A Minister Takes a Geologist's Hammer to Genesis

Rev. Napoleon Hoagland spoke at the Unitarian services in Tacoma hall on "The Question of Authority." Sunday evening he gave an address on "The Intellectual Life," in the interest of Unity Club and kindred societies for reading and study. An abstract of the morning sermon, which was listened to by a large congregation, is here given. He said:

The question of right and truth is one of age-long interest. What am I to do? What am I to think? What am I to believe? are questions that each sane mind must face as a daily habit of mental life. To dodge the question or to shift the responsibility works moral decay and mental degeneration. It is true that people have pinned their faith to what they believed were infallible men or infallible books. The men were called kings, priests, bishops or popes. The books were called the words of God.

It is too late in the day of man's enlightenment for any criticism of the old notion of DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS to be interesting. Even the claims of an infallible pope have become badly shrivelled under the electric-light intelligence of the 19th century. The only valid claim for absolute authority is infallibility. But are the Hebrew scriptures infallible? Are they the only books that are entitled to be called the Word of God? It is a significant fact that our distinguished students of other religious literatures have no very emphatic words to offer in support of the dogma that our Bible is God's only word to man. It is equally significant that the men who have won the greatest distinction for their learning and discoveries in the field of natural science are not the ones who believe most profoundly in the authority of the Bible.

We have been told so often that the Bible agrees with the RECOGNIZED SCIENTIFIC TEACHING of the day that no doubt many people actually believe it upon no other evidence. A glance at a few of the first chapters of Genesis will be sufficient to show the "elegant harmony" between the Bible and science. First, that may be mentioned is the order of creation, in which birds are said to have been created the day before land animals and creeping things. Were this true the fossil remains of birds ought to be found lower down in the stratified rocks than lizards. But any standard work on geology is authority for the statement that fossil remains of lizards have been found at a depth below the discovered fossils of the most ancient birds nearly equal to half the entire layer of stratified rocks.

Then again, if there were exactly six days or six ages of creation the rock strata ought to show some such division. The geological chart in Clode's story of creation, which merely aims to present the most authoritative scientific teachings from many sources, names four general divisions and thirteen sub-divisions. GEOLOGISTS THEREFORE KNOW nothing about any six days or six periods of creation from their study of the rocks.

The statement that light was created the first day and the sun and moon not till the fourth day, one day after the grass and herbs and trees were created, is not in accordance with the scientific order as laid down in any recognized scientific text book. The assertion that after having made the great light and the lesser lights (sun and moon) God made the stars also and set them in the firmament to give light upon the earth shows a conception of astronomy on a level with that of the little girl who thought the moon laid the stars. The person who wrote the ten commandments as given in the 20th chapter of Exodus evidently understood the six days of creation to mean twenty-four hours each, but probably he was mistaken.

ANTHROPOLOGISTS KNOW nothing about Adam having been formed outright from the ground or of Eve having been made from Adam's ribs. Geographers know nothing about the location of the Garden of Eden from the confused description given in Genesis, or any explorations outside, and philologists know nothing about a Tower of Babel in connection with the rise of languages.

When we remember that there are 6,000 species of birds alone we do not need to be told that an ark or barge 500 feet long, 90 feet wide and 50 feet high would be too small to hold one pair of all unclean animals and groups of seven of all called clean, with their necessary food for nearly a year.

EVERY ONE KNOWS, or may know, that coney is the English word for rabbit. Yet we are informed in Leviticus 11:5 that the coney cheweth the cud. That line about Arcturus and his sons in the 38th chapter of Job, which it has been said was never understood until the recent discovery that Arcturus is accompanied by satellites, turns out in the new revision to be "the Bear and her train," an animal of a somewhat different colour.

Heber Newton, of the Episcopal church, Prof. C. H. Toy, of the Baptist church, and Dr. Sinclair, of the Presbyterian church, were quoted in support of the view that the Bible is to be studied in the same way as other books are to be studied, and that if mistakes are found we are not to ignore the fact; neither are we to let the mistakes and crudities blind us to the real worth of the book. These men affirm the doctrine of Bible inspiration as voiced by Emerson and the Unitarian prophets fifty years ago, namely, that God's word is not bound or limited to any one book or to any one age. Man's own enlightened reason is his most divine revelation and his best authority, the will of the Most High that is ever seeking to speak in every soul.