SALVATION is the one great subject of the Bible.
Other things are referred to, and to some extent discussed in the Bible; but always in subordination to the one great and only subject, which is Salvation.
Salvation itself is science, and while this is treated in the Bible as the one great science—the science of sciences—yet other sciences are not ignored, but are often referred to.
It is true that in the Bible no science is considered without God; yet this is nothing against its being science. The idea of science without God is a vain and fallacious thing, infinitely more incongruous than the drama of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. It is a palpable contradiction, for how can there be true knowledge where the very Source of knowledge is ignored?
In all science without God, “There is a painful uncertainty, a constant searching and reaching for assurances that can be found only in God.” In all the discussions of such science there is betrayed a conscious inability, sometimes acknowledged, to trace things back to the first great principle, to that which is fixed and final, and where the mind can rest in assured certainty.
In the Bible, however, that is, in science with God, there is none of this uncertainty. In that there is no feeling about for a standing place; there are no proffers of “a working hypothesis;” but everything is placed at [530] once upon God as the origin and ultimate of every phenomenon, the sure resting-place of the mind after every “last analysis.”
In science without the Bible, that by which things are held together is Cohesion. But when it is asked, What is Cohesion? the only answer is “That by which things are held together.” In science without the Bible, that by which all things are held up or held in place, is Gravitation. But when it is asked, “What is Gravitation?” the only answer is, “That by which all things are held up or held in place.” But such answers as these are not answers at all: they are simply the saying of the same thing in another way.
Yet it is a fact that such is just the instruction that is given in the books, and such is the teaching that is given to students. But by it the mind of the student is caused to travel in a circle, and is left wandering there, ever inquiring and finding no certain or satisfactory answer. It is proper for a student to ask, “What holds, in their places, the worlds and all things?” And it is proper enough that the answer should be, “Gravitation.” It is then proper for him to ask, “What is Gravitation?” But it is not in any sense proper to answer that, “Gravitation is that by which all things are held in their places.” It is proper for the student to ask, “What is it that holds things together?” And it is proper enough that the answer should be, “Cohesion.” It is then proper that he should ask, “What is Cohesion?” But it is not in any sense proper, nor is it at all sensible, to answer this question by saying that “Cohesion is what holds things together.”
Yet that and such as that throughout the curriculum, is what is offered as science. It is science without God, science without the Bible; but it is not genuine science. By it, all that any person can ever know is merely something about things; he cannot know the reality of the things themselves.
In science with the Bible, it is altogether different. In that, when a child or a student asks, “What holds all things in their places?” he can be told that it is Gravitation. And when he asks, “What is Gravitation?” he can be answered, “God made the worlds by his Son, who, being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power.” Hebrews 1:1-3. Thus, gravitation is the power of God manifested in his word through Jesus Christ. When it is asked, “What holds all things together?” and it is answered, “Cohesion;” and when it is asked, “What is Cohesion?” the true answer is, “God hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son, … by whom all things were created, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, all things were made by him and for him; and he is before all things and by him all things consist”—[hold together]. Thus Cohesion is the power of God manifested through Jesus Christ our Lord.
All things came neither by evolution, nor by the “nebular hypothesis,” but by the word of God. For “by the word of the Lord were the heavens made and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. For he spake, and it was.” And “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things that are seen were not made of things which do appear.”
Gravitation was taught in the Bible more than twenty-three hundred years before it was discovered by Newton. That the air has weight and that dew is formed by distillation, was taught in the Bible more than twenty-five hundred years before science without the bible had “discovered” it. That there is a difference in the … ance of the stars, and not simply a difference in their distance, was declared in the Bible more than fifteen hundred years before modern science had learned it. That there is healing in the sunshine was taught in the bible twenty-three hundred years ago, and medical science has only lately “discovered” it. The science of meteorology—the sources of the wind and the rain, the circulation of the waters and of the atmosphere—was revealed in the Bible more than twenty-five hundred years before science without the Bible had become at all acquainted with it.
The world of science and philosophy to-day is going farther and farther astray, “in wandering mazes lost,” because of its persistent ignoring of God in the Bible. By such pretended knowledge and wisdom the world is just coming to the point where again it does not know God. And through the glamour of this so-called science and philosophy, even the professed Church of Christ is fast forgetting God.
He who believes the Bible and thus becomes so acquainted with God and the power of his word, that he knows and rests with perfect confidence in the knowledge that God possesses and has revealed in the Bible a philosophy and a science that is as far beyond any that this world ever knew, as heaven is higher than the earth, is counted as fairly beyond the pale of respectability. But all that makes no difference with the truth. And it is the everlasting truth that in the Bible there is more and better science, truer and more profound philosophy, than this world ever knew or ever can know without this book.
God is. He is the former of all things. He is the only true teacher. He is ever ready and is waiting to be the teacher of all. He will willingly teach all who will be taught by him. And to all such he will teach all knowledge and all wisdom, all science and all philosophy. For in him are hid all the treasures of philosophy and science, and ye are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power.