BOOKS RECEIVED.

A. C. Armstrong and Son, New York. The Sermon Bible. Vol. I.-Genesis to Second Samuel. 1888. (pp. xx. 500. 63 x 37.); Vol. II.-First Kings to Psalms LXXVI. 1888. (pp. vi. 520. 6 x 33.)

The Baker and Taylor Co., New York. The Working Church. By Charles F. Thwing, D.D., Author of "American Colleges: their Students and Work," "The Reading of Books," and joint author of "The Family: an Historical and Social Study," etc. 1888. (pp. 154. 5 x 23.)

Clarendon Press, Oxford. Essays in Biblical Greek. By Edwin Hatch, M.A., D.D., Reader in Ecclesiastical History, Oxford, 1889. (pp. x. 293. 6 x 31.)

Funk & Wagnalls, New York. Future Probation Examined. By William De Loss Love, Pastor at South Hadley, Mass. 1888. (pp. x. 323.6 x 38.)

Wm. Ibister, London. The Self-Revelation of Jesus Christ. With an Examination of some Naturalistic Hypotheses. By John Kennedy, M.A., D.D., Honorary Professor, New College, London. 1887. (pp. xiv. 376. 67 x 31.)

The Laboratory Company, Norway Lake, Me. Living Matter: Its Cycle of Growth and Decline in Animal Organisms. By C. A. Stevens. 1888. (pp. 107. 6 x 38.) $1.00.

N. Murray, Baltimore. The Fragments of the Works of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature. Translated from the Greek Text of Bywater, with an Introduction Historical and Critical. By G. T. W. Patrick, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy in the State University of Iowa. 1889. (pp. 131. 63 x 33.)

Phillips & Hunt, New York; Cranston & Stowe, Cincinnati. Holiness as Understood by the Writers of the Bible. A Bible Study. By Joseph Agar Beet. 1889. (pp. 70. 5 x38.) 75 cents;— John the Baptist, the Forerunner of our Lord: His Life and Work. By Ross C. Houghton, D.D., Member of the Society of Biblical Archæology of London, Author of Women of the Orient," Ruth the Moabitess," etc. 1889. (pp. 372. 5 x 3.) $1.25 The Life of John Price Durbin, D.D., LL.D., with an Analysis of his Homiletical Skill and Sacred Oratory. By John A. Roche, M.D., D.D. With an Introduction by Randolph Foster, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 1889. (pp. ix. 369. 57 x 33.) $1.50;— The Physiology of the Human Soul. By J. H. Wythe, M.D., D.D., LL. D., Professor of Histology in Cooper Medical College, San Francisco. 1889. (pp. 322. 5 x 38.) $1.25-The Sabbath. What-Why-How. Day-Reasons-Mode. By M. C. Briggs, D.D., 1888. (pp. 188. 5 x 3.) 60 cents; -Commentary on The Old Testament. Vol. I.-Genesis and Exodus. By Milton S. Terry, D.D., and Fales H. Newhall, D.D. 1889. (pp. 570. 63x 37.) $2.25.

Scribner & Welford, New York. The Preachers of Scotland from the Sixth to the Nineteenth Century. Twelfth Series of the Cunningham Lectures. By William Garden Blaikie, D.D., LL.D., Professor of Apologetical and of Pastoral Theology, New College, Edinburgh. 1888. (pp. 350. 6 x 31.);―The Text of Jeremiah; or, A Critical Investigation of the Greek and Hebrew, with the Variations in the LXX. retranslated into the Original and Explained. By the Rev. George Coulson Workman, M.A., Professor of Old Testament Exegesis and Literature in Victoria University, Cobourg, Ont., Canada. With an Introductory Notice by Professor Franz Delitzsch, D.D. 1889. (pp. xliv. 398. 6 x 31.) $3.60.

THE

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA.

ARTICLE I.

THE CREATIVE LAWS AND THE SCRIPTURE REVELATION.

BY THE REV. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D., TORONTO, CANADA.

A RECENT writer complains of an eminent Christian apologist that "he examines the Bible in the light of science, instead of science in the light of the Bible." The truth is, however, that both methods are legitimate, each in its own place and under due limitations. Each may serve equally well for the confirmation of faith in the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures, and the truth of the gospel they set forth. When in Scripture we find any deliverance bearing upon asserted scientific truths, we certain ly do well to compare such alleged truths with the unerring Word, sure that, if contradiction shall be proven, science will have to revise its conclusions. Only all experience warns us that in so doing we must take heed that we distinguish the declarations of the Word from our own interpretations of that Word. Infallibility belongs to the form er, but not to the latter. But if it be legitimate. to examine science in the light of the Scriptures, it is no less so to examine Scripture in the light of science; and he who does this, does not imply that he is in doubt as to the absolute truth and authority of the Scripture.

Each apologetic method has its special use and application. The former applies especially to our dealing with

VOL. XLVI. NO. 183.

I

those theories which are often set forth, with some looseness of language, as a part of the science of the day; the latter is of special application to scientific facts and truths such as have secured the general consensus of competent judges. To examine the Scriptures in the light of these is not only not derogatory to the authority of Scripture, but is sure to help greatly in the confirmation of faith. As experience has often shown, such examination is sure to yield, from time to time, new evidence that the Author of nature is the author, in a sense unique, of that book which is the charter of the Christian's faith. The inner harmony between nature and the Word is thus ever more and more clearly evinced to be such as is inexplicable on any other supposition.

In illustration of this, it is proposed to examine the general teaching of the Scriptures in the light of six laws, according to which, by the common consensus of competent authorities, the Creator worked in the production of this present terrestrial order.

1. The first of these laws is the law of progress. It may be taken as a fact, settled by overwhelming scientific evidence, and no less clearly affirmed in Genesis, that the world was not created all at once, and that there was a certain order in which its various parts appeared. It was, without an exception, an order under a law of progress; first, that which was lower, afterward that which was higher. The illustrations are so familiar that they scarcely need to be mentioned. First, there was a time when in all the earth there was only inorganic existence. Then came life, first, in its lowest forms, apparently plant life. It is indeed true that the evidence of this is inferential rather than direct. Still, the indirect evidence is so strong as to have constrained the judgment of geologists as eminent as Professor Dana, Sir William Dawson, and others. Then followed animal life; but this, too, not all

' Professor Dana has expressed himself on the beginnings of plant life in the following terms: "No distinct remains of plants have been observed [in

at once, but in slow succession, still according to this law 395 of progress; first, the lower forms; afterward those which are higher. First, the lowest forms of Invertebrate life, the Protozoa, the Mollusca, the Articulata. Then came in the Vertebrata, still according to this law; first, the fishes; after them the amphibians, and then the reptiles and the birds; and, last of all, the mammals, ending with man.

Such has been the history so far, a history divinely administered under this unvarying law of progress. Now as we contemplate this unbroken progression which has at last brought in man, this prince among the creatures, who can stand on the earth, and weigh and measure even the stars, and by his spiritual sense apprehend the invisible, it becomes a question of intense interest, no less from a scientific than from a religious point of view,-Is this law of progress still in force; or is the progress ended, and is man, as we know him, the last and highest form of life that earth shall see?

the Archæan time]. The occurrence of graphite in the rocks, and its making 20 per cent. of some layers, is strong evidence that plants of some kind were abundant."-Manual of Geology, 3d edition, p. 157.

Sir William Dawson has used the following language on the same sub

ject:

44

Theoretically, plants should have preceded animals;. the oldest fossil certainly known to us is an animal! ...but still earlier plants whose remains are still to be discovered! For my own What if there were part, I see no reason to despair of the discovery of an Eophytic period preceding the Eozoic."

And his reason for this view he elsewhere gives, agreeing with Professor Dana as to the probable interpretation of certain facts. 'The existence of such creatures [the Laurentian Foraminifera] supposes Thus, he says: that of other organisms, probably microscopic plants, on which they could feed. No traces of these have been observed, though the great quantity of carbon in the beds probably implies the existence of larger seaweeds..... ........The immense deposits of carbon and iron in the Laurentian would seem to bespeak a profusion of plant life in the sea, or on the land, or both, second to that of no other period that succeeded, except that of the great coal formation."-Story of the Earth and Man, 8th ed., pp. 32, 25, 26.

Professor Guyot held the same view as to the antecedence of plant life to animal.-See Bibliotheca Sacra, Vol. xliii. p. 587.

The answer to this question must apparently depend upon the further question, whether there is reason to believe that in man the end of the creation has been reached. If not, then, accepting the principle of the uniformity of law, we must assume that the law of progress is still in force, and that we have to expect a form of being yet higher than the animal man, as we know him.

It must be admitted that a higher type of organized life, in certain respects, is at least conceivable. Surely we can easily imagine a created being of a higher order than man as we see him; an organization which should have a much more extended "correspondence with environment" than man has, and therefore fewer limitations; a being, e. g., who should be able to live in the heavenly spaces, who should have faculties as different from ours as the power of flying from the faculties of a mollusc. It is true indeed that this has been denied; at least it has been confidently asserted that, so far as the physical organization is concerned, the end of the "evolution" has been reached; that henceforth the progress can be only psychical and spiritual.' But who knows this? How can it be proved? Grant that, with matter as we are familiar with it, no higher organization be possible; recent speculations point to the high possibility, at least, of other forms of matter; and if so, who knows what new possibilities of organization there may be with a form of matter less gross, more plastic? Such assertions as the above are based on our ignorance, and cannot be authoritative. One might imagine an intelligent fish, in like manner arguing, in the Devonian age, against the possibility of creatures of a higher order than those he knew, and drawing the conclusion that the only progress possible was psychical, in the line of more intelligent fishes! But the end would have proved that reflective ganoid wrong! The impossibility of further progress cannot therefore be argued on the ground of inconceivability. It can only

See, for instance, Mr. John Fiske's Destiny of Man, passim.