II.]

Early folly of the Church.

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influence which placed kings at her command, and (what is important to our immediate purpose) she formulated as dogmatic truth not a few statements which were not only absent from the teaching of Christ, but were wholly alien to the spirit of his revelation. In many cases those dogmas were nothing more than definite crystallizations of the popular opinion, or superstition, or quasi-philosophic theory of the time. During the period of intellectual darkness which we now call the Middle Ages, a period during which the Church was in fact the guardian and, one may say, the monopolist of all knowledge, those dogmas received that sort of confirmation which comes from never being called in question. The greatest dogmatists are those who never have the good fortune to be contradicted; and, in the case of the Church, what was conceived to be philosophically true received the stamp of a theological dogma. The popular notion that the earth is flat, and that the sun, planets and stars are insignificantly small bodies revolving round it, became, in the writings of the fathers, invested with the authority of a religious truth. No scriptural sanction for such a doctrine existed-in fact, when we think how universal this view must have been in the early stages of natural knowledge, it is most surprising that the biblical cosmogony does not in any way contain it. Nevertheless this merely popular opinion, destitute as it was of scriptural authority, became a part of ecclesiastical belief, and when, at the dawn of the scientific renascence, Copernicus came forward with rational ideas about the solar system, the Church, in foolish alarm, opposed the new doctrines with all the forces at her command. For a time the question remained unsettled, until the telescope of Galileo decided it by discovering the moons of Jupiter, when the Church renewed her useless struggle. At last peace came, and with it the conviction which so often comes when the heat and passion of conflict give place to calm reflection-the conviction that the whole affair had been a grand

1

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Draper's "History of the Conflict [LECT.

mistake, and that after all there was nothing whatever to fight about. The Church discovered that the spade of science, which she had thought to be under mining her foundations, had in fact done no more than clear away a rubbish-heap; and notwithstanding her violence and folly, the greatest intellects of the new philosophy, Kepler and Newton, were to be counted amongst the followers of Christ.

The story of this and other similar episodes of ecclesiastical history has been told by the late Dr. J. W. Draper in a book which has, I believe, obtained a large circulation in Japan, and to which for this reason, rather than because of its intrinsic importance as dealing with the question before us to-day, I shall devote a few words. To a reader who does not possess much independent knowledge of the Christian religion, the title of that book cannot fail to be misleading. For the history it narrates is not a conflict between Science and Religion, but rather between Science and the Church, and indeed we might say the Romish Church, since (as he admits) that organization has been specially selected as the object of Dr. Draper's attacks, on the extraordinary ground that "extremists determine the issue" (preface, p. x). The struggle, he says, "commenced when Christianity began to attain political power;" and again he compares the primitive form which Christianity adhered to during the first three centuries of its existence with the adulterated and paganized type it assumed under Constantine, and expressly says that these modifications "eventually brought it in conflict with science" (p. 39). To speak then of the conflict of science with religion is to give the name of religion to that deposit of semi-pagan error which during thirteen centuries gathered undisturbed on the fair temple of God-gathered so thickly that priests and people alike forgot the difference of dust and stone until the trumpet of Luther shook the walls. He would be a rash man who would

II.]

between Religion and Science."

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even now pronounce complete the work of cleansing which was then begun; and in that work science has lent no unimportant aid.

The misconception of the struggle which the title of Dr. Draper's work implies, appears frequently in other ways throughout the volume. In the words of a philosophic critic who is a fellow-countryman of the author, and who will not be accused of any pro-christian bias, "religion" is to Dr. Draper "a symbol which stands for unenlightened bigotry or narrowminded unwillingness to look facts in the face;" the title of his book "keeps open an old and baneful source of confusion ;" and the same critic concludes that there is no such conflict' as that of which Dr. Draper has undertaken to write the history.1 To give you an idea of the way in which the impression of conflict is needlessly fostered, I may quote from the headings to Chapter VI, where we find the antithesis:-"Scriptural view of the world, the earth a flat surface: Scientific view, the earth a globe." Now, as I have already said, it is not the scriptural view that the earth is a flat surface. It was, if you like, the popular and even at one time the ecclesiastical view, but you will not find it either in the Jewish or in the Christian scriptures. In the same chapter Dr. Draper goes on to say that "on the basis of this view of the structure of the world great religious systems have been founded" (p. 153). The implication would seem to be that Christianity is one of these, and if so, could we conceive any more ludicrous mistatement of its "basis ?" Again, Dr. Draper speaks of Copernicus as "aware that his doctrines were totally opposed to revealed truth" (p. 167), though Copernicus was probably enough of a biblical scholar to be aware of just the opposite. Perhaps, however, the drollest climax of historical distortion is reached where Dr. Draper speaks of the origination

1 Fiske. The Unseen World and Other Essays, p. 138 et seq.

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Nature her own Revelation.

[LECT.

and rise of Mohammedanism as a "reformation "_"the first or Southern Reformation," while the movement of Luther is "the second or Northern Reformation."

Resuming now our brief historical review, we find that after the Reformation (the "second or Northern" one, I mean) the relations of the Church to science became much more friendly, although in a number of more or less conspicuous instances the Church was compelled to abandon certain outlying and quite unimportant positions by the advancing tide of scientific discovery. Views regarding the age of the earth and the method of creation, the antiquity of man and other points, which were in part at least based as a too literal adhesion to the Jewish scriptures, had to be rejected; and the truth became more fully recognized that Nature is her own revelation: that the revelation which forms the basis of religion refers to no matters concerning which knowledge can be otherwise obtained. While some theologians endeavoured by a certain elasticity of interpretation to remove the apparent inconsistencies, others saw in these only an additional reason for modifying their views as to the inspired character of the books (additional, I mean, in the sense that the same conviction was borne in upon them as a result of biblical criticism, apart altogether from the bearings of scientific discovery). Indeed scientific discovery has in a measure tended to confirm rather than discredit the authority of the ancient Jewish scriptures, by showing their singular freedom from scientific blunders as compared with other writings claiming to be sacred. It is a fact hard for the opponents of revelation to explain, that the order in which living beings are named in the biblical account as appearing on the earth, is that which the theory of evolution requires, and the evidence of geology proves. Even so unfriendly a critic as Haeckel, in speaking of the so-called Mosaic cosmogony, cannot refrain from bestowing his "just and sincere admiration on the Jewish lawgiver's grand insight into

II.J The controversy has changed its ground. 57 nature:" and a scientific thinker of a very different school, Dr. Joule-to whom more than to any other man we owe the doctrine of the conservation of energy-says "it appears to be impossible to give a clearer, and at the same time an equally succinct, account of the dynamical theory of creation, than that which is comprised in the second and third verses of the first chapter of Genesis.”

It would be pleasant to linger over the entertaining spectacle of the modern historian of creation complacently patting his venerable predecessor on the back. But the point is one on which we need not dwell; for, if I am not mistaken, the views regarding inspiration which theologians generally hold are such as would not preclude the possibility of historical or scientific mistakes on the part of those writers whom they regard as the vehicles of a spiritual revelation. In fact the controversy, so far as there is a controversy, proceeds now on wholly other lines. Scepticism has thrown aside such rusty old weapons as the story of Galileo. That they were ever used is a matter of no more than antiquarian interest; to us now the questions which have a living reality are very different from those. If you think that Christianity is to be resisted by the sort of attack for which Dr. Draper's book furnishes you the materials, you are making the same kind of mistake as a soldier would make who should choose a bow and arrows as his equipment in an age of torpedo-boats and rifled guns. Compared with the questions of to-day, the old case of Genesis versus Geology is as a fossil to a living organism, scarcely less a fossil than the much older conflict of the inquisition with astronomy. In this connection, however, one noticeable episode in the relation of the ecclesiastical world to scientific thought is so recent as to deserve mention. Twenty-three years ago the late Mr. Darwin propounded a theory of the origin of species, applicable to the

1History of Creation, Vol. I, p. 38.