Science and Scripture.

Hebrews 11:3  •  3 min. read  •  grade level: 12
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Science has furnished us with numerous facts, and when she confines herself to her proper domain, which is to examine existing phenomena and generalize under a uniform law, she may be accepted and her teachings valued for their real worth, only, be it remembered that science cannot meet the soul's need in the presence of God, or settle any moral question whatever; and, further, that the facts and laws of creation were there before science discovered them. Man is himself the subject of creative power and wisdom. He did not behold the Creator at His work. Angels cannot inform us how things and persons were produced, for they, too; are the handy work of God. To whom; then, can we turn for certain information as to creation I Why, to the Creator only. But now that we have to do with God, the mightiest intellect must be laid low in the divine presence, as a tribute to the infinite ways of Him who is unsearchable. He speaks, and we reverently hear, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God" (Heb. 11:33Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear. (Hebrews 11:3)). Physiology declares that man is mortal, so does Scripture and every-day experience; but when the physiologist reasons from the present fact of man's mortality (of course true as to the body only), that therefore he was always so, we reject the thought, and affirm, on divine authority, that mortality is a consequence of sin, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Physiology can speak of man as he is, but herein consists the value of the Word of God—and, O beloved reader! it is a treasure too precious to be lightly parted with—that it sheds divine light upon man's past, present, and future. Nor does the fact, if such it be, that death among animals and plants was the rule previous to the earth being prepared as a home for man, prove that therefore man was created mortal. How can it prove anything of the kind's One would naturally think that the reverse would have been the conclusion arrived at, for man was created a moral being, not so the animals and plants. Many pious persons whose reverence for the Word of God is worthy of all praise, are either distressed at the alleged discovery by the scientist of life and death previous to the six thousand years of man's history on earth, or they are driven to deny in toto the evidence of geology on this point as contradicting, in their opinion, the Word of God, which is supposed to teach that death upon all living creatures was the result of Adam's disobedience to God. But the Scriptures do not teach that the lower and inferior creation became subject to death through the sin of its moral and responsible head; moreover, they speak only of death in this world, and intimate nothing as to life and death amongst animals and inferior orders of creation generally, during the unknown and uncountable pre-Adamic times. Rom. 5:1212Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (Romans 5:12) refers to death in the human race and as the result of man's sin; while Rom. 8:2020For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope, (Romans 8:20) shows that the whole system over which man was set as head and moral link between it and God was subjected to "vanity" or "ruin;" it does not say death,