Modern science and the Bible do not agree!

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(William Bacon Stevens, 1815-1887)

What if science, as at present understood, and the Bible, do not agree? Shall we be troubled thereat? I think not. I rejoice to know that what is termed modern science and the Bible do not agree. I would be sorry if they did agree! Modern science is changeable--the Bible is unchangeable!

The science of today is not the science of last year, and will not be the science of the next year.

The Bible of today, is the Bible of all the Christian centuries; and will be a thousand years hence--just what it was nearly eighteen hundred years ago, when the canon of Scripture was closed!

Mark the changes which have taken place along the whole line of sciences since the beginning of this nineteenth century. What a catastrophe then would it have been--had it been proved that the Bible and science as known at the beginning of this century, fully agreed; that all the assertions of the Bible could be squared with the facts of science as then understood! The great tidal waves of science which have rolled over the world since, would have left the Bible stranded and ruined!

And just so now--could it be made clear today that every truth in the Bible accords with the received theories of science--what would become of the Bible fifty years hence, when science will have moved on with even more rapid strides, and left behind more wrecks of theories and more stranded speculations?

In the meanwhile, the Bible stands still in the solitary grandeur of its own perfection. It waits, as the ages roll on, for confirmation and acceptance. It was said by one of old, "God is patient, because He is eternal;" and the Bible, as the book of the God of truth, has this attribute of its divine Author. Its strength is to sit still. It does not go out hastily to meet a half-formed science, and embrace it as an ally--lest it should turn into a foe. It calmly tarries in the consciousness of its own truth--as the advances of science come nearer and nearer; and every advance of true science does bring it nearer to the Bible.

The opposition to that Bible, comes only from a class whose utterances, Paul has justly characterized as "the profane and vain babblings and oppositions of science falsely so called."

These differences between science and Scripture cannot be settled--because science is not settled. And science will never be settled, so long as there is an undiscovered fact in nature, or an inquiring mind in man!

"Forever, O LORD, Your Word is settled in Heaven!" Psalm 119:89

"The grass withers and the flowers fade--but the Word of our God stands forever!" Isaiah 40:8

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