Chapter VII — Faith and Science

Daily Readings

The intellectual difficulties which trouble many folk involve the relations of faith with science, but often they do not so much concern the abstract theories of science as they do the particular attitudes of scientists. We are continually faced with quotations from scientific specialists, in which religion is denied or doubted or treated contemptuously, and even while the merits of the case may be beyond the ordinary person's power of argument, they are nevertheless shaken by the general opinion that what ministers say in the pulpit on Sunday is denied by what scientists say all the rest of the week. In the daily readings, therefore, we shall deal with the scientists themselves, as a problem which faith must meet.

Seventh Week, First Day

No one can hope to deal fairly with the scientists, in their relationship with faith, unless beginning with a warm appreciation of the splendid integrity and self-denial which the scientific search for truth has revealed.

"Can you bind the cluster of the Pleiades, or loose the belt of Orion? Can you bring out Mazzaroth in its season? Or can you guide the Great Bear with its cubs? Do you know the ordinances of the heavens? Can you set their dominion over the earth? Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that an abundance of water may cover you? Can you send out lightnings, that they may go, and say to you, 'Here we are!'? Who has put wisdom in the mind? Or who has given understanding to the heart? Who can number the clouds by wisdom? Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven, when the dust hardens in clumps, and the clods cling together?" —Job 38:31–38 (NKJV)

Such is our ancient wonder before the physical universe; and in the endeavor to discover the truth about it science has developed saints and martyrs whose selfless and sacrificial spirit is unsurpassed even in the annals of the Church. People have spent lives of obscure and unrewarded toil to get at a few new facts; they have suffered persecution, and, even after torture, have reaffirmed the truth of their discoveries, as did Galileo, when he insisted, "The earth does move." They have surrendered place and wealth, friends and life itself in their passion for the sheer truth, and when human service was at stake have inoculated themselves with deadly diseases that they might be the means of discovering the cure, or have sacrificed everything that we hold most dear to destroy an ancient, popular, and hurtful fallacy. The phrase "pride of science" is often used in depreciation of the scientists. There is some excuse for the phrase, but in general, when one finds pride, dogmatism, intolerance, they are the work of ignorance and not of science. The scientific spirit has been characteristically humble. Says Huxley: "Science seems to me to teach in the highest and strongest manner the great truth which is embodied in the Christian conception of entire surrender to the will of God. Sit down before the fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever end nature leads, or you shall learn nothing.... I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this." The Christian, above all others, is bound to approach the study of the controversy between science and theology with a high estimate of the integrity and disinterested unselfishness of the scientists.

O God, we thank You for the world in which You have placed us, for the universe whose vastness is revealed in the blue depths of the sky, whose immensities are lit by shining stars beyond the strength of mind to follow. We thank You for every sacrament of beauty; for the sweetness of flowers, the solemnity of the stars, the sound of streams and swelling seas; for far-stretching lands and mighty mountains which rest and satisfy the soul, the purity of dawn which calls to holy dedication, the peace of evening which speaks of everlasting rest. May we not fear to make this world for a little while our home, since it is Your creation and we ourselves are part of it. Help us humbly to learn its laws and trust its mighty powers.

We thank You for the world within, deeper than we dare to look, higher than we care to climb; for the great kingdom of the mind and the silent spaces of the soul. Help us not to be afraid of ourselves, since we were made in Your image, loved by You before the worlds began, and fashioned for Your eternal habitation. May we be brave enough to bear the truth, strong enough to live in the light, glad to yield ourselves to You.

We thank You for that world brighter and better than all, opened for us in the broken heart of the Savior; for the universe of love and purity in Him, for the golden sunshine of His smile, the tender grace of His forgiveness, the red renewing rain and crimson flood of His great sacrifice. May we not shrink from its searching and surpassing glory, nor, when this world fades away, fear to commit ourselves to that world which shall be our everlasting home. Amen. —W. E. Orchard.

Seventh Week, Second Day

The Christian's appreciation of scientists should not stop short of profound gratitude for their service to religion. If one reads Burns's "Tam o' Shanter," with its "ghaists," "warlocks and witches," and "auld Nick," and remembers that these demonic powers were veritable facts of terror once, one will see in what a world of superstitious fear humanity has lived. Bells were first put into church steeples, not to call folk to worship, but to scare the devils out of thunder-clouds, and the old cathedral bells of Europe are inscribed with declarations of that purpose. The ancients hardly believed in God so vividly as they believed in malicious demons everywhere. Now the Gospel removed the fear of these from the first Christians; it made people aware of a conquering alliance with God, so that believers no longer shared the popular dread of unknown demons. But so long as thunderstorms, pestilences, droughts, and every sort of evil were supposed to be the work of devils, even the Gospel could not dispel the general dread. Only new knowledge could do that. While Christianity therefore at its best has removed the fear of evil spirits, science has removed the fact of them as an oppressive weight on life. Today we not only do not dread them, but we do not think of them at all, and we have science to thank for our freedom. By its clear facing of facts and tracing of laws, science has lifted from the human soul an intolerable burden of misbeliefs and has cleansed religion of an oppressive mass of credulity. True religion never had a deadlier foe than superstition and superstition has no deadlier foe than science. Little children, brought up in our homes to trust the love of the Father, with no dark background of malignant devils to harass and frighten them, owe their liberty to the Gospel of Jesus indeed, but as well to the illumination of science that has banished the ancient dreads.

"These things I have spoken to you while being present with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." —John 14:25–27 (NKJV)

To God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit, we pour forth most humble and hearty supplications, that He, remembering the calamities of mankind, and the pilgrimage of this our life in which we spend our days, would please to open to us new consolations out of the fountain of His goodness for the alleviating of our miseries. We humbly and earnestly ask that human things may not prejudice such as are Divine, so that from the opening of the gates of sense, and the kindling of a greater natural light, nothing of incredulity may arise in our minds towards Divine mysteries; but rather, O Lord, that our minds being thoroughly cleansed and purged from fancy, and yet subject to the Divine will, there may be given to faith the things that are faith's, that so we may continually attain to a deeper knowledge and love of You, Who are the Fountain of Light, and dwell in the Light which no one can approach unto; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. —Francis Bacon, 1561.

Seventh Week, Third Day

If one approaches the scientists, as we have suggested, with appreciation of their devoted spirit and of their beneficent service, a fair and Christian judgment is likely. For one thing, it is easy to understand why some of them are not religious. The laws of psychology are not suspended when religion is concerned; there as elsewhere persistent attention is the price of a vivid sense of reality. When, therefore, a person habitually thinks intensely of nothing but biological tissue, or chemical reactions, or the diseases of a special organ, the results are not difficult to forecast. Darwin's famous confession that in his exacting concentration on biology he utterly lost his power to appreciate music or poetry is a case in point. Said Darwin, "My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of a large collection of facts." It is needless to say that such a mind is not likely to be more vividly aware of God than it is to feel music's beauty or poetry's truth. The plain fact is that if anyone should persistently restrict themselves to a physical science, should never hear a symphony or an oratorio, should shut out from their experience any dealing with music or enjoyment of it, they would in the end lose all musical capacity, and would become a person whose appreciation of music was nil and whose opinion on music was worthless. Just such an atrophy of life is characteristic of intense specialists. When one understands this, intelligent sympathy with scientists becomes possible, even when one does not at all agree with their religious opinions. Jude gives us a remarkable injunction, plainly applicable here: "On some have mercy who are in doubt."

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen. —Jude 20–25 (NKJV)

O God, who so fill all things that they only thinly veil Your presence; we adore You in the beauty of the world, in the goodness of human hearts and in Your thought within the mind. We praise You for the channels through which Your grace can come to us; sickness and health, joy and pain, freedom and necessity, sunshine and rain, life and death.

We thank You for all the gentle and healing ministries of life; the gladness of the morning, the freedom of the wind, the music of the rain, the joy of the sunshine, and the deep calm of the night; for trees, and flowers, the clouds, and skies; for the tender ministries of human love, the unselfishness of parents, the love that binds partners together, the confidence of little children; for the patience of teachers and the encouragement of friends.

We bless You for the stirring ministry of the past, for the story of noble deeds, the memory of holy people, the printed book, the painter's art, the poet's craft; most of all for the ministry of the Son of Man, who taught us the eternal beauty of earthly things, who by His life set us free from fear, and by His death won us from our sins to You; for His cradle, His cross, and His crown.

May His Spirit live within us, conquer all the selfishness of humanity, and take away the sin of the world. Amen. —W. E. Orchard.

Seventh Week, Fourth Day

The tendency of scientific specialization to shut out the appreciation of life's other values has one notable result: the opinions of scientific specialists in the physical realm on matters of religion are generally not of major importance. There is a popular fallacy that an expert in one realm must be listened to with reverence on all subjects. But the fact is that a great physicist is not by scientific eminence thereby qualified to talk wisely on politics or literature or religion; rather, so far as a priori considerations are concerned, they are thereby disqualified. Mr. Edison cannot say anything on electricity that is insignificant; but when he gave an interview on immortality he revealed to everyone who knew the history of thought on that subject and the issues involved in it, that on matters outside his specialty he could say things very insignificant. The more one personally knows great specialists, the more one sees how human they are, how interest in one thing shuts out interest in others, how the subject on which the mind centers grows real and all else unreal, how very valuable their judgment is on their specialties, and how much less valuable even than ordinary people's is their judgment on anything beside. This truth does not concern religion only; it concerns any subject which calls into play appreciative faculties that their science does not use. For a person, therefore, to surrender religious faith because a specialist in another realm disowns it is absurd. If one wishes, outside of those whose vital interest in religion makes them specialists there, to get confirmation from another class, let them look not to physicists but to judges. They are accustomed to weigh evidence covering the general field of human life; and among the great judicial minds of this generation, as of all others, one finds an overwhelming preponderance of religious people.

But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. —1 Corinthians 2:10–14 (NKJV)

O Eternal and glorious Lord God, since Your glory and honor is the great end of all Your works, we desire that it may be the beginning and end of all our prayers and services. Let Your great Name be glorious, and glorified, and sanctified throughout the world. Let the knowledge of You fill all the earth as the waters cover the sea. Let that be done in the world that may most advance Your glory. Let all Your works praise You. Let Your wisdom, power, justice, goodness, mercy, and truth be evident to all, that they may observe, acknowledge, and admire it, and magnify the Name of You, the Eternal God. In all the dealings of Your Providence, enable us to see You, and to sanctify Your Name in our hearts with thankfulness, in our lips with thanksgiving, in our lives with dutifulness and obedience. Enable us to live to the honor of that great Name of Yours by which we are called, and that, as we profess ourselves to be Your children, so we may study and sincerely endeavor to be like You in all goodness and righteousness, that we may thereby bring glory to You our Father who is in heaven; that we and all may have high and honorable thoughts concerning You, in some measure suitable to Your glory, majesty, goodness, wisdom, bounty, and purity, and may in all our words and actions manifest these inward thoughts with suitable and becoming words and actions; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. —Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale, 1609.

Seventh Week, Fifth Day

So far in our thought we have tacitly consented to the popular supposition, that the scientists are at odds with religion. Many of them unquestionably are. But in view of the obsessing nature of scientific specialties, the wonder is not that some scientists are non-religious; the wonder is that so many are profoundly people of faith in God. The idea that scientists as a whole are irreligious is untrue. Lists of testimonials from eminent specialists in favor of religion are not particularly useful, for, as we have said, the judgment of specialists outside their chosen realm is, at the most, no more valuable than that of ordinary people. But if anyone tries to rest their case against religion on the adverse opinions of great scientists, they easily can be driven from that position. Sir William Crookes, one of the world's greatest chemists, writes: "I cannot imagine the possibility of anyone with ordinary intelligence entertaining the least doubt as to the existence of a God — a Law-Giver and a Life-Giver." Lord Kelvin, called the "Napoleon of Science," said that he could think of nothing so absurd as atheism; Sir Oliver Lodge, perhaps the greatest living physicist and certainly an earnest believer, writes, "The tendency of science, whatever it is, is not in an irreligious direction at the present time"; Sir George Stokes, the great physicist (died 1903), affirmed his belief that disbelievers among scientists "form a very small minority"; and Sir James Geikie, Dean of the Faculty of Science at Edinburgh University, impatiently writes, "It is simply an impertinence to say that 'the leading scientists are irreligious or anti-Christian.' Such a statement could only be made by some scatter-brained chatterbox or zealous fanatic." The fact is that, in spite of the tendency of high specialization to crowd out religious interest and insight, our great scientists have never thrown the mass of their influence against religion, and today, in the opinion of one of their chief leaders, are growing to be increasingly people of religious spirit. Whatever argument is to be based on the testimony of the scientists is rather for religion than against it.

Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe. —Ephesians 1:15–19 (NKJV)

O Lord, who by Your holy Apostle has taught us to do all things in the Name of the Lord Jesus and to Your glory; give Your blessing, we pray, to this our work, that we may do it in faith, and heartily, as to the Lord, and not to others. All our powers of body and mind are Yours, and we would gladly devote them to Your service. Sanctify them and the work in which we are engaged; let us not be slothful, but fervent in spirit, and do You, O Lord, so bless our efforts that they may bring forth in us the fruit of true wisdom. Strengthen the faculties of our minds, and dispose us to exert them for Your glory and for the furtherance of Your Kingdom. Save us from all pride and vanity and reliance upon our own power or wisdom. Teach us to seek after truth, and enable us to gain it; while we know earthly things, may we know You, and be known by You through and in Your Son Jesus Christ, that we may be Yours in body and spirit, in all our work and undertakings; through Jesus Christ. Amen. —Thomas Arnold, 1795.

Seventh Week, Sixth Day

Far more important than the opinions of individual scientists for religion or against it, is the fact that scientists are coming increasingly to recognize the limitations of their field. The field of science is limited; its domain is the system of facts and their laws, which make the immediate environment of our life; but with the Origin of all life, with the character of the Power that sustains us and with the Destiny that lies ahead of us science does not, cannot deal. The most superficial observance shows how little any great soul lives within the confines of science's discoveries. Carlyle, after his great bereavement, writes to his friend Erskine:

"'Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done' — what else can we say? The other night in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more and more miserable, these words, that brief and grand Prayer, came strangely to my mind, with an altogether new emphasis; as if written and shining for me in mild pure splendor, on the black bosom of the Night there; when I, as it were, read them word by word — with a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of composure which was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I once formally repeated that prayer — nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of man's soul it is; the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor human nature." But supposing that the facts of science were all of reality and the laws of science all of truth, what sort of prayer could Carlyle have offered? Another has suggested the form which the Lord's Prayer would take in a world that lacked religious faith: "Our brethren who are upon the earth, hallowed be our name; our Kingdom come; our will be done on earth; for there is no heaven. We must get us this day our daily bread; we know we cannot be forgiven, for Law knows no forgiveness; we fear not temptation, for we deliver ourselves from evil; for ours is the Kingdom and ours is the power, and there is no glory and no forever. Amen." In such a barren prayer the whole of our life is not represented.

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their own craftiness"; and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile." Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come — all are yours. And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. —1 Corinthians 3:18–23 (NKJV)

O Infinite Spirit, who occupies all space, who guides all motion, Yourself unchanged, and are the life of all that lives, we flee to You, in whom we also live and move and have our being, and would reverence You with what is highest and holiest in our soul. We know that You are not to be worshiped as though You needed anything, or asked the psalm of praise from our lips, or our heart's poor prayer. O Lord, the ground under our feet, and the seas which surround it, the air which holds them both, and the heavens sparkling with many a fire — these are a whisper of the psalm of praise which creation sends forth to You, and we know that You ask no homage of bended knee, nor heart bowed down, nor heart uplifted to You. But in our feebleness and our darkness, dependent on You for all things, we lift up our eyes to You; as a little child to the father and mother who guide them by their hands, so do our eyes look up to Your countenance, O You who are our Father and our Mother too, and bless You for all Your gifts. We look to the infinity of Your perfection with awe-touched heart, and we adore the sublimity which we cannot comprehend. We bow down before You, and would renew our sense of gratitude and quicken still more our certainty of trust, till we feel You a presence close to our heart, and are so strong in the heavenly confidence that nothing earthly can disturb us or make us fear. Amen. —Theodore Parker.

Seventh Week, Seventh Day

The difficulty which many Christians feel concerning science centers around their loyalty to the Bible. They still are under the domination of the thought that the Christian idea of the Bible is the same as the Mohammedan idea of the Koran or the Mormon idea of Joseph Smith's sacred plates. The Koran was all written in heaven, word for word, say orthodox Mohammedans, before ever it came to earth. As for the Mormon Bible, God buried the plates on which he wrote, said Smith, and then disclosed their hiding place, and his prophet translated them verbatim, so that the Mormon book is literally inerrant. But this is not the Christian idea of the Bible. Inspiration is never represented in Scripture as verbal dictation where human powers and limitations are suspended, so that like a phonographic plate the result is a mechanical reproduction of the words of God. Rather God spoke to people through their experience as they were able to understand Him, and as a result the great Christian Book, like a true Christian person, represents alike the inbreathing of the Divine and the limitation of the human. So the Epistle to the Hebrews clearly states that God did what He could in revealing partially to partial people what they could understand:

God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds. —Hebrews 1:1–2 (NKJV)

Of all limitations that are entirely obvious in the ancient Hebrew-Christian world, the current view of the physical universe is the most inescapable. To suppose that God never can reveal to us anything about the world, transcending what the ancient Hebrews could understand, is to deny the principle which Jesus applied even to the more important realm of spiritual truth: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" (John 16:12 NKJV).

O You who has visited us with the Dayspring from on high, who has made light to shine in the darkness, we praise Your holy name and proclaim Your wonderful goodness.

We bless You for the dawning of the light in far-off ages as soon as human eyes could bear its rays. We remember those who bore aloft the torch of truth when all was false and full of shame; those far-sighted souls who from the mountain tops of vision heralded the coming day; those who labored in the darkened valleys to lift our eyes to the hills.

We thank You that in the fullness of the times You gathered Your light into life, so that even simple folk could see; for Jesus the Star of the morning and the Light of the world.

We commemorate His holy nativity, His lowly toil, His lonely way; the gracious words of His lips, the deep compassion of His heart, His friendship for the fallen, His love for the outcast; the crown of thorns, the cruel cross, the open shame. And we rejoice to know as He was here on earth, so You are eternally. You do not abhor our flesh, nor shrink from our earthly toil. You remember our frailty, bear with our sin, and taste even our bitter cup of death.

And now we rejoice for the light that shines about our daily path from the cradle to the grave, and for the light that illumines its circuit beyond these spheres from our conception in Your mind to the day when we wake in Your image; for the breathing of Your spirit into ours till we see You face to face: in God, from God; to God at last. Hallelujah. Amen. —W. E. Orchard.

Comment for the Week

I

The innermost questions which some minds raise about religion cannot be answered without candid discussion of the obvious contrasts between faith and science. The conflict between science and theology is one of the saddest stories ever written. It is a record of mutual misunderstanding, of bitterness, bigotry, and persecution, and to this day one is likely to find the devotees of religion suspicious of science and scientists impatient with the Church.

If we are to understand the reason for this controversy between science and theology, we must take a far look back into human history. Stephen Leacock remarks that whenever a professor discusses anything, a retreat of at least 2,000 years is needed to get a running start. Our retreat must be farther than that; it carries us to the earliest stage in which we are able to describe the thoughts of people. At the beginning, people attributed to superhuman spirits all activities in the world which they themselves did not perform. If the wind blew, a spirit did it; if the sun rose, a spirit moved it; if a storm came, a spirit drove it. Natural law was non-existent to the primitive mind; every movement in nature was the direct result of somebody's active will. From the mysterious whispering of a wind-swept field to the crashing thunder, what humanity did not cause the gods did.

If, therefore, a primitive person were asked the cause of rain, there was but one answer: a god made it rain. That was the scientific answer, for no other explanation of rain could be conceived. That was the religious answer, for the spirit on whom one must depend for showers was worshiped. This significant fact, therefore, stands clear: To primitive humanity a religious answer and a scientific answer were identical. Sunrise was explained, not by planetary movements which were unknown, but by the direct activity of a god, and the Dawn then was worshiped in the same terms in which it was explained. The historic reason for the confusion between science and religion at once grows evident. At the beginning they were fused and braided into one; the story of their relationship is the record of their gradual and difficult disentangling.

Wherever peace has come between science and religion, one finds a realm where the boundaries between the two are acknowledged and respected. Ask now the question, What makes it rain? There is a scientific answer in terms of natural laws concerning atmospheric pressure and condensation. There is also a religious answer, since behind all laws and through them runs the will of God. These two replies are distinct, they move in different realms, and are held together without inconsistency. As Sabatier put it, "Since God is the final cause of all things, he is not the scientific explanation of any one thing." In how many realms where once confusion reigned between the believers in the gods and the seekers after natural laws, is peace now established! Rain and sunrise, the tides and the eclipses, the coming of the seasons and the growing of the crops — for all such events we have our scientific explanations, and at the same time through them all the person of religion feels the creative power of God. Peace reigns in these realms because here no longer do we force religious answers on scientific questions or scientific answers on religious questions. Evidently the old Deuteronomic law is the solution of the conflict between science and religion: "Cursed is the one who moves his neighbor's landmark" (Deuteronomy 27:17 NKJV).

II

Left thus in the negative, however, this might seem to mean that we are to divide our minds into air-tight compartments, and allow no influences from one to penetrate another. But science and religion do tremendously affect each other, and no honest dealing ever can endeavor to prevent their mutual reaction. Our position is not thus negative; it affirms a positive and most important truth. Life has many aspects; science, art, religion, approach it from different angles, with different interests and purposes; and while they do influence each other, they are not identical and each has solid standing in its own right. When science has grown domineering, as though her approach to reality were the only one and her conclusions all of truth, the poets have had as much distaste for her as have the theologians. Shelley, who called himself an atheist, had no interest in religion's conflict with the extreme claims of science; yet listen to his aroused and flaming language as he pleads the case for poetry against her: "Poetry is something divine.... It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all things; it is as the odor and color of the rose to the texture of the elements which compose it, and the form and splendor of unfaded beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue, love, patriotism, friendship — what were the scenery of this beautiful universe which we inhabit; what were our consolations on this side of the grave — and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not even soar?" This involves no denial of science's absolute right to her own field — the "texture of the elements which compose" the rose, and the "secrets of anatomy." But it is a justified assertion that this field of science is not all of reality, and that what the "owl-winged faculty of calculation" can reach is not all of truth.

What is a sunset? Science sets forth the answer in tables where the light waves that compose the colors are counted and the planetary movements that bring on the dusk are all explained. Poetry answers in a way how different!

Is one of these answers more true than the other? Rather it is absurd to compare their truth; they are not contradictory; they approach the same fact with diverse interests, and seek in it different aspects of reality. Each has its rights in its own field. And so far is it from being true that science has a clear case in favor of its own superior importance, that Höffding, the philosopher, remarks, "It well may be that poetry gives more perfect expression to the highest Reality than any scientific concept can ever do."

Any great fact is too manifold in its meanings to be exhausted by a single method of approach. If one would know the Bible thoroughly, the rules of grammar must be understood. Were one to make grammar an exclusive specialty, the Bible, so far as one held strictly to that science, would be nouns and verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and prepositions, and the law-abiding relationships between them. This mere grammarian would know by such a method one aspect of the Bible, but how little of the Book would that aspect be! No rules of grammar can interpret the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians or explain the story of the Cross. The facts and laws of the Book's language a grammarian could know, but the beauty and the soul of it, the innermost transforming truth of it, would be unperceived.

So life is too rich and various to be exhausted by any one approach. Science seeks facts and arranges them in systems of cause and effect. Poetry sees these bare facts adorned with beauty, suffusing them with preferences and appreciations. Religion sees the whole gathered up into spiritual unity, filled with moral purpose and good will, and in this faith finds peace and power. There need be no conflict between these various approaches; they are complementary, not antagonistic; and no one sees all the truth by any one of them alone. So a chemist might come to a spring to analyze it; a painter to rejoice in its beauties and reproduce them on canvas; and a person athirst might come to drink and live. Shall they quarrel because they do not all come alike? Let them rather see how partial is the experience of each without the others!

III

In the mutual trespassing which has caused our problem, religion has had her guilty share, and the reason is not difficult to find. God did not have to give a modern scientific education to His ancient Hebrew saints before He could begin to reveal to them something of His will and character. And they, writing their experience and thought of Him, could not avoid — as no generation's writers can avoid — indicating the view of the physical world which they and their contemporaries held. It is easy, therefore, from scores of Scripture passages to reconstruct the early Hebrew world. Their earth was flat and was founded on an underlying sea (Psalm 136:6; Psalm 24:1–2; Genesis 7:11); it was stationary (Psalm 93:1; Psalm 104:5); the heavens, like an upturned bowl, "strong as a cast metal mirror" (Job 37:18 NKJV; Genesis 1:6–8; Isaiah 40:22; Psalm 104:2), rested on the earth beneath (Amos 9:6; Job 26:11); the sun, moon, and stars moved within this firmament, of special purpose to illumine us (Genesis 1:14–19); there was a sea above the sky, "the waters which were above the firmament" (Genesis 1:7; Psalm 148:4), and through the "windows of heaven" the rain came down (Genesis 7:11; Psalm 78:23); beneath the earth was mysterious Sheol where dwelt the shadowy dead (Isaiah 14:9–11); and all this had been made in six days, a short and measurable time before (Genesis 1). This was the world of the Hebrews.

Because when the Hebrews wrote the Bible their thoughts of God, their deep experience of Him, were interwoven with their early science, Christians, through the centuries, have thought that faith in God stood or fell with early Hebrew science and that the Hebrew view of the physical universe must last forever. In the seventeenth century, Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, said: "Heaven and earth, center and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water.... This work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning." Of what tragedy has this identification of science with religion been the cause!

When astronomy began to revolutionize our idea of the solar universe, when for the first time in human imagination the flat earth grew round and the stable earth began moving through space seventy-five times faster than a cannon-ball, Pope Paul V solemnly rendered a decree, that "the doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture." When geology began to show from the rocks' unimpeachable testimony the long leisureliness of God, laying the foundations of the world, a Christian leader declared geology "not a subject of lawful inquiry," "a dark art," "dangerous and disreputable," "a forbidden province," "an awful evasion of the testimony of revelation." This tragic record of theology's vain conflict with science is the most pitiable part of the Church's story. How needless it was! For now when we face our universe of magnificent distances and regal laws has religion really suffered? Has a flat and stationary earth proved essential to Christianity, as Protestants and Catholics alike declared? Rather the Psalmist could not guess the sweep of our meaning when now we say, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork" (Psalm 19:1 NKJV).

In the last generation the idea of evolution was the occasion of a struggle like that which attended the introduction of the new astronomy. How was the world made? asked the ancient Hebrew, and the answer was, By the word of God at a stroke. That was the scientific answer, and the religious answer too. When, therefore, the evolving universe was disclosed by modern science, when we read in fossil and in living biological structure the undeniable evidence of a long history of gradually changing forms of life, until the world was seen not made like a box but growing like a tree, many people of religion thought the faith destroyed. They identified the Christian Gospel with early Hebrew science! Today, however, when the general idea of evolution is taken for granted as gravitation is, how false this identification obviously appears! Says Professor Bowne, "An Eastern king was seated in a garden, and one of his counselors was speaking of the wonderful works of God. 'Show me a sign,' said the king, 'and I will believe.' 'Here are four acorns,' said the counselor; 'will your Majesty plant them in the ground, and then stoop down and look into this clear pool of water?' The king did so. 'Now,' said the other, 'Look up.' The king looked up and saw four oak trees where he had planted the acorns. 'Wonderful!' he exclaimed; 'this is indeed the work of God.' 'How long were you looking into the water?' asked the counselor. 'Only a second,' said the king. 'Eighty years have passed as a second,' said the other. The king looked at his garments; they were threadbare. He looked at his reflection in the water; he had become an old man. 'There is no miracle here, then,' he said angrily. 'Yes,' said the other; 'it is God's work whether he do it in one second or in eighty years.'"

Such an attitude as this is now a commonplace with Christian folk. A vast and growing universe through which sweep the purposes of God is by far the most magnificent outlook for faith that we have ever had. The Gospel and Hebrew science are not identical; the Gospel is not indissolubly bound to any science ancient or modern; for science and religion have separable domains.

The same story of needless antagonism is now being written about religion and natural law. When science began plotting nature's laws, the control of the world seemed to be snatched from the hands of deity and given over to a system of impersonal rules. God, whose action had been defined in terms of miracle, was forced from one realm after another by the discovery of laws, until at last even comets were found to be not whimsical but as regular in their law-abiding courses as the planets, and God seemed to be escorted to the edge of the universe and bowed out. When Newton first formulated the law of gravitation, the artillery of many an earnest pulpit was let loose against him. One said that Newton took "from God that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism" and that he "substituted gravitation for Providence." But now, when science has so plainly won her case, in her own proper field; when we know to our glory and profit so many laws by which the world is governed, and use our knowledge as the most splendid engine of personal purpose and freedom which we have ever had, we see how great our gain has been. Nor is it more a practical than a religious gain. God once was thought of chiefly in terms of miraculous action; He came into His world now and again, like the deus-ex-machina of a Greek tragedy, to solve a critical dilemma in the plot. Now all the laws we know and many more are His regular ways of action, and through them all continuously His purpose is being wrought. As Henry Drummond exclaimed, "If God appears periodically, he disappears periodically. If he comes upon the scene at special crises, he is absent from the scene in the intervals. Whether is all-God or occasional God the nobler theory?"

Nothing, therefore, can be more pathetic than the self-styled "defenders of the faith" who withstand the purpose of reverent students to give scientific answers to scientific questions. Such people are not really defending the faith. They are doing exactly what Father Inchofer did when he said, "The opinion that the earth moves is of all heresies the most abominable"; what Mr. Gosse did when he maintained, in explanation of geology's discoveries, that God by the use of stratified rock and fossils deliberately gave the earth the appearance of development through long ages, while really he made it in six days; what Mr. Southall did when, in the face of established anthropology, he claimed that the "Egyptians had no Stone age and were born civilized"; what the Dean of Chichester did when he preached that "those who refuse to accept the history of the creation of our first parents according to its obvious literal intention, and are for substituting the modern dream of evolution in its place, cause the entire scheme of man's salvation to collapse." These were not defending the faith; they were making it ridiculous in the eyes of intelligent people and were embroiling religion in controversies where she did not belong and where, out of her proper realm, she was foredoomed to defeat. For scientific problems are not a matter for faith; they are a matter for investigation. No one can settle by faith the movements of the planets, the method of the earth's formation, the age of humanity, the explanation of comets. These lie in science's realm, not in religion's, and religious faith demeans herself when she tries to settle them. Let science be the grammarian of the world to observe its parts of speech and their relations! Religion deals with the soul of the world, its deepest source, its spiritual meaning, its divine purpose.

IV

Science, however, has not always been content with the grammarian's task. When we have frankly confessed religion's sins in trespassing on scientific territory, we must note that science has her guilty share in the needless conflict. Today one suspects that the Church's vain endeavor by ecclesiastical authority to force religious solutions on scientific problems is almost over. But the attempt of many scientists to claim the whole field of reality as theirs and to force their solutions on every sort of problem is not yet finished. This, too, is a vain endeavor. To suppose that the process of scientific observation and inference can exhaust the truth of life is like supposing that there is no more meaning in Westminster Abbey than is expressed in Baedeker.

Scientists, for example, sometimes claim domains which are not theirs by spelling abstract nouns with capitals, by positing Law or Evolution as the makers and builders of the world. But law never did anything; law is only our statement of the way, according to observation, in which things are done. To explain the universe as the creation of Law is on a par with explaining homes as the creation of Matrimony. Abstract nouns do not create anything and the capitalizing of a process never can explain it. So, too, Evolution does nothing to the world; it is the way in which whoever makes the world is making it. As well explain the difference between an acorn and an oak by saying that Growth did it, as to explain the progress of creation from stardust to civilization by changing e to E. Science may describe the process as evolutionary, but its source, its moving power, and its destiny are utterly beyond her ken.

For another thing, scientists often invade realms which are not theirs, by stretching the working theories of some special science to the proportions of a complete philosophy of life. A generation ago, when geology and biology were in their "green and salad days," the enthusiasm inspired by the splendid results of their hypotheses went to strange lengths. One professor of geology seriously explained the pyramids of Egypt to be the remains of volcanic eruption which had forced its way upwards by slow and stately motion. The hieroglyphs were crystalline formations and the shaft of the great pyramid was the airhole of a volcano. Scientists are human like all of us; their specialties loom large; the ideas that work in their limited areas seem omnipotent. So a student of the influence of sunlight on life thinks reactions to the sun explain everything. "Heliotropism," they say, "doubtless wrote Hamlet." A specialist on the influence of geography on human nature interprets everything as the reaction of people to seas, mountains, plains, and deserts, and Lombroso even thinks the revolutionary temperament especially native to those who live on limestone formations! Specialists in economic history are sure that we are little more than animated nuclei of hunger and that all life is explicable as a search for food. And psychologists, charmed by the neatness of description which causal connections introduce into our inner life, leap to the conclusion, which lies outside their realm, that personality is an illusion, freedom a myth and our mental life the rattling of a causal chain forged and set in motion when the universe began. All this is not science; it is making hypotheses from a limited field of facts masquerade as a total philosophy of life.

The underlying reason why science, when she regards her province as covering everything, inevitably clashes with the interests of religion, is that she starts her view of the world from the sub-human side. The typical sciences are physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, biology, and the view of the universe which they present is the basis on which all other sciences proceed. But this foundation is sub-human; the master ideas involved in it are all obtained with the life of humanity left out of account. Such an approach presents a world-machine, immense and regular, and when, later, psychology and sociology arise, how easy it is to call the human life which they study a by-product of the sub-human world, an exudation arising from the activities of matter.

Religion, on the contrary, starts with human life. Fall down in awe, Science cries, before this vast sub-human world! And the religious person answers: What world is this I am to bow before? Is it not the universe which my mind knows and whose laws my intellect has grasped? This universe, so far as it exists at all for me, is apprehended by my vision, penetrated by my thought, encompassed by my interpretations. What is really great and wonderful here, is not the world which I understand, but the mind that understands it — not the sub-human but the human. Humanity itself is the supreme Fact, and all the world that we could bow before, our mind must first of all contain. The master truth is not that my mind exists within a physical universe, but that the physical universe is encompassed by my mind. Therefore, when I interpret life, I will start with humanity, and not with what lies below us.

Romanes, the English scientist, illustrates in his experience the difference which these two approaches make. When, returning from agnosticism to Christianity, he explained his lapse, he said, "I did not sufficiently appreciate the immense importance of human nature, as distinguished from physical nature, in any inquiry touching theism.... Human nature is the most important part of nature as a whole whereby to investigate the theory of theism. This I ought to have anticipated on merely a priori grounds, had I not been too much immersed in merely physical research." Of how many now does this same explanation hold! They segregate humanity from the rest of the universe, and endeavor an interpretation of the unhuman remainder. They forget that we are part and parcel of the universe, bone of its bone, as imperative an expression of its substantial nature as are rocks and stars, and that any philosophy which interprets the world minus humanity has not interpreted the world.

Here is the difference between a Haeckel and a Phillips Brooks. All the dominant ideas of the one are drawn from existence minus humanity; all the controlling convictions of the other are drawn from the heights and depths of our own life. The first approach inevitably leads to irreligion, for Spirit cannot reveal itself except in spirit and until one has found God in humanity one will not find Him in nature. The second as certainly leads to religion, for, as Augustine said, "If you dig deep enough in every man you find divinity." Over against the testimony of the sub-human that there is a mechanistic aspect to the world, stands the unalterable testimony of the human that there is as well an ideal, purposive, and spiritual aspect to the world. Surely the latter brings us nearer to the heart of truth. We never understand anything except in terms of its highest expression and humanity is the summit of nature.

Could religion find a voice, therefore, she would wish to speak not in terms of apology but of challenge, when science, assuming all of reality for its field, grows arrogant. Describe the aspect of the world that belongs to you, she would say. I have learned my lesson; your field is yours, and no interference at my hands shall trouble you again. But remember the limitations of your domain — to observe and describe phenomena and to plot their laws. That is an immense task and inexpressibly useful. But when you have completed it, the total result will be as unlike the real world as a medical manikin with wire nerves and painted muscles is unlike a real person. The manikin is sufficiently correct; everything is truly pictured there — except life. So things are as science sees them, but things are more than science sees. Plot then the mechanistic aspect of the world, but do not suppose that you have caught all of truth in that wide-meshed net! When you have said your last word on facts observed and laws induced, humanity rises up to ask imperious questions with which you cannot deal, to present urgent problems for which no solution ever has been found save Augustine's, "I seek for God in order that my soul may live."

V

Our thought so ended, however, would leave science and religion jealously guarding their boundaries, not cooperating as allies. Such suspicious recognition of each other's realms does not exhaust the possibilities. When once the separate functions each by the other have been granted, we are free to turn our thought to the inestimable service which each is rendering. Consider the usefulness of science to the ideal causes of which religion is the chief! Science has given us the new universe, not more marvelous in its vastness than in its unity. For the spectroscope has shown that everywhere through immeasurable space the same chemical properties and laws obtain; the telescope has revealed with what mathematical precision the orbits in the heavens are traced and how unwaveringly here or among the stars gravitation maintains its hold. Humanity never had so immense and various and yet so single and unified a world before. Polytheism once was possible, but science has banished it forever. Whatever may be the source of the universe, it is one Source, and whoever the creator, He is more glorious in our imagination than He could ever have been before. Science also has put at the disposal of the ideal causes such instruments as by themselves they would never have possessed. We are hoping for a new world-brotherhood, and we pray for it in Christian churches as the Father's will. But the instruments by which the inter-racial fellowship must be maintained and without which it would be unthinkable are science's gift. Railroads, steamships, telegraphs, telephones, wireless — these are the shuttles by which the ideal faiths in human fraternity may be woven into fact. When Christian physicians heal the sick or stamp out plagues that for ages have been our curse and despair, when social maladjustments are corrected by Christian philanthropy, and saner, happier ways of living are made possible; when comforts that once were luxuries are brought within the reach of all, and life is relieved of crushing handicaps; when old superstitions that had filled our life with dread for ages are driven like fogs before science's illumination, and religious faith is freed of their encumbrance; when great causes of relief have at their disposal the unimaginable wealth which our modern economic system has created — can anyone do sufficient justice to our debt to science? And once more science has done religion an inestimable service in establishing as a point of honor the ambition to see straight and to report exactly. The tireless patience, the inexorable honesty, the sacrificial heroism of scientists, pursuing truth, is a gift of incalculable magnitude. Huxley is typical of science at its best when he writes in his journal his ideal — "To smite all humbugs however big; to give a nobler tone to science; to set an example of abstinence from petty personal controversies and of toleration for everything but lying; to be indifferent as to whether the work is recognized as mine or not, so long as it is done." Countless obscurantisms and bigotries, shams and sophistries have been driven from the churches by this scientific spirit and more are yet to go. Science has shown intellectual dishonesty to be a sin of the first rank. Christianity never can be thankful enough for science; on our knees we should be grateful for her as one of God's most indispensable gifts. Nor should the fact that many a scientist whose contributions we rejoice in was not certain about God defer our gratitude. Cyrus, the Persian, is not the only one to whom the Eternal has said, "I will gird you, though you have not known Me" (Isaiah 45:5 NKJV).

When, however, science has done her necessary work, she needs her great ally, religion. Without the insight and hope which faith alone can bring, we learn a little about the world, our minds enclosed in boundaries beyond which is dark, unfathomable mystery. We rejoice in nature's beauty and in friendship, suffer much with broken bodies and more with broken family ties, until we die as we were born — the spawn of mindless, soulless powers that never purposed us and never cared. And the whole universe is purposeless, engaged with blind hands, that have no mind behind them, on tasks that mean nothing and are never done. Science and religion should not be antagonists; they are mutually indispensable allies in the understanding and mastery of life.

Footnotes

¹ J. G. Holland. ↩