ANCIENT WISDOM, OR REVELATION? Third Article in a New Series by Harry Rimmer, Sc.D. Reproduced by permission from the book
T h e H a r m o n y o f S c ie n c e a n d S c r ip t u r e Copyright by Research Science Bureau, Inc. But now in this ingenious genera tion when one is in a hurry to com municate, he dictates to a machine. There are offices in our land that are connected with as many as thirty far- distant cities, by a marvelous mech anism called the teletype. The head of one of these concerns, desiring to communicate with all of his branch managers, speaks to the operator of this machine, whose flying fingers depress keys as fast as the speaker can dictate. Instantly, without any appreciable lapse of time, in a score and a half far-flung cities, machines synchronize to the one in the home office and reproduce the words of the executive as fast as they can fall from his lips. A hundred miles, a thousand miles, or three thousand miles, make no difference in communication today. Very often the writer has taken down the phone in New York City and saluted the operator with the number of his home in distant Los Angeles. Fifteen seconds after the operator has received the call, a loved one in Los Angeles is speaking into our ear. Recognizing the voice, we say, Hello, and although we are sep arated by three thousand miles of space, the answer is instantaneous. No lapse of time of any longer dura tion than that required by light to make that same journey, ensues be fore the reply falls upon our listening ear. This, to a past generation, would have appeared miraculous. In the reproduction of the written word, with automatic presses grinding out hundreds of thousands of words a minute, which words are distrib uted over counties and states ere the ink is dry upon the paper, mark the progress of humanity in the conquest of culture. Verily was Job premature when he said to the men of his gen eration, No doubt ye are the people, and wisdom will perish with you. We are almost convinced that if Job had waited until our generation, he could have made his famous sarcastic fling and it would have been received as solemn truth by us to whom it was later addressed. Yet when all this has been said and done, there is in the dim recesses of
I T would be folly for any intelligent human being to question the mar velous progress of this age. We are surrounded on every hand by in disputable evidences of the mechanical ingenuity of our generation, which is our modern criterion of an advanc ing culture. With an engaging lack of false modesty, man named himself genus homo sapiens. There is only one genus of man and but one species. There are several varieties of homo sapiens. No longer should man be denominated as sapient. It is time now to classify this generation as the genus homo scientifaciens! We realize, of course, that if one is not scientific now, one just is not! Perhaps the best way to get a picture of the cultural progress of our gen eration would be to contrast the cul ture of the twentieth century A.D. with that of the twentieth century B. C. In almost every avenue and channel of living, we have made won derful progress. In the case of trans portation alone, we could surely prove our contention that we are far ahead of our primitive ancestors. In those ancient days when one was in a hurry to journey, his swiftest means of travel was the horse. If the horse didn’t balk, run out of hay, or decide to turn away from the path and go his own sweet course, man could flee across the terrain at the astounding speed of fifty miles a day. But in our generation when we desire to get somewhere else in a hurry, we climb into a vehicle to which we have given the wings of a dove, and cross continents and oceans at a speed of two hundred and fifty miles an hour. Verily, indeed, has the genius of this generation conquered the realms of space. Even more startling is the progress in the field of communication. Our minds go back in fancy to the time when some ancient business man en tered his innermost office cave and saluted his stenographer with these words, Miss Stonehatchet, take a let ter. In our fancy we see two strong men carrying in a stone block, while the maiden grabs her chisel in one hand and her hammer in the other and prepares to take dictation. Page Ten
our conscience a monitor which seeks to call attention to what we are pleased to call lost arts. When men talk about perfection in architecture, their minds journey back to ancient Karnak or to the Coliseum, whose ruins astound the tourist today. When men speak of sculpture, they breathe with awe the name of Phidias . In the realm of painting, voices hushed with reverence comment upon the work of the old masters, and in some things we have made progress backwards. The chief sphere in which man must stand humbly before the mystery of antiquity is in the realm of literature. Almost two thousand years ago, the pen of the last writer of the great Book was laid aside, and no word has been added to the Bible in the long succession of hurrying centuries. Yet the wisest of men on the earth still go to this great Book of vast antiquity for the highest inspiration that liter ature contains. One of the greatest wonders of the Scripture is the manner in which its writers have anticipated much of our modern scientific discovery. This the sis cannot be disregarded when an honest inquirer seeks to survey the problem of the harmony of science and Scripture. Remembering that the Bible was written multiplied centuries before our modern knowledge was gathered, it is inconceivable that human wisdom could have kept that Book in harmony with our advancing discoveries. So when, in the laboratory of science, we make some marvelous discovery in our generation and then find that the writers of the Bible had incorporated our discovery in their ancient records, we find ourselves be tween the horns of a dilemma. Shall we decide that the ancients were in possession of our modern scientific knowledge? We could not concede that possibility. First, our body of knowledge and wisdom, slowly accumulating by pains taking accretion over hundreds o f years, is indeed far in advance of that’ possessed in those dim, dark years when the Bible was being written. T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
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