MR. LL. DAVIES AND THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.
[TO MR EDITOR OF TIER "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Mr. Davies, in his letter of last week, appears to justify the use of the Fourth Commandment as an authoritative document in the Church, though it contains a statement with respect to the Creation in six days which he knows to be (to use a mild expres- sion) not literally true. If, when we speak of " days," we may mean only " forms of time," it is difficult to see what kind of erroneous statement is not allowable ; and this, be it remembered, not in the conversation of common life, but in the public services of the Church, where, if anywhere, the spoken word should be in harmony with the felt conviction.
We sometimes notice among the feebler members of the Church a pride in believing what is difficult to believe because of the difficulty, so that the more slender or hostile the evidence, the greater the merit of the believer. Mr. Davies is far above super- stition such as this, though by maintaining the authority of untrue statements he helps to encourage it.
Mr. Davies knows that all truth to which men can attain, by the exercise of their faculties, is the truth of God,—that the con- viction of the present day that Creation was not effected in a limited time is as much His teaching as any revelation we possess of His own nature and attributes.
The errors of the Bible cannot live, and it is a waste of strength to defend them. Why keep up the attempt to make out that everything ancient written in Hebrew must be, in some sense, good and true ? So long as the Bible is spoken of as a per- fect whole, the objection is reasonably made, " How can you
recommend as perfect that which contains such errors "? Minis- ters of religion may find ample employment for all their benefi- cent energy in providing against the rejection of the gold with the dross,—in taking care that with the tares, which must be weeded out, the wheat should not be gathered also. And who can doubt that the true sustenance of religious life will grow all the better when the tares are removed ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
A LAYMAN.
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