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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

B.C. 4004

B.C. 4004.

Next, as to the nature of the selections made. I will take the opening parts of the Old Testament and New Testament respectively as samples of its two chief defects in point of matter. The book was put together at a time when Biblical criticism was hardly born, the 'Principles of Geology ' was only partially written, and a quarter of a century had still to run before the publication of the 'Origin of Species'; and so it was only natural that the first lesson, which consists of Genesis i., should bear the heading 'The Creation : B.C. 4004.' What are we to say of the proposal to teach our children that the world was created in exactly six days, exactly 6,000 years ago? Not one in a thousand adult Christians believes it. Probably not a single speaker at the Opera-house meeting believed it, yet each of these was there to advocate that the falsehood should be imprinted on the tender minds of our children—for the good of their souls ! Something was said at the meeting about the reverence due to childhood and to the sacred writings, but I can imagine no greater outrage upon both, no surer method of inspiring a child with a contempt for the Bible and for truth than by incorporating in his first lesson in religion—his first introduction to what you ask him to believe to be the word of God—a falsehood which has not even the sorry justification of the "lie medicinal," and which is perhaps exposed by the first primer in natural science put into his hands. Theologians have been a puzzle to me all my life, and when I see men of undoubted earnestness, piety, and honour taking up such an attitude as this, I prefer to marvel at them as theologians; I despair of characterising them as men.

Of course, I am aware that the date B.C. 4004 forms no part of the text of the Bible; and I also know that sane and honest men have held that when the sacred writer says that on the fifth day—a day consisting of morning and evening—"God created great whales," he really meant that fishes are to be first met with in the upper strata of the Silurian period. To argue the point is beyond my present purpose, nor have I any quarrel with the Scripture itself; hut what I must point out is that the date B.C. 4004 is there as almost the first word in your Irish Text Book, and that the questions at the end of the first lesson pin an honest teacher down to a literal interpretation of the word day; thus :—
  • Tell me the first tiling that God said.
  • What did God first do on the third day ?
  • What next ?
  • What did God do on the fourth day ?
  • For what purpose were these lights created ?
  • What did God create on the fifth day?

After taking the language of Scripture and catechising it in this matter-of-fact fashion, it is surely impossible to hold that a figurative interpretation is still admissible for the word which the catechist himself speaks of as a "day." Rather than perplex and distort the mind of a child with such juggling sophistry I would have him taught in a straightforward manner, as part of his first religious lesson, that there is no difference between black and white.

If, however, any advocate of the text-book is hardy enough to maintain that it does not preclude a liberal interpretation of the word "day," will he kindly tell us what that interpretation is to be ? If he and his friends will be good enough to turn their attention to that question, they will be so busy fighting one another that our threatened educational system will enjoy a very long reprieve. page 6 And it is surely fairer and [fitter that the question should be settled outside the schools by a tribunal of experts than that it should be reserved for the rough-and-tumble conflicts of harassed school teachers and lynx-eyed school committees.