PHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS

KNOWLEDGE.

INTRODUCTION.

THE Conflict now going on between the physical discoveries and theories of these latter days, and the forms of faith which have hitherto ruled the mind of Christendom, is one of the most noticeable phenomena of the intellectual movement of the times. The constant discussions from pulpit and platform, the numerous essays, pamphlets, and books, in which these two opponents are arrayed one against the other, and attack, defense, or effort at reconciliation made, allow no intelligent man or woman to remain unaware of the controversy.

It is a fact, so notorious that we need specify no particular instances nor details, that, by a large part of the Church, modern science is looked upon as a godless and blind teacher, a sacrilegious intruder upon the domain of revealed truth, and that, among almost all denominations and phases of religious thought, there has been more or less suspicion, jeal

ousy, and abuse of physical investigation. It is a fact almost equally patent that, on the part of science likewise, among many, at least, of its representatives, there is a similar hostility entertained toward religion, and that not only all ecclesiastical organizations, but all spiritual faith and principles, are looked upon as their natural foes.

Now, this present antagonism of religion and science is a matter which may justly give concern, I believe, to all who have at heart the welfare of either. It is becoming quite plain to all clearsighted observers that religion certainly cannot afford the continuance of any such quarrel.

"The problem of our age," said Archdeacon Hare, in his life of Sterling, "is to reconcile faith with knowledge, philosophy with religion. The men of our age will not believe unless you prove to them that what they are called upon to believe does not contradict the laws of their minds, and that it rests upon a solid and unshaken foundation."

In former conflicts, the struggle had been to preserve the Church from division, or the orthodox doctrine from aberrations or perversions.

In the present controversy, the debate concerns the fundamental ideas of religion. Twenty-five years ago Dr. Newman said to a sectarian controversialist, "Let us discuss the prospects of Christianity itself, instead of the differences between Anglican and Catholic." To-day such a change of front is still more necessary. More than ever be

fore it is the citadel of Christianity, rather than her outposts, that needs to be defended. The wise Christian will turn his arms from these petty skirmishes about tapers and genuflexions, millinery of priests and wording of creeds, the sense of Hebrew numerals and the supernatural efficacy of drops of water, to ward off the blows of a nearer enemy-an invader who is pushing his way already with uplifted battle-axe into the Holy of Holies.

In former assaults upon religion, it was cynics, and worldlings, and doubters of every thing, who led the attack. Jest and jibe, scoff and sneer, were the favorite weapons of attack. Believers had only to stand firm in courage and patience on the unassailed foundations of their faith, and the strong currents of man's instinctive yearnings would before long turn the tide of popular opinion the other way, and bring the Church safely through its peril. Today, however, the objections presented against religion are brought forward in no frivolous spirit, from no mere feverish mental excitability or love of innovation, but in the sincerity of an earnest loyalty to truth, out of a serious desire to get at the reality of things, through all illusions and at all risks. It is not ridicule, but reason, that leads the assault. The weapons are not the clown's bells and grinning mask, but the astronomer's spectroscope, the biologist's flask. The scales in which Christianity would now be tested are not those of universal skepticism, but of cautious, critical weighing of historic evi

dence and scientific proof. This method, of course, is a slower one than that of the French encyclopedists. Religion has not to fear that any such rapid and radical revolution can now occur in the belief of Christendom as was wrought in France in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. But it is a much more dangerous course to its adversary. The ground it gains it keeps. Like an Alpine glacier, its slow, gigantic plane grinds to powder the most flinty obstructions, and never loses a foot of ground that it has once taken. For four hundred years Science has driven the Church from post to post. The sphericity or the flatness of the earth, the mobility or stationariness of the globe, the six days' creation, the six thousand years' age of the world and of man, the universal deluge-these all have been battle-fields where the scientist and the ecclesiastic have met in conflict, and in every engagement it has been the ecclesiastic that has been worsted, and the scientist that has been victorious. The result is, that science to-day holds such a position that the belief of the next century may be said to lie in its hands. The facts that its distinguished savans establish to-day, in six months will be read in every newspaper and magazine in the civilized world; in ten years will be incorporated in our school-books, and planted in the forming minds of our children; in thirty years will be the creed of every educated man; and, before a century has passed, will be the universal belief of all classes. If Christianity cannot harmonize

herself with science, it is much to be feared that the fate of the Ptolemaic system of the universe will, at no very distant period, be hers; at least, no one can doubt that the future of Religion would be vastly more sure and prosperous if she could make science an ally instead of a rival.

Nor for science, either, is it a matter of indifference what its relation toward religion is. While science stands, or is believed to stand, in an attitude of hostility to religion, it carries an unnecessary burden, which impedes no little its progress. The antagonism, whether it be real or only supposed, weakens its power and circumscribes its sphere of influence. It diverts its attention from its proper work to uncalled-for polemics. It vitiates the impartiality of judgment and equanimity of temperament which are required of it. Moreover, it is only, I venture to say, when science can gain the inspiration of the religious spirit, and be led forward and upward by such a conviction as animated Kepler, that, in tracing out the laws of Nature, he was thinking God's thoughts after him-it is only when pursued in this mood, I believe, that science can do its best work.

To bring, then, these two poles of modern thought into harmonious relations with each other, is a work of prime importance. On it depend the integrity and coördination of those two factors of man's higher existence the aspirations of his soul and the perceptions of his intellect for whose development all