Page:The Garden of Eden (Doughty).djvu/17

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The Garden.
11

common sense and revelation be really at variance? Would the God who made all science, have given a religion which denies its plainest propositions and ignores its most unquestioned truths? Or would He who endowed his creatures with whatever common sense they may possess, have revealed a written Word which could not stand the test of common sense? Skeptics and believers alike will answer, No!

The trouble usually arises from a mistake on the part of both scientists and theologians. Because he cannot find the name of God as the Maker written plainly on the face of the stars, the scientist doubts the existence of an intelligent Creator. And because he finds the conclusions of scientific research to be at variance with some literal statements of the Bible, the theologian denies the plainest propositions and facts of science. The scientist wants to find material proofs for spiritual things, or sensuous evidence for that which is above the realm of sense; and the theologian would have spiritual evidence for that which is merely natural, or proof from revelation of that which is plainly written on the rocks or disclosed by the movements of the stars before his eyes.

Both these classes have a lesson to learn. Astronomy and geology and cosmogony are taught in the volume of nature, not in the written Word. Immortality and heaven and God are