Scriptural Questions, Part II [pp. 316-326]

316.~CRiPTURAL ~UES7YO2V& [Dec.,
SCRIPTURAL QUESTIONS.
No. II.
THE OBJECTION FROM SCIENCE IN GENERAL AGAINST REVELATION
-CHRONOLOGY OF THE ADAMIC SPECIES.
OBJECTION FROM SCIENCE IN GENERAL.
THE illogical inference drawn by certain scientists from facts
and probabilities of geology, and set up as an argument against
the divine inspiration of Genesis, may be stated in a more general form as an objection from natural science in all its extension
against the entire system of Scriptural and Chnstian theology.
Geology proclaims immensely long periods before the beginning of human history. Genesis directs our attention almost
from the outset to the history of Adam and his offspring. Its
history becomes constantly more narrow and particular, until it
runs into a narrow bed of narrative whose stream is continued
through the historical books of the Old Testament. The stream
disappears under ground at a distance of about six centuries
from the epoch of David, reappearing again in the brief memoirs of the historical books of the New Testament, after which
it ceases entirely.
Secular science and history, on the contrary, are busied with
prehistoric researches, and investigations of the entire realm of
earth and man, considered as a kingdom appertaining to the
universal world of nature. Moreover, science, in its astronomical branch, rises to the investigation and contemplation of the
vast stellar unlverse. Thus science opens up an extent of time
and space as the when and the where of existing nature and natural operations, in comparison with which the earth and the period
of duration covered by historical records dwindle to a point and
a moment.
Just here and at this point of view arises the opposition, not
of science, but of certain minds bewildered by speculations to
which science has given occasion abusively, to the theological
doctrine concerning nature, this world, and man, with their relations and their first and final causes.
In these minds the speculation which takes a wrong direction
from science creates a pseudo-science that co-exists with the real
science which they possess, but is not identical with it and is
not in harmony with any of its certain truths or probable theo