 
sary, with those who accept the Bible narrative as true, 
either to state the objections of such as Strauss, or the 
answers of such as Ebrard. There may have been the 
adaptation or the introduction of higher laws to facilitate 



4 i 6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ascent, thus constituting here, also, relatively supernatu- 
ral action ; but in the outgoing of the will and power of 
Jesus there was the absolutely supernatural. Like the 
incarnation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, his 
ascension is mysterious in its process ; it cannot possibly 
be explained by physical science ; it is a fact, at the same 
time, which is but the natural — we may add, the inevi- 
table — outcome from the resurrection. Jesus had risen ; 
and as he was not again to die, it was essential that he 
should pass from his earthly existence in a supernatural 
way ; and it was consoling to his sorrowing disciples, as it 
is now satisfactory to every believer, to have the facts of 
his departure distinctly stated, although that departure to 
a higher sphere cannot be proved by even the ingenuity 
of modern science to have been in the least degree con- 
formable to any ordinary or known or hidden laws. But 
the fact is certain, like the resurrection itself ; and as the 
resurrection is but the beginning of the ascension — as it 
is in his grave the first ray of his future glory shines — 
both facts must stand or fall together. 

IV. RESULTS IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY. 

In Revelation, the incarnation of Christ Jesus, his 
death, resurrection, and ascension, apart from many 
other impressive events, there is such a singular yet 
perfectly harmonious combination, not only of miracles 
but ot doctrines, as renders Christianity easily distin- 
guishable from every other religious system, and as nat- 
urally leads every unprejudiced student to anticipate cor- 
responding results. And so it is. The history of 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 417 

Christianity in the world is its best interpreter ; it re- 
veals a series of changes so distinct as to be easily trace- 
able in the character of individuals and of nations ; it 
represents the evolution of doctrine in the higher life of 
renewed men, and it is ever exhibiting all those remedial 
influences which faith in Jesus Christ enables man every- 
where to appropriate. 

As this subject is too extensive to be fully discussed 
within the space at our disposal, we must restrict our- 
selves to a brief review of those results which depend 
on doctrines chiefly related to the person of Christ, and 
which are manifested in individual, social, and national 
life. 

1. The doctrines to which reference has been made 
create a new motive to action and sustain an ennobling 
aim. Love and holiness are their natural fruits. In the 
multifarious religions of the world, this motive to action 
and this aim were absent. There was an abiding and 
ever deeply-felt want, which they utterly failed to remove 
or lessen. The sublime moral maxims of oriental na- 
tions — the early learning of Egypt — the philosophic and 
aesthetic culture of Greece — and the jurisprudence of 
Rome, rising from the midst of an all-embracing idola- 
try — never produced any results approaching those which 
the preaching of the gospel has diffused through every 
generation. For at least six thousand years, the world 
has done its best to repress evil and lessen sorrow, but 
has failed. Untaught by experience, the world continues 
its vain struggle. Philosophy has long striven to solve 
the problem of human life, and has failed. Poetry has 



418 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

long- sung its most ennobling strains, and has failed. 
Political wisdom has run its course of secular expedients, 
and has failed. Unaided humanity has had no spirit with 
power to rise above its own dark and troubled waters, 
and evolve from its chaos light, beauty, and stability. 
But in the doctrines of the cross, in the gospel revealing 
the love of God in Christ Jesus, there is the supernatural 
introduction of a new motive power — there is that which 
is changing the intellectual and moral aspects of the 
whole world. Although heathen philosophers under- 
stood not the gospel, the olden prophets proclaimed its 
power ; although earliest poets could assign it no place 
in their strains, it gave a tenderer thrill to David's lyre, 
and with it Solomon enriched his song ; although to the 
Greek it was foolishness, and to the Jew a stumbling- 
block, it became mighty to the pulling down of the 
strongholds of Satan ; and although Saul of Tarsus con- 
strained men to attempt to swear it down, it subdued his 
own heart, and led him, in the face alike of friend and 
foe, henceforth with unfaltering- tongue to proclaim his 
one great resolve : " God forbid that I should glory, save 
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." 

The doctrines of the cross, as dependent not on a 
system but on a person, Jesus Christ, gave the motive 
power that was needed by the world to connect, through 
grace, its knowledge of the right with the doing of it. 
In the wondrous truths of the incarnation of the Son of 
God, of his death, of his resurrection, and of his ascen- 
sion, is much of the vitalizing power which, by the Holy 
Spirit, is reanimating a perishing world, and enriching 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 4*9 

it with moral loveliness. These truths represent preemi- 
nently the love and the wisdom of God as originating 
that which, in the gift of the Son, was absolutely super- 
natural. " For God so loved the world, that he gave his 
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him 
should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 
3:16. "And we have seen, and do testify, that the 
Father hath sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world." 
1 John 4 : 14. This giving of the Son — this " God sent 
his Son" — can, by no conceivable process of thought, be 
referred to any law. Its secrets are in the divine coun- 
sels. With what singular exactness the apostles' delin- 
eation of the life and character of Jesus corresponds 
with the simple yet sublime announcement of the Evan- 
gelist ! " God sent not his Son into the world to con- 
demn the world; but that the world through him might 
be saved." John 3:17. " Let this mind be in you, which 
was also in Christ Jesus : who, being in the form of God, 
thought it not robbery to be equal with God ; but made 
himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of 
a servant, and was made in the likeness of men ; and be- 
ing found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and 
became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. 
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given 
him a name which is above every name: that at the 
name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth ; 
and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 
is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Phil. 2 : 5-1 1. 
2. These and similar descriptions separate the Bible 



42 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

from all other books, and Christ Jesus from all other 
persons. In the announcement of his advent, and in 
the records of his life, there is a history which rises 
above all histories. Christ can no more be classified 
with mankind, than his miracles can be reduced to ordi- 
nary events. His whole life attests the truth that he is 
from above, and that he came to save the lost. Chris- 
tianity is, in this view, "an historically superhuman move- 
ment in the world, that is visibly entered into it, and 
organized to be an institution in the person of Jesus 
Christ. He is the central figure ; he is the unfailing 
power ; and, with him, the entire fabric either stands or 
falls."* Christ was himself a revelation of God. " He 
was the brightness of His glory, and the express image 
of His person ;" he was " God manifest in the flesh." 
Humble as he was among men, he willed to be a king, 
and his ministerial work was one continued proclamation 
of his absolute and unrivalled sway ; and when that min- 
istry on earth had terminated, he encouraged his disci- 
ples by the declaration, " All power is given unto me in 
heaven and in earth," and by the thrilling promise, " Lo, 
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." 
As we study his character and his claims, we are con- 
strained to acknowledge the truth of Isaiah's prophecy : 
" And his name shall be called Wonderful," Isaiah 9:6; 
and " we discover, as did the first Christians, beneath 
and beyond all that meets the eye of sense and the eye 
of conscience, the eternal Person of our Lord himself. 
It is not the miracles, but the Maker; not the character, 

* See Bushnell's "Nature and the Supernatural," chapter 10. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 421 

but the living subject ; not the teaching, but the Master ; 
not even the death or the resurrection, but He who died 
and rose again ; upon whom Christian thought, Christian 
love, Christian resolution, ultimately rest."* To him 
alone believers on earth, like the ransomed in glory, 
turn as " all their salvation and all their desire." 

The person of the Lord Jesus is the very foundation 
of Christianity. He is its source and its support. He is 
its embodiment. As well take the sun from our system, 
as Christ from Christianity. Philosophy can exist apart 
from the philosopher, science from the scientist, art from 
the artist; but not so Christianity. Platonism may re- 
main though Plato may be himself forgotten, astronomy 
may remain though Newton or Laplace may not once 
reappear in the student's memory, and so of all human 
systems ; but Christianity without Christ evanishes as 
intellectual vapor,f and becomes alike powerless and un- 
profitable. This lowly Jesus has become the great centre 
of thought in the civilized world. Men cannot rest in 
his teaching alone, or his doctrines ; they see in them all 
Himself, and everywhere they are now in the profound- 
est sense acknowledging his intellectual and moral pre- 
eminence. Religious controversies have removed from 
their old positions, and they are concentrating their 
forces around the person of Jesus. The highest scholar- 
ship, the most cultivated taste, and the profoundest phi- 
losophy, have united their resources in analyzing his 
character and in portraying his life. 

* LiJdon's Bampton Lectures on " Our Lord's Divinity," p. 146. 
t Ibid., p. 127. 

3G 



422 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Intellectually and emotionally, is the prophetic decla- 
ration being fulfilled : " And I, if I be lifted up from the 
earth, will draw all men unto me." Thought and feeling 
from opposite poles are drawn to him, whether in knowl- 
edge, in faith, in love, in adoration, or in hate and fear. 
Among learned men, he is in the midst now as when in 
the temple he "was sitting in the midst of the doctors 
asking them questions," and taxing their learning and 
their wisdom. Skepticism and unbelief are accustomed 
to examine his claims, and ever as they strive to escape 
they turn to look on him, as Peter met his glance when 
in cowardice he swore he knew not the man. 

3. Not only are the fundamental conditions and the 
essential truths of Christianity miraculous in their origin, 
but they are supernatural in the results which they pro- 
duce. Its ideas of God, its clear delineations of heaven, 
its demands of holiness, of love, of patience, of self- 
denying toil, not for the indigent only, but for enemies, 
its commands to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and its 
fulness of consolation through the Holy Spirit the Com- 
forter, are blessings which are inseparable from true 
Christianity, but which are discoverable in no other reli- 
gious system. Truly, Christendom is not the creation of 
mere human thought and will. Guizot has informed us 
that in studying for the annotation of Gibbon, he became 
impressed " not only with the moral and social grandeur 
of Christianity, but with the difficulty of explaining it by 
purely human forces and causes." 

a. The fruits of Christianity in individual character 
are apparent. Union to Christ by faith is the condition 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 423 

of enjoyments which never cease, it is the source of that 
" peace of God which passeth all understanding," and inten- 
sifies that love through which believers become more than 
conquerors in their constant struggle with spiritual foes. 
Christianity, originated in love, is manifested in every 
man by himself, and by him in the world. The perfec- 
tion of the individual is its first aim ; and the second, the 
right use of that perfection in the world for its improve- 
ment and happiness. It takes man as he is, sunken and 
debased, or intellectually equipped and socially refined, 
and, creating in him the consciousness of sin, stimulating 
his sense of responsibility to the all-seeing and just Ruler, 
and leading him to feel, in the solitude of guilt, as if none 
existed save himself and his God, it directs him to that 
blessed Redeemer who hath said to the guiltiest and the 
vilest, " Come unto me, all ye that labor, and I will give 
you rest." Thus may those whose life has been most 
enslaved to sin become " heirs of God," and exclaim, 
" Behold what manner of love the Father hath be- 
stowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God." 
They are "new creatures," and strive to meet through 
grace all the demands of their higher sphere. The 
perfection which is to be reached is special ; it is not 
exactly that of an unfallen being, but, resting on a dis- 
tinct foundation, and having new characteristics, it is 
specified as "perfection in Christ Jesus." The affections 
purified, the understanding enlightened, the will submis- 
sive, the conscience made sensitive and strengthened, 
the imagination regulated, the love abounding "yet more 
and more in knowledge and in all judgment," are univer- 



424 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

sal results in Christian life. Every man is summoned to 
know, to act, and to be for himself alone as accountable 
to God. He is encouraged to look " into the perfect law 
of liberty" that he may learn — to learn that he may be a 
"doer of the work," and to do that he may be "blessed 
in the deed." What he knows, he is to apply; what he 
receives, he is to distribute ; what intellectual, moral, 
and spiritual influences benefit his own life, he is freely 
to communicate to others, for the common good. Thus 
does Christianity blend the doctrinal and the practical, 
theology and religion, the sublimest truths with the com- 
monest duties of daily life. 

b. In social, as well as in individual life, the assimila- 
tive influences of Christianity are distinctly visible. The 
power which, in the breast of every believer, subdues and 
controls his warring passions, no less effectively com- 
mands and regulates the surging movements of society. 
Without demanding any change in the external arrange- 
ments of society, it has infused a new spirit, broken down 
the middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, and 
revolutionized the old estimate of distinctions between 
high and low, learned and unlearned. It has rebuked 
selfishness in every form ; and care for the poor, long 
regarded as no part of society at all,* but only as materi- 
als to be wasted in war or in the drudgery of home servi- 
ces, it has not only inculcated by new arguments, but 
sustained by new motives. 

At the time of Christ's appearing, a kindly regard to 
the poor had perished amid even the stirring injunctions 

* See Bushnell's "Nature and the Supernatural," p. 241. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 425 

of Moses, the psalmist, and the prophets. Selfishness 
was supreme. The ordinary duties of common philan- 
thropy were but feebly if at all discharged. Mutual love, 
in its noblest sense, had ceased to be recognized by the 
Jews as a principle of action. Because distasteful and 
unpopular, the topic found no place in the disquisitions 
of the moralists or the religious expositors of that degen- 
erate age. The Sadducees had no motive by which to 
stimulate or sustain self-denial, and the Pharisees, teach- 
ing, with untroubled conscience, ungrateful children to 
evade the fifth commandment, and defraud their parents 
of that filial aid which the law of God and the instincts 
of their own nature taught them to render freely, either 
shunned or disowned the subject. In the midst of this 
heartless laxity of moral principle Jesus appeared, and, 
while by his life he established principles which com- 
pletely revolutionized the ethics of the world, he spoke 
to the heart and conscience of man with a spirituality 
and power never before approached by prophet, or priest, 
or psalmist. 

In his ministry, human slavery lost the foundation 
which tradition and custom had given it, and its last 
argument perished in the overwhelming fulness of that 
gospel which was henceforth to be preached to all na- 
tions. Woman also was assigned her rightful place ; but 
although eighteen centuries have passed since Christian- 
ity restored and honored woman's claims, her sunken 
condition in the midst of Eastern civilization is still as 
signal as it is in those dark places which savage ferocity 
wantonly stains with human blood. 

30* 



426 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

Not only has Christianity shielded the poor, and up- 
lifted woman, but it has diffused those genializing influ- 
ences which bless the outcast, the maimed, the diseased, 
and the infirm. It pleads for them, and shelters them in 
the asylum, the almshouse, and the hospital. On objects 
or themes like these the eloquence of heathenism never 
spent its strength. In Christianity alone can we find a 
higher eloquence plying its power on behalf of the suffer- 
ing poor than ever thrilled the councils and the courts of 
ancient heathenism. In short, in no part of the world 
has there ever been raised any social structure so beau- 
tiful in aspect, so lovely in proportion, so truly generous 
in spirit, and so effective in methods, as that which Chris- 
tianity creates and adorns. 

c. Those forces which beneficially operate in society, 
permeate with no less effect communities and empires. 
As the individual is the type of society, so society repre- 
sents national character. As society retains its external 
aspects, even when animated by the spirit of Christian- 
ity, so nationalities may be expected still to retain their 
distinctive characteristics, when they are all one in spirit. 
The idea of a world-wide dominion does not require the 
absorption of all nationalities into one vast empire, but it 
represents them associated as are members of the same 
family, who yet differ from one another. Not the king- 
dom of this world, but its " kingdoms," are to become the 
kingdoms of our Lord. 

This oneness of many kingdoms, with widely differ- 
ing forms, is dependent on the oneness of principle which 
Jesus Christ himself embodies. Love and holiness are 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 427 

its characteristics. Love is its compacting power, and 
holiness its universal expression. The mind which was 
in Christ is to be in the Christian. The world is to be- 
come of " one mind in the Lord." To this universality 
of empire the Scriptures direct us. The unity of God 
and the unity of the human race, as taught in Scripture, 
presuppose the ultimate unity of the kingdoms of the 
world. Diversity of races and of nationalities does not 
necessitate the abandonment of the idea that Jesus shall 
be acknowledged " Lord of all." Christianity does not 
obliterate, in the individual, mental characteristics, or pro- 
duce a monotonous uniformity. After conversion, each 
continues himself as before it. Though modified, consti- 
tutional qualities abide. The prophets and the apostles 
were one in spirit, though easily distinguishable in their 
representation of that spirit. The genius of Isaiah, the 
pathos of Jeremiah, the statesmanship of Daniel, the phil- 
osophic thoughtfulness of St. John, and the reasoning 
power of the apostle Paul, not only retained their lustre 
undiminished, but had their intensity increased by faith 
in the truth as it is in Jesus. Thus also may nations be so 
diversified as to be apparently antagonistic, while in real- 
ity they shall be of one mind in Christ. In this idea of a 
universal sway over the human mind by one Lord, there 
is surpassing grandeur. That the idea of a universal 
kingdom had a place in Babylonian, if not indeed long 
before in Egyptian history is certain. Nebuchadnez- 
zar's dream, at least, contemplated a kingdom that shall 
" not be left to other people, but that shall break in pieces 
and consume all those kingdoms, and that shall stand for 



428 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ever and ever." Cyrus, Alexander, and Caesar attempted 
to realize this idea, but they utterly failed.* The one true 
idea was couched in the first promise to our first parents, 
and it had continuous and consistent development in the 
Scriptures until the close of the Old Testament ; but the 
Jews mistaking the import of revelation, looked for a 
material organization, and they missed the truth. 

As an idea, it is surpassed in grandeur only by the 
history of the means through which it is to be realized. 
Great conquerors sought to influence nations through 
their princes ; ' they treated only with the mighty. But 
Jesus began with the lowest ; he went to the basement of 
society to uplift and permeate its whole mass ; he was 
born among the poor, his lot was in their midst ; he was 
identified with them, and made them the special objects 
of his ministry. To the disciples of John, who put the 
question to him whether he was the Christ, he answered, 
as evidence of his mission, "And the poor have the gos- 
pel preached to them ;" and now only is the world awa- 
kening to a just conception of the marvellous sublimity 
of the blending benevolence, wisdom, and power which 
appear in the very commencement of the Saviour's work.f 

The moral magnificence of his undertaking is all the 
more impressive when we remember that this kingdom 
has to be established by the diffusion of principles which 
are ever intensely distasteful to human nature. Not only 
did Judaism and heathenism dislike the demand for in- 
most holiness as the basis of external consistency, but 

* See Luthardt's " Fundamental Truths of Christianity," pp. 227-230. 
t See Bushnell's "Nature and the Supernatural," chapter 10. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 



429 



they regarded with inveterate repugnance the very thought 
of a universal religion which should subdue the whole 
world and extend throughout succeeding generations. 

How, therefore, could Christianity be the natural 
outcome of powers which sought its instant destruction 
through the crucifixion of the Saviour, and which have 
for the last eighteen centuries relentlessly resisted its 
extension ? 

The inference that Christianity is a mere historical 
result, evolved by slow changes from ancient religions, 
though plausible, is really futile. That there was a prep- 
aration in mental conditions for the Son of Man's advent, 
as there had been in. material conditions for our first 
parents, that there were "unconscious prophecies of hea- 
thenism"* pointing to Jesus as the "Desire of all na- 
tions," few will be disposed to deny ; but that conclusion 
is widely different from the notion that Christianity is 
the mere natural growth of the old religions of Paganism, 
as man is, in the belief of some, the lineal descendant of 
the monkey tribe. Voltaire and his school revelled — and 
blundered egregiously as they revelled — in their reason- 
ing, t at Christianity was the puny offspring of Eastern 
religions. We do not require to doubt or deny that in 
false religious systems there may readily be found some 
truths which have their counterpart in Christianity ; but 
Christianity is so far in advance of them all, that no one 
can really trace its outcome from Paganism ; it has also 
diffused practices which have no counterpart in any other 
system, and for whose existence there is no satisfactory 
* See Trench's " Hulsean Lectures," 1846. Introductory Lecture. 



43 o BLENDING LIGHTS. 

explanation whatever, apart from the Bible. It has no 
originality, if it is regarded merely as an illustration of 
moral truths embodied in ancient philosophy, or if it is 
held to be no more than the last utterance of some dog- 
matic traditions which have in varying forms existed in 
all religions.* Students have spoken too hastily. The 
" Science of Religion " has not yet assumed any definite 
outline. Max Miiller admits this.f We can afford to 
wait, and also to welcome any other discoveries that may 
be made. The bitter inferences of Voltaire have been 
rejected even by those scholars who are indifferent to 
the Bible, and we can look with calm interest to the 
growth of a science of religion, promoted by the recent 
discovery of authentic documents of the most influential 
religions in the ancient world. The Bible has nothing 
to fear from the Canonical Books of Buddhism, the Zend- 
Avesta of Zoroaster, and the Hymns of Rigveda, although 
revealing what religions were existing before that old 
mythology which was a ruin even in Homer's time.lj: 
Tested by their practical results they all fail ; they can- 
not be compared with Christianity in its love, in its holi- 
ness, in its missionary spirit. While these religions are 
limited to Asia, the gospel has its sanctuaries in all 
lands, and its glorious aim is, through the grace of God 
and by his Holy Spirit, to reach every heart and home in 
the world. 

d. In the face of all this, we are met by the repeated 
assertion that Christianity has failed, that it is effete, and 

* See De Pressense's "Religions before Christ," concluding chapter. 
t Max Miiller's "Chips from a German Workshop," p. 378. % Ibid. 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 431 

must be abandoned. But to this it may be answered, Is 
it true ? Have ever sunken tribes been found which it 
has failed to uplift and enrich ? Has ever nation been 
found which has been ruined by the adoption of its prin- 
ciples ? Is not the continuous history of Christianity the 
refutation of such assertions ? 

The triumphs of the gospel in Asia, Europe, and 
Africa, during the earlier centuries, have arrested the 
thought of even the most indifferent, and have taxed the 
philosophy of the skeptic to account for their complete- 
ness. 

In comparatively recent times, the most ferocious and 
debased cannibal tribes have been subdued by the influ- 
ence of the gospel — the most sunken tribes in the world — 
men of all races, of all grades in society, and of all stages 
in culture, have rejoiced in the blessing of which, through 
faith in Jesus Christ, they have become partakers. 

It were easy to adduce ample testimony to the power 
of the gospel in rooting out the most debasing social 
practices and in overturning long-established systems of 
idolatry. The records of missionary enterprise vindicate 
the claim of the gospel to be the one mighty power which 
is destined to revolutionize and exalt the world ; but we 
can do little more than refer the reader to some of them. 
The South-Sea Islanders, for instance, physically a noble 
race, and favored with nature's richest products, were 
idolaters, destitute of principle, ferocious in war, murder- 
ers of their offspring, and stained with the blood of hu- 
man sacrifices, but have been so changed as to present, 
in some instances, the comeliness, the spirit, and grace of 



432 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

civilized communities. And the Fuegians, small in stat- 
ure, filthy, and almost hopelessly debased, have been in 
part reclaimed and uplifted. Dr. Livingstone, whose 
impartiality all acknowledge, gives it as his conclusion, 
after carefully noting the effects of Christianity on many 
hundreds of the Griquas and Bechuanas, and comparing 
them not with what appears in Britain, but with practices 
in neighboring tribes, that if the whole subject were 
examined in the severest and most scientific way, the 
changes effected by the missionaries would be reckoned 
unquestionably very great. No tribe has ever yet been 
found so sunken as to be beyond the power of Divine 
truth, when presented in the gospel message. In every 
part of the habitable globe where the voice of the mis- 
sionary has been heard, most notable changes have been 
effected, and the sufficiency of Divine grace has been most 
distinctly manifested. The boasted systems of the East 
have proved barren of similar results. There is in them 
no missionary spirit, because there is, and there can be, 
no love as a motive force. Mohammedanism, Buddhism, 
and other systems, are now circumscribed, apathetic, and 
monotonous ; they seek no outlet, they are destitute of 
enthusiasm, and are, therefore, without missionaries to 
the most distant parts of the earth. 

CONCLUSION. 

The field which lay before us at the outset of these 
lectures has been traversed, and if we have found in our 
survey more to encourage than to perplex the Bible stu- 
dent, our object has been gained. Studies which have been 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 433 

prosecuted in the various departments of Natural Science, 
Archaeology, and History, sometimes with the avowed 
object of confuting the Bible, as well as many of those 
incidental inferences which have been the result of purely 
scientific inquiry, have so often become the sources not 
only of defence, but of singularly attractive and instruc- 
tive expositions of Scripture passages which before were 
somewhat obscure, that we may well rejoice in the assu- 
rance that whatever difficulties remain shall disappear in 
the fuller light of extending knowledge, and that fail or 
change what may, the "Word of the Lord endureth for 
ever." 



37 



NOTE BY THE AUTHOR. 



A new attitude of hostility to the Bible has been 
assumed by influential scientists in Britain, as represent- 
ed by Professor Tyndall. In his inaugural address in 
Belfast, as President of the British Association, he boldly 
advocated the Evolution Theory in its most materialistic 
form, and in the discussion which the address evoked in 
various parts of the country, its leading principles were 
as boldly controverted. They are briefly noticed in this 
edition, chapter 15. Professor Tyndall has renewed 
the discussion in a paper which he has just published in 
the Fortnightly Review, and as it could not be noticed 
in its proper place in this edition, owing to its having 
nearly passed through the press, the author takes the 
opportunity of referring to it here. 

His paper is not written in the spirit in which stu- 
dents dealing with questions involving issues so moment- 
ous should strive to emulate or exemplify. Many, who 
have read nearly all that he has written with a delight 
which has scarcely been lessened by their inability to 
accept every one of his conclusions, or to yield to all his 
assertions, will regret to find him, while bitterly denoun- 
cing theologians, losing the calmness of the philosopher 



43 6 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

in the impatience of the partisan and the dogmatist. He 
should with equanimity bear to be told that his argument 
in support of the evolution theory is incomplete — that 
important links are wanting; that while the sciences 
have multiplied their facts and illustrated their laws 
within well-defined spheres, they have supplied no means 
of connecting these separate spheres. Evolutionists 
themselves are constrained to admit that the chasms are 
yet unbridged, and therefore impassable, between an 
atom and life — between matter without life and matter 
with it, and between animal life and human conscious- 
ness, with its associated moral distinctions, philosophic 
power, and religious aspirations. 

" It is absolutely and for ever inconceivable," says 
Du Bois Reymond, "that a number of carbon, hydrogen, 
nitrogen, and oxygen atoms should be otherwise than 
indifferent as to their own position and motion, past, 
present, or future. It is utterly inconceivable how con- 
sciousness should result from their joint action." On 
this point Professor Tyndall is compelled to make 
concessions both to Du Bois Reymond and Mr. Marti- 
neau which completely invalidate his reasoning. He 
frankly confesses that " this is the rock on which Mate- 
rialism must inevitably split, whenever it pretends to be 
a complete philosophy of the human mind." And yet 
with this admission in his hand, he severely rebukes 
those who reject his theory on account of its sheer defec- 
tiveness. 

In the Fortnightly Review he puts forth his strength 
in combining several illustrations for the purpose of 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 437 

proving that in matter there is a "formative power" 
which is sufficient to educe and account for all the modi- 
fications of terrestrial life. With characteristic grace 
and eloquence he describes the changes through which 
water passes as it disappears in vapor, and, frozen, falls 
in " stars of snow ;" the rush of vital action through the 
slender branches of a fern from Ceylon "until the un- 
sightly twigs broke forth into a mass of fronds ;" the 
changes through which the acorn passes from the time 
of its bursting in a genial soil, until, as a majestic oak, it 
spreads its branches in the sun ; and he afterwards briefly 
indicates what physiologists tell us of the origin and 
growth of the human body. He assumes that the "for- 
mative power" which came into play in the snowflake, 
and which existed in the water and the vapor, though not 
manifested by either, is the same power which is at work 
in the fern, the oak, and the human body. By this 
" formative power " are built all life structures ; and thus 
he sees in matter "the potency of all terrestrial life." 
He believes this, and therefore he not only asserts his 
dogma, but claims for it universal acceptance. If his 
assumptions were correct, the evidence of an all-embra- 
cing evolution should be met everywhere. But it is not 
so. Continuousness is nowhere visible, and there is not 
the slightest warrant for supposing that it is the same 
formative power which builds the crystal, the fern, the 
oak, and the human body. There is something distinc- 
tive in each. There is that in the crystal which sepa- 
rates it from the fern, and that in the oak which separates 

it from the human body. They never even approximate- 

37* 



438 BLENDING LIGHTS. 

ly coalesce. Evolution is for ever represented separately 
in the crystal, the snowflake, the oak, and the human 
body. Neither Professor Tyndall nor any other evo- 
lutionist has succeeded in showing an all-pervading "for- 
mative power" controlling inorganic and living matter. 
And even if it be granted that there slumber in atoms 
different formative powers, which come into play suc- 
cessively in congenial circumstances, so as to produce 
different structures, mineral, vegetable, and animal, there 
is not the slightest evidence of continuousness or trans- 
mutation. The biologist has failed to connect spontane- 
ous generation with inorganic matter ; the physiologist 
has failed to connect with the processes in the body the 
facts of consciousness ; and throughout the geologic vol- 
ume, vast in its lapse of ages and in its extent of space, 
not a single vestige has yet been found of those trans- 
mutations of structural form which are indispensable in 
proof of evolution. The geologic volume is decidedly 
unfavorable to the evolutionists. They are baffled by it 
at the very outset. In the earliest organism yet known, 
the Eoozoon, they have not only found no support to 
their view, but, as Principal Dawson states in his recent 
very interesting and instructive work, "The Dawn of 
Life," the " eoozoon itself bears some negative though 
damaging testimony against evolution." And in reply to 
those who assert that such an organism as eoozoon may 
include potentially all the structures and functions of the 
higher animals, and that it is possible that we might be 
able to infer or calculate all these with as much certainty 
as we can calculate an eclipse or any other physical phe- 



BLENDING LIGHTS. 439 

nomenon," he says that "there is not only no foundation 
in fact for their assertions, but it is, from our present 
standpoint, not conceivable that they can ever be real- 
ized." After referring to the limited data which they 
use, as not warranting their deductions, Principal Daw- 
son justly adds, " Those who think to build a philosophy 
and even a religion on such data are mere dreamers, and 
have no scientific basis for their dogmas." 

In short, the advocates of an evolution whose origin 
is in atoms, have utterly failed to give any plausible ac- 
count of the facts of modern civilization, of the philoso- 
phy of human history, and of the doctrines and precepts 
of Christianity. The present aspects of the controversy 
recall Kirchow's conclusion : " Of all kinds of dogma- 
tism, the materialistic is the most dangerous, because it 
denies its own dogmatism, and appears in the garb of 
science ; because it professes to rest in fact, when it is 
but speculation ; and because it attempts to annex terri- 
tories to the domain of natural science before they have 
been fairly conquered." 

This discussion, so far as it has yet gone, has done 
good in showing the weakness of the argument in sup- 
port of materialism, and the weakness also of Christian 
apologists in making unnecessary and mischievous con- 
cessions, the consequences of which they do not foresee. 

Free Middle Manse, Paisley, 
November 5, 1875. 



