B 00 - CHAPTER II The Constitution Of Man
CHAPTER II THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN. In reading Scripture it may be held by us as a safe general rule, that beyond the sphere which limits the special objects for which Scripture, as a revelation from God, was given to men, we are not to expect infallible instruction, nor to be surprised or disturbed should we find statements which we are compelled to regard as not in exact accordance with a more advanced state of knowledge than that attained by the society in the midst of which the sacred writers moved and for which they wrote. In all matters pertaining to religion, whether dogmatical statements of divine truth or practical instruction respecting worship and moral conduct, or the record of the fates and progress of the Church of God on earth, we may expect to find the most perfect accuracy, for these are points on which it is the professed design of the Bible to give infallible direction. But on points on which the sacred writers touch only incidentally, or to which they refer only as casually lying in their way as they pass on to their peculiar theme, we have no reason to expect that equal care will be shown to avoid mistaken or partial statements.
It was no part of the design of the sacred writers to give the world instruction on these points, and we should not deal with them as if this formed part of their design. Of this sort are their references in Scripture to natural phenomena or questions of philosophic speculation. To set the world right on such points formed no part of the direct design of Holy Scripture. Hence the writers of Scripture spoke on such points as the people around them spoke, often with very imperfect knowledge, sometimes even erroneously. This should not disturb us, and we should as little labour to force the statements of Scripture into accordance with the doctrines of the advanced science of modern times, as we should allow ourselves to be troubled by the invidious zeal of the enemy of revelation in collecting and pointing out the deficiencies, in a scientific point of view, of the sacred writers. These state ments have an archseological interest as indicating the amount and kind of knowledge possessed by the ancient Hebrews regarding natural phenomena and subjects of scientific specula tion; and it is interesting to observe how even here the Bible maintains its superiority over all works of contemporary author ship, the cosmology and natural science of the Bible being almost as far superior to what we find in the traditions of other nations as it falls below the discoveries of modern times.
Even here we may directly recognise an indication of the superintending hand of God in the composition of this book; for it is certainly very remarkable that the sacred writers whilst, on the one hand, not going beyond the intelligence of the men of their own day by anticipating the scientific dis coveries of a later age, should invariably express themselves in a way which commits them to none of those gross physio logical and cosmological errors and absurdities with which heathen writers, when they touch on such points, abound. To keep men from making gross blunders on subjects of which they are ignorant, as much demands the agency of a supernatural power as to guide them to state truth in words they were unable to understand. And in a series of writings, the design of which is to teach religious truth, not to antici pate scientific discovery, this is all we have any right to expect, even though the whole series and every word of it be given by inspiration of God.
There is one department, however, of philosophic research so closely connected with the main purport of the Bible that we may expect to find the sacred writers to do more than incidentally touch upon it, and may anticipate that what they say on it will bear the test of scientific scrutiny.