"Science and Scripture."

Otago Witness, Issue 1581, 4 March 1882, Page 19

"Science and Scripture."

The last of the series of lectures by Rev. A. C. Gillies was given in the

Temperance Hall on Friday evening, and was listened to by a densely-crowded audience. The side rooms, platform, and gallery were crowded ; all available stand-ing-room was occupied. Although the heat of the room was oppressive, very few left the building before the close of the lecture, and the lecturer was frequently and enthusiastically applauded. The lecture, which occupied two hours in delivery, was of a character that could not be summarised within the space at our disposal—the headings of the discourse, the references to scientific works and to the Scriptures being so numerous. The subject of the lecture was " Rciejico and Scripture," and the lecturer maintained that there was not the least conflict between tlio facts of science and the Scriptures. After the statements in Genesis had been ridiculed for centuries by infidels, the ascertained facts of science were found to be in exact accord with them, Amoirjst other instances he gave the following exami'l ; : — That Scripture and modern seienix. leach that Nature as now constituted was not eternal : that it had had a beginning, and would have an end, and had buen created, produced, originated, or developed ; that the earth was very old, its age being used , as illustrative of the eternal purpose of God ; that croation was the work of time— a process i of devpJopmenfc, Uie nebular hypothesis ((xcnetfis, first chapter, second vptkc) ; that tho order of ex^ence wsv; d*irl:n(v«, mattev, lTiof-'on, %].i, and hoafc (exactly llio Mosaic order); I.h.ik lfoht is not n^cr- "ai'i)y am-; lwoiud v.'iili tho "jtin ; that Ihuro was a, :

time wilfcix the earth was enveloycd in

vapour; that the land was for a long time covered with water; that water animals existed before land animals ; that there was progress from the lower to tho higher forms (the first two chapters of Genesis showed that there was progress throughout from the lower to the higher forms and types of animal life) ; and that death prevailed among the animals long before the creation of man (the Bible giving an account of carnivorous animals). The lecturer also said that a few years ago "Evolution, or the gradual development of man, was racing among certain infidel scientists ; but this beastly dogma- was now becoming less popular, and was indignantly rejected by a number of first-class scientists. "What, he asked, became of the threadbare infidel boast that all our leading scientists believe in Evolution ? He believed there were a few smatterers in Dunedin who believed in Evolution, and they might give them his (the lecturer's) compliments and say, whether they were in the pulpit or the university, that they were simply smatterers. Science taught the universal reign of law, and the unavoidable inference from that was that there was an infinite and unvarying Lawgiver. There was reason to believe that the Caspian Sea was the drainage of the Flood, which was evidently local, and a godly family and whatever animals they had domesticated were preserved in tho Ark. The Bible declared there was such a flood, and both Assyrian discoveries and geology in that part of the country corroborated the declaration. Astronomy teaches that the sun is the centre of the solar system, but it travelled in a circuit round another great globe, and that the sun's heat pervades and percolates all Nature ; but the same thing was taught 3000 years before in the, 19th Psalm, while philology supported the scriptural statement that a time had existed when the whole earth was 1 of one language and of one speech. The lecturer maintained that the inspiration of the Bible was demonstrated by the witnesses he had cited, wherein the discoveries of science had been anticipated by thousands of years.