an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion.

The great body of theologians who have so long resisted the conclusions
of the men of science have claimed to be fighting especially for "the
truth of Scripture," and their final answer to the simple conclusions
of science regarding the evolution of the material universe has been the
cry, "The Bible is true." And they are right--though in a sense nobler
than they have dreamed. Science, while conquering them, has found in our
Scriptures a far nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for
which theologians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more
as we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great sacred
books of the world is found in their revelation of the steady striving
of our race after higher conceptions, beliefs, and aspirations, both
in morals and religion. Unfolding and exhibiting this long-continued
effort, each of the great sacred books of the world is precious, and
all, in the highest sense, are true. Not one of them, indeed, conforms
to the measure of what mankind has now reached in historical and
scientific truth; to make a claim to such conformity is folly, for it
simply exposes those who make it and the books for which it is made to
loss of their just influence.

That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our own
most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions, beliefs,
and aspirations of our race from its childhood through the great
turning-points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all bibles, and
especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often are as a record
of historical outward fact; recent researches in the East are constantly
increasing this value; but it is not for this that we prize them most:
they are eminently precious, not as a record of outward fact, but as
a mirror of the evolving heart, mind, and soul of man. They are true
because they have been developed in accordance with the laws governing
the evolution of truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle,
code, legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development
of what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are
not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a planet is
not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the universe. In
welding together into noble form, whether in the book of