Page images
PDF
EPUB
[blocks in formation]

It has been with us a matter of sheer necessity, while of daily regret, to delay so long our admiring notice of this book. We cannot pretend even now to do justice to its contents, so rich in learning, so exact in criticism, so sound in judgment. All that we shall attempt will be, to estimate the spirit, and in some degree to set forth the results, of Mr. Kenrick's researches into a most interesting field of inquiry, into which all thinking minds have been led from one point or other of theology or of science, though no writer has, so far as we know, at least in the annals of English literature, ventured fully and fairly to grapple with the subject till now.

Mr. Kenrick's book cannot fail to be welcomed with the purest satisfaction, by earnest minds of various orders, as meeting the scientific difficulties or the religious doubts to which all such minds have been doomed by the long prescriptive ascendancy of irrational and undiscriminating notions on the nature of the Scriptures. Many a man of science who is tacitly, if not openly, ashamed of what passes for religion, yet is not theologian enough to vindicate the true claims of the Scriptures against the pseudo-orthodox pretensions on their behalf, will rejoice to read a book in which the principles of common sense are applied, as matter of course, to the investigation of Scripture, in the freest and most candid spirit and under the guidance of ample learning. And many indeed are the diligent readers of the Scriptures, who, at once thoughtful and devotional, have felt the untenableness of the common conventional ideas on their scientific inspiration, but have been revolted still more by the harshness of sceptical attacks on those venerable writings, and by the crudity of the mythical and transcendental schemes which have variously attempted their exposition. To all such minds Mr. Kenrick's book will prove a treasure indeed. It speaks all their own spoken and unspoken doubts and difficulties, and either suggests their rational solution or admits their necessary continuance. It speaks forth, but in the clear, calm, candid language of the scholar and man of science, their own vague belief, their own halfdigested theories, their own half-matured opinions. It is just what they have thought, but could not express,-never saw expressed,perhaps hardly dared to express. It gives voice to the real belief of the earnest and sincere and thoughtful, who cannot suppress reasoning for devotion's sake, nor give up devotion at the call of sciolism. It is truly a Believer's book. In John Wesley's phrase, but appropriately to a higher order of minds than he contemplated, its pages might

An Essay on Primæval History. By John Kenrick, M. A. Fellowes. 1846.

[blocks in formation]

be successively inscribed-" For believers doubting"-" For believers hoping"-"For believers rejoicing"-" For believers comforted". "For believers assured." It is all this to those whose belief is intelligent conviction. To another class, it is, of course, the very reverse; -it is an unbelieving book, a sceptical book. If this class do not want it, or cannot understand it, let them leave it to those who can understand and will welcome it. There are many such; their number is increasing, and must still increase with the spread of education and the progress of science. And no one appreciates better than Mr. Kenrick the existence and the wants of this order of minds. He says,

"These opinions may be startling to many persons, by seeming to derogate from an authority concerning which 'sanctius ac reverentius visum credere quam scire.' Yet I believe it will be found, that neither our religious feelings nor our religious belief are necessarily and permanently affected by the exercise of a freer and more discriminating criticism upon the Jewish

records.

[ocr errors]

"On the other hand, I am persuaded that there are many persons of truly religious mind, to whom it will be a relief from painful perplexity and doubt, to find that the authority of revelation is not involved in the correctness of the opinions which prevailed among the Hebrew people respecting cosmogony and primæval history. They delight to trace the guiding hand of Providence in the separation of this people from amidst the idolatrous nations, in order to preserve the worship of a Spiritual Deity, and in all the vicissitudes of their history till its consummation. They admire the wisdom and humanity of the Mosaic institutions, and acknowledge this dispensation as the basis of the Christian; they feel the sublimity and purity of the devotional, moral and prophetic writings of Scripture; but they can neither close their eyes to the discoveries of science and history, nor satisfy their understandings with the expedients which have been devised for reconciling them with the language of the Hebrew records. I know that this is the state of many minds; the secret, unavowed, perhaps scarcely self-acknowledged convictions of many others are doubtless in unison with it. And such views would be more general, were it not for a groundless apprehension, that there is no medium between implicit, undiscriminating belief and entire unbelief. It has been my object to shew that between these extremes there is a ground, firm and wide enough to build an ample and enduring structure of religious faith."Preface, pp. xxi, xxii.

The wonder will presently be, that principles so rational and rightminded as these should ever have been disputed; and that assumptions so palpably absurd should ever have gained ground, as those which have for ages served to perplex theology and revolt science. Because God revealed his unity and perfections to the Jews, therefore they could infallibly expound astronomy, geology and cosmogony! Because Moses was inspired for a certain mission, therefore he was inspired on subjects wholly unconnected with that mission! Because men who lived under the Jewish dispensation did not know that the earth is globular and turns on its axis, therefore it is not globular and does not turn; but sun, moon and stars turn round it! Because Moses believed that a solid firmament of sky overarched the earth, dividing the waters above from the waters beneath," and Job believed the same and described it as "strong and like a molten mirror,"— therefore such a firmament does exist, though the modern explorers of the atmosphere have not found it, when they have ascended far above "the waters that be above the firmament"! What is the force

66

of the therefore? How hangs the conclusion upon the premise? How can such stupid non-sequiturs ever have prevailed? But they have prevailed and do still; and the senseless argument is varied or reversed for the purpose, as it would seem, of offending science or of wounding religion in each other's name. Because science shews that geology was not thoroughly understood by Moses, or astronomy by David,therefore science is irreligious?therefore science is false? therefore Revelation is untrue? therefore Moses was not commissioned to reveal the one true God?-therefore the sublime Monotheism of the Psalms had no higher origin than the false geology of Genesis? Ridiculous pretence at reasoning, whether used by the orthodox theologian to shew his jealousy of modern science, or by the half-learned philosopher to shew his contempt for religious doctrine! The day will come when we shall wonder that ever such a collocation of irrelevant ideas could have been called reasoning. It will be like the Corn-law, now that it is passed away, with its notable arguments: We ought to protect home agriculture, therefore starve home labourers; We ought to be independent of foreigners, therefore we must make bread dear;-or the converse: If the Corn-law be repealed, the sun of England's glory will set. The Corn-law is (prospectively) repealed; and when we have seen the sun shining a few years notwithstanding, and agriculture protecting itself in a market of unexampled demand, and Englishmen and foreigners mutually dependent and mutually useful, we shall wonder that ever such collocations of irrelevant ideas should have been taken for reasoning. It will be a later day-but the day will come-when the confused jumble of unconnected ideas which now sets the popular theology and modern science at variance, shall be in like manner unravelled and its mischievous ascendancy be obsolete. And then will Science be truly religious, and Revelation matter of highest science. It will then be maintained as matter of course, instead of being granted by way of concession, that the inspiration claimed on behalf of a prophet has reference simply to the subject of his mission, and nothing else; and that (except so far as an enlightened understanding of great religious ideas may indirectly enlarge the mind's view of other connected subjects) the prophet is, of course, on all topics of simply human knowledge, a participant in the current views of his age and nation. Then if it should be objected by any denier of Revelation, that Moses taught a very doubtful cosmogony and a geology which is since proved untrue;-that his mention of the rainbow shews he did not understand refraction;-that his deluge may have been the tradition current in his day, but it will not account for the diluvial strata of the earth ;— that his origin of the human race will satisfy no ethnologist - his Tower of Babel no philologist; -if some semi-philosopher should propound all these truisms as so many grave doubts affecting Revelation, the simple answer will be, What then? Moses never professed to have gained his cosmogony from inspiration, nor to have been sent to teach the Jews the modern sciences. The only folly is in those who demand it of him. Most unfortunately for the reputation of his writings, such absurd claims have been made on his behalf; but he is not answerable for the superstition of the dark ages or the bigotry of the Inquisition. Man of Science, look at the Scriptures as they are, -not as Orthodoxy wishes to make them. Understand their genu

ine character and pretensions for yourself, and do not gratuitously encumber them with the absurdities ascribed to them by ignorant advocates. Treat them only as fairly as you would treat other books. Apply to them the admitted principles of criticism. Learn their meaning, and discuss that meaning fairly. Let them state their own pretensions, and consider whether those pretensions are reasonable or not. Do not oppress them with seeming honours that are the reverse of honourable. Do not attempt to glorify them by untenable claims. Do not make exemptions on their behalf from the rules of common

sense.

When we consider the kind of claims usually made on behalf of the Scriptures, without any countenance whatever from the writers themselves,-how they are assumed to have been produced by immediate divine dictation, though bearing on every page the customary characteristics of human literature,-how all the distinct marks of varied authorship, so interesting in the different books and so decisive of their general authenticity, are slurred and slighted by the theory of a pencontrolling inspiration, and the little discrepancies which mark human truthfulness are by the same theory erected into insuperable difficulties in the way of Divine Revelation;-when we consider how the Scriptures have been oppressed with extraneous difficulties like these, we may almost wonder that they have any reputation still left. They have been more hardly dealt with than any other literature whatever. They have been wounded most deeply in the house of their friends. No other writings could have survived such cruel kindness.

It is refreshing to find this simple avowal of the applicability of historical criticism to them as matter of course, which Mr. Kenrick makes at an early page of his Essay:

"In the following inquiry into primæval history, the Jewish records are not assumed as the sole and infallible source of knowledge. They are regarded as an evidence of the belief of the nation which admitted them among its sacred books; a nation of high antiquity, placed in contact from its origin with those ancient kingdoms in which civilization reached its earliest perfection, Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia; a nation which possessed the art of writing from remote times, and applied it to historical purposes. Like all similar works, however, they are subject to be judged of according to the external evidence of their authorship and date, and the internal evidence of their truth, to be confronted with the records, and compared with the belief, of other ancient nations. There is nothing in these writings to forbid our subjecting them to this test. The book of Genesis incorporates written documents of unknown ages and authors; the book of Joshua appeals to ancient poetical writings; the Chronicles of Israel and Judah are cited as authorities for the histories of these kingdoms respectively; and while the legislator and the prophet claim to speak by the immediate dictate of heaven, no author of an historical book of Scripture alludes to any supernatural source of knowledge. "Taken in that large sense which popular use has given to it, primæval history goes back even beyond the first appearance of man upon the earth. Almost every nation of the ancient world had its own cosmogony, including the origin of the earth and heavens, the elements, animals and vegetables, man and even the gods themselves.* As they are only speculations, though assuming an historic form, they represent the imperfect state of natural philosophy in the age when they were framed. They generally agree in representing

"Anc. Un. Hist. i. 23, foll.; Diod. Sic. i. 6, 2, 30.

[ocr errors]

a dark state of chaos and intermixture of the elements, preceding the distinct existence and separate properties of each as we find them in the present system. In some, an intellectual principle presides over this change; in others, it appears to be brought about by the mere operation of natural causes, analogous to those which are now in action. The idea of creation out of nothing, of power exerted without an object on which it could exert itself, has always been conceived by the mind with difficulty, which seemed to be relieved by the introduction of a chaotic matter, on which the act of creation might be performed. The difficulty thus removed a step further back, was thought to be solved, and only the more reflecting inquired, how chaos itself had come into existence. To facilitate the conception of an unknown process by assimilating it to something known, creation was compared to the hatching of an egg,† to the growth of a seed, or the production of animals ignorantly supposed to follow the action of the sun's rays upon the liquid mud. Compared with these rude efforts of the most civilized people to solve the problem of the world's existence, and connect themselves by an unbroken chain with the origin of all things, the narrative of the creation in the book of Genesis is remarkable for its sublimity and truth. It speaks a plain and simple language, ascribes every thing to the benevolent purpose of one wise and omnipotent Being, and relates the successive stages of creation in general harmony with the discoveries of science, though by no means with that exact accordance which has sometimes been asserted. But though such a narrative could only have been produced among a people divinely instructed in the great truths which distinguish revealed from natural religion, it has evidently received its form from the popular belief. To regard it, in all its details, as the authorized history of the changes of the globe, from the time when all was 'without form and void' to the creation of man, would require that we should either close our eyes to the evidence of science, or adopt interpretations of the text which are not warranted by philology, nor in accordance with the obvious meaning of the writer. Such are the attempts which have been made to give to the words 'in the beginning,' 'create,'' day,' a sense different from that which they commonly bear. Geology has shewn that our earth was not brought into the state in which man was placed upon it by an instantaneous act of creative power; and has established an order of succession and intervals of time in the production of animal and vegetable life, which were certainly not in the contemplation of the author of this history."-Pp. 6-10.

"Of

Now there is not a word in this statement to which any rational mind can object. It is the clear, simple, calm exposition of commonsense principles, which need only to be stated in order to be admitted and approved. Few could state them with equal clearness and simplicity; but when we read them, sentence by sentence, we say, course, "-"That is self-evident,"-"That is just what I have always thought." We are ready to say, "Everybody knows that;" but we remember that if everybody knows it, very many persons pretend not to know it. What learned labour has been lost between theologians and geologists in endeavouring to harmonize their respective sciences on an unsound basis, instead of going at once to the root of the matter and boldly avowing that there is no need of harmonizing ancient physical theories with modern experiment! Is it not shameful that

"Euseb. Præp. Ev. i. 7; Diod. Sic. i. 7; Hes. Theog. 116; Ovid. Metam. i. 4, seq.; Beros. ap. Euseb. Chron. Can., p. 6. ed. Scalig.

+ "Euseb. Præp. Ev. 3, 11, p. 115, ed. Viger.; Von Bohlen Altes Indian, i. 162; Lobeck Aglaophamus, i. 475.

"Diod. Sic. i. 7.

« PreviousContinue »