naturally developing that system. What, in such a case, would be the true
estimate and valuation of the achievement? Simply this, that he had thus
succeeded in cancelling and counteracting a determinate scheme of divine
discipline and training for man. Wherefore did God give to man the powers
for contending with scientific difficulties? Wherefore did he lay a secret
train of continual occasions, that should rise, by relays, through scores
of generations, for provoking and developing those activities in man's
intellect, if, after all, he is to send a messenger of his own, more than
human, to intercept and strangle all these great purposes? This is to
mistake the very meaning and purposes of a revelation. A revelation is not
made for the purpose of showing to indolent men that which, by faculties
already given to them, they may show to themselves; no: but for the
purpose of showing _that_ which the moral darkness of man will not,
without supernatural light, allow him to perceive. With disdain,
therefore, must every thoughtful person regard the notion, that God could
wilfully interfere with his own plans, by accrediting ambassadors to
reveal astronomy, or any other science, which he has commanded men, by
qualifying men, to reveal for themselves.

Even as regards astronomy--a science so nearly allying itself to religion
by the loftiness and by the purity of its contemplations--Scripture is
nowhere the _parent_ of any doctrine, nor so much as the silent
sanctioner of any doctrine. It is made impossible for Scripture to teach
falsely, by the simple fact that Scripture, on such subjects, will not
condescend to teach at all. The Bible adopts the erroneous language of men
(which at any rate it must do, in order to make itself understood), not by
way of sanctioning a theory, but by way of using a fact. The Bible, for
instance, _uses_ (postulates) the phenomena of day and night, of
summer and winter; and, in relation to their causes, speaks by the same
popular and inaccurate language which is current for ordinary purposes,