CONCLUSION.

SUMMARY AND RESULT.

It only remains for us to take a rapid survey of some of the most important points of this partial outline which has been sketched in the course of Lectures now come to a conclusion. We started out with the understanding that we should seek the Truth, and when found, we should accept and follow it. It was acknowledged that all nature is a revelation of herself to the thinking mind of man, and also the manifestation of a Power behind all phenomena. Christians teach that that Power is a personal God, whose mind and will are partially expressed in nature, but that He speaks to man through another revelation, opening up a further understanding of his mind and will, teaching him what all nature, though completely understood, never could convey to human thought.

If nature be the work of God, and the Bible a revelation from Him, they must of necessity agree, and each represent the Truth. The one must be the complement of the other. The students of the one should agree with the students of the other. The ascertained results of research in the one should agree with the ascertained results of research in the other. But it must be borne in mind that each teaches a different subject. Science does not teach, though it may endorse, the doctrines of Theology; the Bible does not teach, though it may supplement, the science of the physical world. It must also be remembered that neither the present deductions of science, nor the present exegesis of the Bible can be looked upon as infallible and final, and so long as our knowledge is imperfect, so long must discrepancies appear

Christianity leads to perfect Civilization.

289

to exist. But so far as science becomes settled and exegesis becomes clear, if both are true they must agree,-and if they do thus agree, they must be looked upon, the one as God's revelation in that which is physical and temporary, the other as His revelation regarding the spiritual and eternal.

Men thought that the revelations of geology and the discovered remains of ancient men laughed to scorn the Book of Genesis and undermined the teaching of the Bible. Further research shows that geology endorses Genesis, and all the ascertained facts regarding pre-historic man perfectly agree with the Bible records.

The most interesting question before Japan to-day is the means by which to consolidate her people into a lasting, growing, civilized nation. The history of 6,000 years lies open before us; we have looked over the debris of many a fallen civilization and have found only one phase which carries with it the promise and potency of permanence and growth. Commerce has given rise to wealthy communities, but commerce alone as a political bond is a rope of sand; despotic power has bound tribes together, and developed a force for a time, but despotism keeps the land in perpetual night and in a fossil form; philosophy has succeeded in making books, and attracting a crowd, but has never developed a people; Christianity alone, while bursting the bonds which fettered the humanity of man, let loose his powers for evil as well as for good, has awakened hope within the soul, infused life within the heart, expanded all the faculties peculiar to man, and solves the problem of civilization by creating a truly civilized unit, the ultimate aggregate of which, when universally realized, must bring the Utopia of social political perfection.

The two grand stages of development in this revelationexpressed in Christianity as taught by the Bible-are represented by Moses and Jesus Christ; the preparation and the culmina

290 True Science and Scientists endorse the Bible.

tion. Thus while dealing with the general question of civilization, it was seen that the Bible exactly fitted the sociological and constitutional needs of the human race.

But it has been asserted that the teachings of the Bible as well as of other religions, while of use as a regulative force, are scientifically untrue. The modern mind claims to be scientific, and one good result of scientific influence is to lead men to reject what is found to be false. Science must destroy this regulative force if it is untrue, or belie itself. Many men in the name of science have rejected the Bible because they were ignorant of its truth. Their rejection does not make it scientifically untrue. Again, science has helped to remove untruths which had grown upon the Bible, but the removal of an extraneous incubus of untruth does not make the real teaching false. On the other hand we have seen that the greatest names in the roll of scientific master minds have at all times, and do to-day, accept and endorse the Bible as the word of God. We have also seen that neither a combination of all the ascertained facts of science, nor legitimate speculations in scientific hypotheses, even far beyond the range of accepted facts, affect the truth of those things which the Bible undertakes to teach. And thus "you will be able to judge for yourselves how widely removed from the true scientific spirit is the temper of those who outrage the name of science and prostitute her authority, by attempts to discredit a religion which they do not understand and cannot injure.'

1

Philosophy of a certain kind has in every age antagonized the Bible, accomplished the ruin of men and of generations,. and then has passed away, leaving Christianity to repair the social, political wreck. And philosophy, so-called, is carrying on the same work to-day. The great harm of a system of

1 Prof. Ewing, p. 94.

False Philosophy exploded by thorough Criticism. 291

philosophy which, with plausible fallacies leads men away from the Bible, lies not so much in turning individuals away from Christian Theism and Christian Ethics, much as this is to be deplored, as in the educating of men's minds and moral nature into sophistical and shallow methods of inquiry. There is hope for skeptics and doubters; but let the mind and moral nature once be prostituted into a credulous acceptance of logical fallacies and multitudes will weakly follow, rarely recovering for a generation from the aberration. In treating of the philosophical question, I have taken Mr. Spencer as representative, not because he is the greatest of philosophers, but because he has that reputation at present in Japan. I am sorry to say that the fuller study of his works for this course of lectures leaves in my mind less respect for him as a philosopher than I formerly had. The colossal proportions of his edifice are equalled only by the extent of its illogical fallacies, and surpassed only by the arrogance of his assumptions. We have seen the essential fallacies of his fundamental "First Principles," the raising of a false issue-the assumption in his premises of an unproved theory in its extremest, most impossible phases-the indistinctness and incorrectness of his definitions— his playing fast and loose with the syllogism,-which alone convict his whole system of a species of sophistical legerdemain. Upon this foundation he builds a vast superstructure of Biology, Sociology, Ethics, etc., and all through the same fallacies run, the same peculiar logic and the same peculiar bias are prominent, only his anti-Christian bias seems to become more offensive as his attacks accumulate. The president of one of the greatest of American Universities (Yale), has well remarked: "So far as we have observed, converts to the Spencerian philosophy are not recruited in the legitimate method of beginning with their author's theory of knowledge and a careful scrutiny of his 'First Principles.' Those who begin at this point rarely desire to go

292

Spencer's System a Philosophical Failure.

farther. They find so much to question and reject that they neither desire nor dare to follow so untrustworthy a leader."

His two volumes on Biology should be called "A collection of Biological facts up to date, which can be pressed into the service of the Evolution-philosophy." If any one wants to study Biology, he will in all probability consult the works of scientists who make a specialty of that branch, without any particular theory to support, rather than a work which simply in the interest of a pet theory, gathers from the works of scientists all apparently suitable facts-facts which with the advance of science may turn out to the fictions.

The same manner of work is carried on in his multifarious volumes on Sociology. In these books there are many splendid statements, generalizations, suggestions; but the same fallacies run through the whole, and no part of his work gives the honest Christian a sadder impression than the growing antipathy to everything Christian, seen so evidently in these books. I cannot but endorse a further remark of the author quoted abovePresident Porter of Yale-commenting on this phase of these volumes, particularly the chapter on "Theological Bias." "It is difficult to determine whether it gives more decided evidence of ignorance, narrowness, conceit or virulence." He seems to be ignorant of the fact that much of what he insists upon, has been taught by Christian Theists for ages, and that the New Testament is full of it. He is too narrow to acknowledge it if he knows it. His conceit is seen in his supercilious disdain of other workers in the same field, his confident assertions regarding systems which he fails to appreciate, and his dictatorial announcements. of his own opinions as of something new and authoritative. His virulence at times emulates the sarcasm of Voltaire, at

1 Princeton Review, 1880.