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S t ru c tu r e In S c r ip tu r e Introduction—Creation and Inspiration B y N orman B. H arrison ( Minneapolis, Minn.) ( AÎI Rights Reserved) yw
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IHEN Sir Christopher Wren had completed his life work, his body was laid to rest in St. Paul’s Cathedral, a building that is recog nized as the noblest embbdiment of archi tectural genius. Since that day, visitors to St. Paul’s are greeted with an epitaph to its architect and builder, concluding thus: “ If you seek his monument, look around.” Design,- wherever found, betokens mind. And the beauty, the stateliness, the symmetry of the design, how
N umerics in N ature That which makes science possible is the numerical exactness everywhere employed by our God in His created universe. Everything from His hand has its normal pro portions. “ Every law of nature tends to express itself in terms of arithmetic” (Herschel). Every star has its place, measured and meted out to it. Every plant has its ordered arrangement of leaf, of flower, of fruit. Every snowflake has its precise mathematical structure ; yet, in ten thousand examined, none has been found to duplicate
another. Well might its Creator call His servant’s attention to its wonders : “ Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail” (Job 38 :22) ? Every sound that strikes our ears travels through the air in accordance with ex act mathematical law. This it is that makes possible the art of music, the higher and lower tones, the precise shadings and cadence. All color is the expression of the same numerical law in the realm of light, repro ducing the gorgeous rib band of colors when a ray of light passes through the prism of a raindrop. How could the Creator tell us any more plainly than He has that He is a God of exactness, of order, of pro portion, of numerical ac curacy of arrangement? S cripture ’ s N umerical S tructure The student who finds
ever gracefully they cover and conceal it lest we be too conscious o f it— all this beautiful effect is the ex pression of a ca re fu lly planned, arithmetically ac curate structural scheme. The same secret lies back of God’s wondrous beauties and harmonies in nature. Does anyone imagine that the unity, beauty, and sym metry of Scripture is se cured in any other way? G od ’ s . Tw o B ooks Three Psalms— 1, 9, 119 —are devoted to extolling God’s Word. Psalm 1 shows the pros perity of its devout, devoted ‘reader (vs. 1-3), his fruit fulness and happiness of lot being contrasted with the worthlessness and perishing lot of the ungodly (vs. 4-6). In each case, the similes are drawn from nature. Psalm 19 also divides into two parts, exactly cor respondent in their intent. The first (vs. 1 -6 ): extols
numerics everywhere evident in the book of nature should be prepared to find an arrangement equally orderly in the book of revelation. While he will guard against extremes in the matter, yet he will never be surprised when such arrangement and accuracies spring anew from the sacred page; rather, he will incline to believe that very much of orderly method and planning, wholly beyond the. purpose of the human writers, lies hidden from his dull powers of perception. Let us take the most comprehensive, and possibly the most patent; item of arrangement. While the 'Bible Cov ered some 1600 years in its actual writing, the correspon dence between the Old and New Testaments cannpt' es cape us.
the book of nature as the manifestation of God’s power gnd glory in His natural attributes. The second (vs. 7- 14) extols the book of the law, the Scriptures, as the rev elation of Himself in His moral attributes. The one is “ His handiwork,” speaking to the minds of men a univer sal language, that men may know that God is. The other speaks to the heart of man, with power to make man pure and clean, like ,to Himself. Psalm 119, the longest unit of Scripture^ follows an exact structural scheme—the alphabet. Does God press .His message into such.a seemingly artificial mould? Yes; jas much as to .say,, “ My Woçd is the universal language to the human heart; beyond it there is nothing of truth for ‘ Speech to utter.”
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