"We do not take possession of our ideas, but are possessed by them. They master us and force us into the arena, Where, like gladiators, we must fight for them.” -HEINE THE ARENA VOL. XXV. MARCH, 1901. No. 3. ARE SCIENTIFIC STUDIES DANGEROUS TO D NTIFIC RELIGION? R. PARKHURST has recently raised a note of warning against what he thinks the great peril to which young men in our colleges are exposed through the acquaintance thrust upon them there with the latest results of the modern investigations of Nature. Rev. L. G. Broughton, in a still more excited strain, has recently called our universities and seats of higher learning dens of demons, so mischievous does he deem them to "faith." The exclusion by Cardinal Vaughan from the rites of the Roman Church of the distinguished Catholic layman, Prof. St. George Mivart, unless he would abandon and recant all criticisms and independent judgment of the scientific marvels and supernatural narratives contained in the Scriptures, is another significant illustration of the ban under which the Church still holds scientific investigation. "The bankruptcy of science" has been a popular cry of late among a certain school of writers-the wish evidently being father to the thought. These representations of Science as a devouring wolf against whom every wise shepherd of souls should be on his guard are indeed very mild in comparison with the savage onslaughts which the students of Nature sixty and seventy years ago had to endure. Nevertheless, they show much of the same jealous spirit and short-sightedness of view, and are pregnant with quite enough mischief to the interests of both science and religion, to call for that presentation of the real friendliness of natural knowledge to genuine faith which the facts of history so fully establish. There are, I am willing to admit, cases where the study of science has had a demoralizing and withering effect. But in most of these cases this is due simply to misapprehension either of the real nature and demands of religion or a quite superficial knowledge of science; often both are united in plunging the young mind into the morass of skepticism. The popular preachers, from whom the student has gained his ideas of faith, have unfortunately identified it with certain theological dogmas of an antiquated type. The Christian must regard his Bible as an infallible authority, not merely in regard to scriptural truths but in regard to geology, biology, and anthropology. He must believe that the world was made in six ordinary days; that death first came by Adam's fall; that the fossils in the mountain-side were victims of Noah's flood; that a whale's gullet is big enough to swallow a man-or else Revelation is a lie. And so, if scientific researches throw discredit on these theologic figments, the young mind leaps to the conclusion that all the great truths of religion are illusions. Or, perhaps, the student has fallen under the influence of some of those physical dogmatists who not infrequently caricature the genuine spirit of science and who in the name of natural philosophy assert with positiveness the most uncertain theories-agnostic metaphysics concerning the limits of human knowledge and the possibilities of divine revelation; a priori materialism and empiricism of the most audacious type, whose doctrines of the eternity and exclusive existence of matter, of the non-existence of will and spirit, and of the universal authority of our narrow experience and the absolute certainty that there can be nothing deeper and grander within phenomena than is indicated on the surface, transcend altogether the experimental conditions and verifications which, in the same breath the scientists declare, constitute the criterion of truth. With such widespread ignorance among the followers of both religion and science concerning the laws and demands of their own fields of investigation, and their still deeper ignorance of each other, it is not strange that reciprocal alienation and distrust should spring up. Nay, there are even notable cases of men who have gone with great diligence and profundity into scientific investigations and have thereby suffered mournful spiritual desolations. Prof. Clifford's sigh over the loneliness of the heart in a soulless world, "when it finds the great Companion is dead," and the withering up in Darwin not only of his earlier religious sentiments, but his esthetic capacity to enjoy poetry, drama, and music, are often quoted. Science may have indeed sometimes wrought injury to the religious nature and the cause of Christian faith. But shall we therefore ostracize or ignore physical studies? We should remember that the study of history, of art, of mental philosophy, the indulgence in pleasure and amusements, the mixing with the world and the vicissitudes and temptations of life, have each of them withered and demoralized souls. For one skeptic who is made so by scientific studies there are a hundred unthinking men and women who give themselves up to practical paganism for no deeper reason than that the pleasures of the senses and the grasping of place and power have absorbed their desires as the only prizes worth seeking. Shall we then ostracize pleasure, social life, and all association with the world? Suppose the Church could do this; would it not find, as where the attempt was made by strict ascetic and monastic life so to do, that the consequent ignorance, fanaticism, and perversion of human nature have caused even worse demoralizations, superstitions, and immoralities? The quietism and exclusive absorption of the mystics in devout meditations have caused, indeed, as Church history shows, the worst kind of mental and moral perversions, heresies, and actual lunacies. So, also, the study of the Bible in an exclusive and one-sided way has been most injurious to true and sound religion. What scoffings and skeptic reactions, as in the case of Paine and Ingersoll and many others, has the doctrine of Scripture infallibility provoked! Even among devout churchmen, how much bigotry, persecution, warfare, and needless blood-spilling has it occasioned! One of the interesting points in the history of the conversion of the Goths was the decision of Ulfilas, the first missionary to this nation, not to translate into their tongue the books of Joshua and Kings, on the ground that the Goths were already too prone to wars of conquest and deeds of violence. As the historian reviews the melancholy roll of the repeated wars raged by Christian nations, and approved by Christian ecclesiastics, he is inclined to wish that these sanguinary chronicles might have somehow been permanently excluded from the canon and thus saved from liability to stir up periodically the latent tiger in man to such flagrant contradictions of Christ's laws of peace and love as we see them doing, even among professed Christian ministers to-day. Everything even the best things are liable to abuse when wrongly employed. The study of science should be recognized by the intelligent as necessary to faith. No one who would know God can half know him unless he knows these great laws and the works he has so patiently wrought out. To be afraid of science and its ordeals is to confess doubt of the truth of one's own faith, discredit one's senses and judgment, and turn traitor to the Creator who gave us our reason as the best guide to the knowledge of his ways. The religious believer, just in proportion to the strength of his belief in the Divine omnipresence and creative action, must believe that Nature is no independent power, that man's perceptive and reasoning faculties are no unmeaning faculties, but that both physical and human nature are honest works of God, reflecting God's mind and purpose, and therefore are trustworthy witnesses of him. These fauna and flora which science describes are not its inventions. The hieroglyphics in the rocks which it deciphers are not of its construction. Science finds them in Nature because they are in Nature; and they are in Nature, every monotheist must say, by the creation. or permission of God. For unless we go back to the polytheism of paganism or the dualism of the Parsees we must recognize God as the sole author of all things. Whatever facts or laws or relations exist in the great temple of the world are there because such was God's will, and they show forth the attributes of the great architect as surely as the peculiarities of a villa or a cathedral exhibit the carelessness or faithfulness, the esthetic sense or lack of it in the builder. Every law that science can unravel or every force that it can trace out is an expression of God's nature and has some Divine message to man. Every natural phenomenon-be it the building-power of molecule or colored bands in a spectrum, mimicry of insects, cross-fertilization of flowers, natural selection among animals, development or degeneration of species (provided it be a real fact, not mere rash conjecture)-has something to tell us of God's thoughts, powers, and methods of action. That is surely the worthier view of inspiration that limits its action not to any one century or nation, but recognizes it as guiding the studies of a Cuvier as well as the legislation of a Moses; animating the thoughts of an Agassiz or a Gray, no less than the songs of a David or the letters of a Paul. These later revelations, through the rocks and the stars, may disclose the Divine hand as acting in ways that we had not before supposed. They may compel theology to revise more than one of her philosophic schemes. But this revision religion should regard as received from God's own hand, and as simply bringing us nearer the Divine reality and truth. The rigid traditions that we will not allow God's sunlight to transmute into fresh and unclimbing growths petrify into sepulchers that seal our souls in spiritual death. He that confounds the march of the intellect with the operations of Satan evidently ought to trace his own origin to the devil rather than to believe the word of Scripture-that man was made in the image of God and that God saw all the works that he had made, and, behold! they were very good. If there may be some respects in which science has been a source of harm or danger to religion, nevertheless, on the other hand, science has given religion aid and admonition far outweighing in value all the mischief it has done. Recall the positive contributions of science to natural theology: How, |