college only to be more thoroly instructed in this divine truth,
I conceived the idea that this book we were studying was merely the
"guess-work" of some modern infidel, and that our real purpose in
studying it was to be the more able to refute it when we got out into
our life work; all of which would fully appear before we finished the
book.

One day when we were perhaps half thru, the professor, himself a
Baptist minister, catechised the class individually, as to their
opinions as to the length of time the earth was in process of
formation, previous to the appearance of life upon it. I noticed, with
surprise, that the answers varied from a few millions to hundreds of
billions of years, until the question came to me, when I answered
promptly, "Six days!" Everybody laughed, professor and all. Of course
I felt "cheap"; but insisted on the correctness of my answer "because
the Bible said so," notwithstanding Lyell and Dana to the contrary.

The professor complimented me on my "loyalty to the Scriptures," but
explained that the story of creation in Genesis was to be interpreted
"figuratively"; that it referred to six great geological epochs in
terms of days; and that what we were studying was to be accepted as
scientific truth in its general principles, subject, however, to
possible revision in some of its details as further geological
discoveries were made.

This was a revelation to me. I know the intelligent reader of today
will be provoked to laugh at my native, inherent "greenness." But it
must not be forgotten that this was thirty-six years ago; and besides
this, there are still, in this year of grace 1919, literally millions
of men and women, long past the age of student life, who still hold
substantially the same views concerning the relations of science to
religion and the Bible that I held then. The simplicity of faith is
often sublime. And I am not sure that it is not often the truth that,
"Ignorance is bliss where it is folly to be wise"; especially where the
"wisdom" is just sufficient to disturb the mind but not enough to
settle it. But I had a revelation,--two of them.

First, that modern science is to be taken seriously; and second, that
much of the Bible must be interpreted figuratively. The latter was the
most disturbing to me. The question that confronted me was this: If
the Bible is partly literal and partly figurative, when I get out into
my life work as a minister, how am I to be able to