"IN LIMINE." It is assumed in the following pages that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the divinely-inspired Word of God. Their authority is considered absolute, their decisions final. But if, indeed, it be true that the Bible is God's Word, we should naturally expect to find in it some marks of similarity to other works known to be by the same Author. The Word and the Works of God should be found to possess common characteristics. If we find similar principles governing the origin, development, and relations both of the facts of the material universe and the spiritual facts recorded in the Bible, we have not only a proof of common authorship, but a most important clue to the study of the meaning of both classes of facts. It has been only within a comparatively brief period that it has been discovered that the order of nature does not consist in mere external arrange ment, but is an order of growth and development. Formerly, animals were classified according to size, form, color, number of limbs, and other merely external characteristics. Cuvier, and in later days, Agassiz, have taught us that of the individuals which were thus classified many have no real relation to each other. The relations of plants and animals are relations of internal structure, not of outward garb. Who, for instance, could know from external traits, that the Whale is not a Fish, but a warm-blooded animal, of different genus from any of the tribes of Fishes? Or who would suppose by merely looking at them, that the cultivated Easter lily and the field. onion have a common ancestry, and belong to the same family? Of late years, the aim of scientific research has been, first, the ascertainment and verification of facts, and, second, to learn the relations of these facts to each other. It has so far been found that all the facts of physical science have relation to a vast, systematic, and comprehensive plan, extending over a vast series of ages. The plan is seen to have been evidently complete from the beginning, in the mind of its author. But its development has been gradual. |