I am going to catalogue, first, a lot of the things that modern
knowledge has taken away. Then I am going to tell you some of the
things that modern knowledge is putting in place of what it has
removed.
In the first place, the old universe is taken away; that is, that
little tiny play-house affair, not so large as our solar system, which
in the first chapters of Genesis God is reported to have made as a
carpenter working from outside makes a house, inside of six days. That
little universe, that is, the story of creation as told in the early
chapters of Genesis, is absolutely gone. I shall tell you pretty soon
what has taken the place of it.
Secondly, the God of the Old Testament, the God of most of the creeds
has been taken away, that God who was jealous, who was partial, who was
angry; who built a little world, and called it good, and then inside of
a few days saw it slip out of his control into the hands of the devil,
either because he could not help it or did not wish to; who watched
this world develop for a little while, and then, because it did not go
as he wanted it to, had to drown it, and start over again; the God who
in the Old Testament told the people that slavery was right, provided
they did not enslave the members of their own nation, but only those
outside of it; the God who indorsed polygamy, telling a man that he was
at liberty to have just as many wives as he wanted and could obtain,
and that he was free to dispose of them by simply giving them a little
notice and telling them to quit; the God who indorsed hypocrisy and
lying on the part of his people; the God who sent a little light on one
little people along one edge of the Mediterranean, and left all the
rest of the world in darkness; the God who is to damn all of these
people who were left in darkness because they did not know that of
which they never had any chance to hear; the God who is to cast all his
enemies into the pit, trampling them down, as Edwards pictures so
horribly to us, in his hate for ever and ever.
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