There are some men who find difficulty in accepting the Bible as the word of God. To them the Scriptures are simply the writings of good men. They do not speak to them with the authority of God, and consequently they are not decisive in matters of faith and practise. They do not come to them as the oracles of God. Much has been written upon the authenticity of the Scriptures, and to show their reliability. And the attempt to help others to find a sure foundation for their faith in a divine revelation is certainly praiseworthy. But in doing this we should exercise the greatest care that we do not weaken the foundation upon which all true believers have built, and at the same time fail to place the doubter upon safe ground. Some of the testimony borne, professedly in favor of the inspiration and value of the Bible by those who, in this time of advanced thought, pass for defenders of the sacred volume, is really subversive of a genuine faith in the divine authority of the Scriptures. An example of this kind of testimony has recently come to our attention, and we refer to it here because it has been quoted approvingly in a publication which is sent out to our own people, and which they are asked to circulate. Referring to the recently discovered inscriptions upon the monuments and tablets left behind by some of the ancient nations, in which are recorded traditions of events similar to those described in the Old Testament, the author of “The Monuments and the Old Testament” says:— Their common elements point to a time when the human race occupied a common home and held a common faith. The early races of men, wherever they wandered, took with them these primeval traditions, and with the varying latitudes and climes their habits and modes of life have carried these, and present them to us to-day in their different dresses. One ancient religion did not borrow these universal traditions from another, but each possessed primitively these traditions in their original form. A careful examination of all these traditions shows that the Genesis record is the purest, the least colored [with] extravagances, and the nearest to what we must conceive to have been the original form of these traditions [Italics ours]. This testimony is printed in order to help infidels and skeptics to believe in the divine authorship of the Bible. But what does the learned author really say? After a painstaking study of all the traditions of the ancient nations dealing with the subject of the creation, he assures us that in the record in Genesis we doubtless have an account which is better than any of the others, and that it is “the nearest to what we must conceive to have been the original form of these traditions.” Put into another form, this means that, with our present knowledge of science, the scholars of to-day could write a more accurate account of the creation than is given in Genesis, and that the record in Genesis does not transmit to us even the original form of the tradition concerning this event, but, nevertheless, it is doubtless the most accurate of any of the ancient traditions. Any infidel or skeptic could assent to such testimony as this, and still remain an infidel or a skeptic. Instead of establishing to any degree the inspiration and authority of the book of Genesis, it frankly declares that the account of creation there given is not even an accurate record of the original tradition of cosmogony. In other words, the writer of the book of Genesis did not rise far enough above the current traditions of his time to preserve for us even a reliable statement of the original tradition concerning creation. And yet this sort of testimony is quoted as showing how “voices from the ancient ruins” bear witness in favor of the Bible. In contrast with such infidelity as this it is refreshing to read the following words from the spirit of prophecy:— God has permitted a flood of light to be poured upon the world, in both science and art; but when professedly scientific men treat upon these subjects from a merely human point of view, they will assuredly come to wrong conclusions. . . . The Bible is not to be tested by men’s ideas of science. Human knowledge is an unreliable guide. . . . Moses wrote under the guidance of the Spirit of God; and a correct theory of geology will never claim discoveries which can not be reconciled with his statements.
We hope none of our readers will permit6the foundation of their faith in the Scriptures to be undermined by a really infidel writer, even though he may be quoted in an anti-infidel publication. And we can but think that the less authority is given to such testimony, the better it will be even for the infidel and the skeptic.