CHAPTER III.

THE CLAIM OF RELIGION TO POSSESS EXCLUSIVE KNOWLEDGE AND CONSEQUENT DIVINE SUPREMACY.- -HUMAN CONDITIONS OF RELIGION.-DIVINE ORIGIN OF SCIENCE. HELP RECEIVED BY RELIGION FROM SCIENCE.

SECONDLY, there are the claims made by both Science and Religion of exclusive knowledge, and, as a result of this, a rightful supremacy over the other.

I take up first the claim of Religion. It is one of the most ancient claims of Religion that to her has been given truth in its absolute purity, direct from Heaven. Scientific investigations are but blind human gropings. There is nothing divine or heavendescended in them. But religion is a revelation from the Creator himself, conveying absolute and final truth. No human admixture alloys its certainty; no sense-experience nor logical demonstrations are needed to make it credible; no further principles are to be sought for. God has unveiled to man in advance all the information about spiritual things which it is essential for him to have. For the human understanding to pick and dig about

these foundations is either superfluous or injurious. If its investigations agree with the divine revelation, they are but a waste of energy. If they disagree, they are beyond doubt mischievous misleadings. Religious truths are not like scientific truths. Spiritual phenomena are not like material phenomena. They are to be gazed at reverently, not searched into with microscope and dissected with lancet. They should be accepted in faith, not criticised by impious reason. Of eternal and infinite importance, as they are, what is man that he should set himself up as their judge? "In the things of God," Mr. Mansel tells us to-day, as Augustine, and Aquinas, and Calvin, and Edwards, and the great Church authorities in every century, have told the world, "Reason is beyond her depth, and we must accept what is established, or we must believe nothing.”

Almost every branch of the Church claims more or less of this exclusive knowledge. Each has some oracle whose voice must be accepted as authoritative, and whose message as divine truth, unmixed with the dross of common human knowledge, needing not that examination and verification which other kinds of truth require before it is worthy to claim man's credence.

At its lowest term, this oracle is merely the spiritual intuition, the voice within the breast. In its next higher form, it is the word of the religious master; in Islam, of Mohammed; in Buddhism, of Sakya-Mouni; in Christianity, of Jesus. At a third

stage, it presents as infallible every verse of some sacred book-Veda, Koran, Bible. At its highest term, the Church, or, perhaps, its official head, Highpriest, Grand-Llama, Mikado, or Pope, becomes the vicegerent of God, and the exclusive declarer of divine truth.

Believing that in herself she has thus a special, direct, and unerring source of divine knowledge, Religion naturally is disinclined to admit the possibility that she has made mistakes, or that Science is competent to correct her, or to find out religious truths undiscovered by her. The investigations of Science are very well as long as they confirm the Scriptures, and sustain the Church; but to stray from the orthodox pathway, to criticise or contradict what Pentateuch or Papal College has laid down, is a sacrilege. Evangelical Protestantism, by instance after instance, has disclosed its unwillingness to allow to Science any other position than that of a subordinate and a satellite; and the Roman Church has explicitly and officially declared the absolute supremeness of the Church in all such matters, and the wickedness of looking upon Science as capable of correcting the interpretations of the Church. In the General Council of the Roman Church, held in 1870, known as the Vatican Council, it was defined to be "a doctrine divinely revealed, that when the Roman Pontiff speaks ex cathedra.... he possesses that infallibility with which the Divine Rdeeemer willed his Church to be endowed. . . . The pastors and

faithful, of whatever rite and dignity, are bound by the duty of hierarchical subordination and true obedience" in reference to doctrines thus defined by the pope. And in regard to human science, in particular, the position previously taken by the Papal See was ratified by the formal decree:

"Let him be anathema

"Who shall say that human sciences ought to be pursued in such a spirit of freedom that one may be allowed to hold as true their assertions even when opposed to revealed doctrines;

"Who shall say that it may at any time come to pass in the progress of science that the doctrines set forth by the Church must be set forth in another sense than that in which the Church has ever received and yet receives them."

Language such as this makes it plain that, whatever be the tendency in the more liberal Protestant communions, the Roman Church has no thought of abandoning the theories of human and cosmic origin which it has planted itself on in times past, or encouraging any study which would naturally or probably lead to doubt of the authority of the Church which has enunciated them.

Ancient and common as is this claim of Religion, I believe it to be erroneous. It cannot stand before thorough criticism and sound logic. Religion has no exclusive source of information, but such sources only as are common to all branches of human knowledge. Every oracle that has ever been set up in the

Church, as the voice of the Divine, has had and still has its human conditions and vehicles. I would not deny the great fact of revelation, proceeding from God, for the enlightenment of man. We come to perceive religious truth—yes, and secular truth also, I rejoice to believe-not merely by our own unaided efforts, but by the help of the divine illumination constantly vouchsafed to the earnest seeker after truth.

But, living in the world in which we do, within the material organisms in which our spiritual natures are embodied, possessed of no other knowing faculties than these finite ones of ours, how is it possible for us to receive divine truth in its absolute fullness and purity? How can man either apprehend it, or interpret it, or know it as divine, without the revelation becoming subject to those finite limitations which are the conditions of human thought?

However undoubtedly and exclusively a revelation may have had its beginning with God, how can it reach man's consciousness except through the sensitive and rational avenues of the organism in which God has set man's soul? And these perceptive avenues will inevitably give shape to the message that passes through them. These mental windows will tint with the color of their own glass whatever light streams through them.

The pint pot cannot hold a quart. The earthy soul cannot take in the spiritual conception. Love, aspiration, self-sacrifice, divine communion-these