CHAPTER. VII.

POSITIVE SCIENTIFIC PROOFS OF RELIGION.

In the previous chapters I endeavored to show that, if the foundations of religion are insecure, those of science, also, for the same reasons and in the same way, are uncertain. Not only can this negative exposition be made, but positively it can be shown that religion has valid evidences similar to those of science. Physical investigation can claim no monopoly of scientific method; for, as Herbert Spencer says, it is nothing different from ordinary reasoning, but simply the processes of commonsense carried out with precision. Let us consider, then, the

SCIENTIFIC FOUNDATION OF RELIGION.

The starting-point of all science is in the observation of Nature. The various senses, sight, hearing, smell, touch, perceive various objects—star, rock, water, plant, animal; and notice their varied qualities, heat and cold, hardness, softness, perfumes, sounds, forms, etc. These are compared ;

their likenesses and differences noted. Then classifications are formed-families, species, substances, forces, laws and, as the result of these inductions, general propositions are laid down, the general principle ruling in this inductive process being to classify together the like things, separating them from the unlike, and to interpret the unknown by the known, not vice versa.

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Now, the course of religious thought has been the same. It may not have been aware that it started with observation, and proceeded by induction, any more than M. Jourdain knew that he talked prose. It may even have claimed to reach its knowledge entirely through other sources. ertheless, like science, its work has been, for the most part, the interpretation of the facts of Nature, only it has taken them up with other aim, and pursued them in another direction. Mr. Huxley himself, urging upon clergymen the study of science, points this out. "The theories of religion," he says, "like all other theories, are professedly based upon matters of fact."

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If we examine even the rudest forms of religion, we shall find their genesis, as Mr. Tylor says,' in "the plain evidence of men's senses, as interpreted by a fairly consistent and rational primitive philosophy." Mr. Tylor has explained, at length, the various processes and reasonings which suggest "Lay Sermons," p. 60.

2" Primitive Culture," p. 387.

to the savage the doctrine of spiritual beings. To sum them up, they are as follows: Thinking men, at a low level of culture, observing the strange phenomena of sleep, trance, dreams, disease, death, are deeply impressed by them, and seek to account for them. What makes the difference between a live and a dead body-a conscious and an unconscious man? What are these human shapes which appear in visions? Looking at these marvelous facts, the ancient savage philosophers made the induction of what we may call an apparitional soul, or ghost-soul -an unsubstantial human image or shadow-the cause of life and thought, independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or present, and able to leave the body and flash swiftly from place to place.

This conception of spiritual beings as the causes of life and motion once attained to, two great postulates of religion were natural inferences from it. As the soul or spiritual being was able to leave the body during life, and appeared in dreams after death, it was not involved in the destruction of the body at death, but continued to live on.

This was enough to establish for them the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Then, as they looked upon the mighty marvels of earth and sky, so full of awe to primitive man, the grand conception of Divine Beings was reached.

The blazing sun which warmed and lighted man; the cloud which swallowed up the sun in the

midst of its career, and shot its lightning-bolts upon the earth; the sea which now smiled so sweetly, and now raved along the shore with tossing mane; the bubbling fount, the fruitful earth, the wind, the mountain-here were powers which did not originate with man himself, over which he could exercise no control nor foresight, which were mightier far than he. What is their nature? Naturally he applied to the explanation of the unknown outward Nature the conception by which he had already explained his own life and movements. As he himself existed and executed his purposes and acted upon the world through the spiritual being or soul within him, so he believed that each celestial or earthly body was itself or had as its mover an independent living spiritual being. Accordingly, he offered to these spiritual beings worship, prayer, gifts, sacrifices, rites, and ceremonies of various kinds, such as he deemed would win their favor, mollify their wrath, or persuade them to effect his wishes.

In the widening experience of man, the rude observations of early times have been made infinitely more full and exact. Further observation reveals many errors in the primitive animistic theories of human phenomena. Further observation shows Nature not to be ruled by numerous independent volitions, but to be under the government of a single uniform system of laws. The first crude theories of religious interpreters must, therefore, be laid

aside. Theology has undergone many transformations between those early fancies and its modern forms. Nevertheless, its starting-point and its method to-day are the same, only carried out with more scientific rigor. Religion, with the help of science, whose aid is here invaluable, surveys the vast phenomena of the universe. It finds Nature not the same from all eternity, but ever changing. It finds these constant changes, however, directed by law. Every effect has some regular cause. Force is linked with force. Principle dovetails into principle. Creature is grouped with creature, forming an hierarchy of species, genus, order, and class. Thus the Kosmos discloses itself as a wonderful order. A luxuriant and exquisite loveliness beams thence upon the eye. Whether the devout or the undevout survey Nature, the beauty which graces it, ranging in scale all the way from the majestic glory of Alpine scenery to the symmetry of a snow-flake's facets, or the microscopic chasings of a diatom, cannot be unadmired. Again, in the admirable correlation of structure to environment, and of organ to function, in the mutual interdependence of animal and vegetable life, in the continuous self-adjustments of part to part and change to change, in the ingenious contrivances which minister to the prospective harmony of Nature, a marvelous exhibition of the adaptation of means to ends greets the glance of the observer. In every creature, tokens of providential impulses, stirring to activity, are revealed.