be by common consent of the centuries past and the living present. Professor L. T. Townsend has said that "no great council has ever agreed what writings to accept and what to reject, and neither the early Church nor the distinguished heretics of the day ever questioned the credibility of the books which had been pronounced canonical. Luther objected to the Epistle of James, and Calvin would have cast out Revelation, while Rome inserted Church traditions as having equal weight with the apostolic writings, but no such personal prejudices invalidate the text. Pious monks saved these early copies from fire, sword, and pillage, until God saw fit to bring the manuscripts from their safe seclusion and free them from the death-grip of two dead languages, the Hebrew and Hellenistic Greek. Since then, whether men have stabbed or embraced the Book, its truths have been marching boldly on." And wherever they go the same results follow; people give up their idolatry, and worship God; discard their rude customs and habits, and enter into the spirit, power, and pursuits of Christian civilization. This end of revelation, as Canon Mozley has said, is the true test. "By the fruit of revelation we must judge, not by root, nor stalk, nor husk-surely not by smut or parasite." About three hundred millions of the race are distinguished from all others by the one mark, they have the Bible. "There are eight hundred millions who have not the Bible. The Bible readers, then, are but a small minority of the whole race, and yet this small fraction is the dominant element in the affairs of the world. If it is not correct to say that Christianity has invented the railway and the steamboat, it is true that outside of Bible lands there is not, and there never was, a country on the globe that possessed a railroad, a telegraph, a post-office, a banking system, a free government, or wise public charities. Where the Bble has not been given to the people, civil liberty has found no air to breathe. The secular value of this book has never been recognized by those who have enjoyed benefits which ever follow in its wake. Viewed from a purely economic stand-point, the Bible and the religion it teaches are the best and cheapest safe-guards of the nation; and the full payment of its unacknowledged indebtedness to the book would bankrupt the state." SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY OF THE BIBLE. The Bible was not written by professional scientists nor by renowned scholars in any field of thought. The authors of some at least of its books were uneducated men, whose only object was to make known the mind of God in things pertaining to spiritual and eternal life. It is not probable that they even once considered that their utterances might at some time be subjected to severe scientific tests as to their accuracy, far less that their authority in things concerning which they claimed inspiration would be called in question because they did not throw fuller light upon matters foreign to their purpose. Yet their writings hold good in every department of human investigation. In no particular have enemies succeeded in overthrowing them. It has not yet even come to pass that skeptics are more respected by the thinking world because they flaunt out their disbelief of the Bible. It has been remarked that the slurs which Tyndall and Huxley have cast upon the Scriptures have not increased their reputation with the scientific world. In every such fling these skeptics assume to pass judgment upon a book for whose interpretation they are wanting in fundamental qualifications. They lack spiritual sympathy with the primary intent of Holy Writ, and have no right to wrest its incidental statements from their moral bearings. Yet when they do so, they fail to crush a chapter or verse of the inspired Book. Doubting geologists have tried their hands on the book of Genesis; skeptical astronomers have tried theirs on the book of Joshua; and other unfriendly critics have done their best to break down other books; but not one is destroyed, or broken, or bruised. The Bible stands to-day in solid integrity, challenging its foes to do their worst. That worst, hitherto, has been only to rail and blaspheme. These are the methods of the impotent scoffer, and are powerless with the thinking classes. Some would have us believe that the study of science leads to skepticism, and that the Bible has ceased to be recognized as a revelation from God by those who are eminent in the scientific world. Dr. William Allen Miller, a distinguished scientist, in a discussion of this very subject, says: "The habit of scientific investigation tends naturally to develop and strengthen certain mental characteristics. Among these we may mention candor and caution, enforced by experience of the facility with which error may be mistaken for truth. The constant need of watchfulness against self-deception, and the logical training which scientific research requires, though hostile to credulity and superstition, render the mind only more alive to proofs of creative power and wisdom, and predispose it to acts of adoration and praise." This is a fair statement, and it shows how really great minds are guarded against loose expressions, which may be construed as in the interests of infidel philosophy. Misunderstanding, in some quarters, might have been avoided had men kept in view the sole province of the Book of God. "The Bible," says the late Bishop (better known as Chancellor) E. O. Haven, whose scholarly endowments placed him in the forefront among educators, "does not undertake to teach us the shape of the earth, nor its texIt does not teach mining or civil engineering, or navigation or agriculture. It does not teach the circulation of the blood, or the construction of the nervous system, or the origin or mode of transmission of the nervous force. It does not even teach orthography. It does not teach cooking, important as that is. It describes neither statute law nor common law, neither Parliament nor Congress. It teaches nothing that we can really ascertain and determine certainly without it. It is not its province to present to man the facts of material things or the laws by which material things are governed. It is not even its province to teach mental or moral science fully and systematically. All those are left for man to explore and classify and comprehend, by an exercise of his own powers." The Bible confines itself to the affairs of human redemption. All its incidental allusions to scientific facts and principles are for the purpose of inculcating great doctrines, bearing upon character, condition, and destiny. Yet some of these are wonderful in their accuracy and fullness. How often are scholarly men surprised at finding the very truth they have arrived at by scientific methods, unequivocally, and as simple matter of fact, stated in the Word of God! Thus, M. Guyot, one of the most eminent scientists of the present century, wrote and delivered a course of lectures upon Creation, and afterwards found that he had unwittingly followed the order of the account in Genesis. His interest being aroused, he set about to do what others had attempted; viz., to harmonize scientific researches with the Biblical account. The result was his famous work 66 upon The Creation." There are scientists not a few, whose study of nature and revelation has led them to the conclusion expressed by Dana in the closing chapter of his great work on geology, where, after comparing the Mosaic account of creation with that derived from the study of the rocks, he says: 'The record of the Bible is therefore profoundly philosophical in the scheme which it presents. It is both true and divine. It is a declaration of authorship, both of creation and the Bible, on the first page of the sacred volume. There can be no real conflict between the two Books of the great Author. Both are revelations made by him to man—the earlier telling of God-made harmonies, coming up from the deep past, and rising to their height when man appeared; the later teaching man's relation to his Maker, and speaking of loftier harmonies in the eternal future." Dr. Samuel Kinns, an English author, recently gave a series of lectures in the drawing-rooms of the aristocracy of England on "The Marvelous Scientific Accuracy of the Bible." The London Record states that the last of these, which took place at the Earl of Shaftesbury's, was attended by a large and very distinguished company. Dr. Kinns showed that the following order of fifteen creative events, as taught by science, corresponds with that given by Moses: Primarily, Science says that matter existed first in a highly attenuated gaseous condition, called ether, without any form, and non-luminous. Moses says: "And the Earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." 1. Science: Astronomical facts go to prove that other worlds were formed before the solar system. Moses: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." 2. Science: The condensation of ether formed luminous nebulæ, which afterwards still further condensed into suns and worlds. Moses: "And God said, Let there be light." 3. Science: On the cooling of the earth some of the gases which surrounded it combined mechanically and chemically to form air and water. Moses: "And God said, Let there be a firmament." 4. Science: On further cooling great convulsions took place, which heaved up the rocks and raised them above the universal sea, forming mountains, islands, and continents. Moses: "And God said, Let the dry land appear." 5. Science: The earliest forms of vegetable life were Cryptogams, such as the algae, lichens, fungi, and ferns, on the land, which are propagated by spores and not by seeds. (Dr. Hicks has found ferns in the Lower Silurian of Wales.) Moses: "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass." (Literal translation: Let the earth sprout forth sproutage, which might be rendered tender herbage.) 6. Science: Next succeeded the lowest class of Phænogams, or flowering plants called Gymnosperms, from having naked seeds, such as the Conifers. (Dana mentions coniferous wood being found in the Lower Devonian.) Moses: "The herb yielding seed.” 7. Science: These were followed by a higher class of Phænogams, or flowering plants, bearing a low order of fruit, found in the Middle Devonian and Carboniferous strata. Moses: "And the fruit-tree yielding fruit." (The higher order of fruit-trees appeared when "God planted a garden" later on.) ་ 8. Science: The earth until after the Carboniferous period was evidently surrounded with much vapor, and an equable climate prevailed all over its surface; afterwards these mists subsided, and then the directs rays of the sun caused the seasons. Moses: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmanent of heaven, and let them be for signs and for seasons." 9. Science: After the Carboniferous period many fresh species of marine animals appeared, and the seas swarmed with life. Moses: "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly." 10. Science: In the New Red Sandstone footprints of birds are found for the first time. Moses: "And fowl that may fly above the earth." 11. Science: In the succeeding strata of the Lias, monster saurians, such as the Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus, are found. Moses: "And God created great whales." (Should have been translated " monsters." sea 12. Science Enormous beasts, such as the Megalosaurus, Iguanodon, and Dinotherium, preceded the advent of cattle. Moses: "And God made the beast of the earth after his kind." 13. Science: Cattle, such as oxen and deer, appeared before man; some of them in the Post-Pliocene period. Moses: "And cattle after their kind." 14. Science: According to Agassiz, the principal flowers, fruit-trees, and cereals appeared only a short time previous to the human race. Moses: "The Lord God planted a garden: and out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." 15. Science: The highest and last created form of animal life was man. Moses: "And God created man in his own image." Moses: 66 God Finally, Science: As far as our present knowledge goes, no fresh species of plants or animals were created after man. ended his work which he had made." Dr. Kinns then proved that the number of changes that can be made in the order of fifteen things is more than a billion-viz., 1,307674,368,000-and, therefore, if Moses placed fifteen important creative events in their proper order without the possibility of traditional help, as most of them happened millions of years before man was created, it is a very strong proof of his inspiration, for group them as one may, and take off a further percentage for any scientific knowledge possessed by him, still the chances must be reckoned by hundreds of millions against his giving the order correctly without a |