stars have always changed, must always change. Pick up the old charts
which the astrologers made and compare them with the charts of
astronomers of our day. How vast the difference! Listen to our
astronomers talk about the magnitudes and disunites and composition of
the stars, and compare with their story that which was written in
the astronomy of a few centuries ago. The stellar universe has not
changed, but men's conceptions have changed amazingly. The facts of
the human body do not change. Our heart beats as the heart of Homer
beat, our blood flows as the blood of Julius Caesar flowed, our
muscles and nerves live and die as the nerves and muscles have lived
and died in the bodies of men in all the generations--and yet, how the
theories of medicine have been altered from time to time. A doctor
does not want to hear a medical lecturer speak who persists in using
the phraseology and conceptions which were accepted by the medical
science of fifty years ago. Conceptions become too narrow to fit the
growing mind of the world, and when once outgrown they must be thrown
aside. As it is in science, so it is in religion. The facts of
Christianity never change, they are fixt stars in the firmament of
moral truth. Forever and forever it will be true that Christ died for
our sins, but the interpretations of this fact must be determined by
the intelligence of the age. Men will never be content with simple
facts, they must go behind them to find out an explanation of them.
Man is a rational being, he must think, he will not sit down calmly in
front of a fact and be content with looking it in the face, he will
go behind it and ask how came it to be and what are its relations to
other facts. That is what man has always been doing with the facts of
the Christian revelation, he has been going behind them and bringing
out interpretations which will account for them. The interpretations
are good for a little while, and then they are outgrown and cast
aside.