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 man's power of argument, he nevertheless is 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 he begins with a warm appreciation of
the splendid integrity and self-denial which the scientific search for
truth has revealed.
=Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season?
Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train?
Knowest thou the ordinances of the heavens?
Canst thou establish the dominion thereof in the earth?
Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds,
That abundance of waters may cover thee?
Canst thou send forth lightnings, that they may go,
And say unto thee, Here we are?
Who hath put wisdom in the inward parts?
Or who hath given understanding to the mind?
Who can number the clouds by wisdom?
Or who can pour out the bottles of heaven,
When the dust runneth into a mass,
And the clods cleave fast together?=
=--Job 38:31-38.=
Such is man's 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. Men 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 men 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 Thee for the world in which Thou hast 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 Thee 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 Thy creation and we ourselves are part of
it. Help us humbly to learn its laws and trust its mighty powers._
_We thank Thee 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 Thy image, loved by Thee before the worlds
began, and fashioned for Thy eternal habitation. May we be brave
enough to bear the truth, strong enough to live in the light, glad to
yield ourselves to Thee._
_We thank Thee for that world brighter and better than all, opened
for us in the broken heart of the Saviour; 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, he will see in what a world of superstitious
fear mankind 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 men 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 man's 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 have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. But
the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my
name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance
all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give
unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your
heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.--John 14:25-27.=
_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 unto faith the things that are
faith's, that so we may continually attain to a deeper knowledge and
love of Thee, Who art the Fountain of Light, and dwellest in the
Light which no man can approach unto; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen._--Francis Bacon, 1561.
Seventh Week, Third Day
If one approach the scientists, as we have suggested, with
appreciation of their devoted spirit and of their beneficent service,
he is likely to be fair and Christian in his judgment. For one thing,
he will readily understand why some of them are not religious men. 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 man 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 any man should persistently restrict himself to
a physical science, should never hear a symphony or an oratorio,
should shut out from his experience any dealing with music or
enjoyment of it, he would in the end lose all musical capacity, and
would become a man 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
he becomes capable of intelligent sympathy with scientists, even when
he 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 ye, beloved, building up yourselves 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 mercy, who are in doubt; and some save, snatching them
out of the fire; and on some have mercy with fear; hating even the
garment spotted by the flesh.=
=Now unto him that is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set
you before the presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding
joy, to the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be
glory, majesty, dominion and power, before all time, and now, and for
evermore. Amen.--Jude 20-25.=
_O God, who so fillest all things that they only thinly veil Thy
presence; we adore Thee in the beauty of the world, in the goodness
of human hearts and in Thy thought within the mind. We praise Thee
for the channels through which Thy grace can come to us; sickness and
health, joy and pain, freedom and necessity, sunshine and rain, life
and death._
_We thank Thee 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 man
and woman, the confidence of little children; for the patience of
teachers and the encouragement of friends._
_We bless Thee for the stirring ministry of the past, for the story
of noble deeds, the memory of holy men, 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 Thee; for His cradle, His cross, and His crown._
_May His Spirit live within us, conquer all the selfishness of man,
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 his
scientific eminence thereby qualified to talk wisely on politics or
literature or religion; rather, so far as _a priori_ considerations
are concerned, he is 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 he 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 men'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 man, 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 of men, let him 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
men.
=But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit
searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men
knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man, which is in
him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God.
But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is
from God; that we might know the things that were freely given to us
of God. Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom
teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth; combining spiritual things
with spiritual words. Now the natural man receiveth not the things of
the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot
know them, because they are spiritually judged.--I Cor. 2:10-14.=
_O Eternal and glorious Lord God, since Thy glory and honor is the
great end of all Thy works, we desire that it may be the beginning
and end of all our prayers and services. Let Thy great Name be
glorious, and glorified, and sanctified throughout the world. Let the
knowledge of Thee fill all the earth as the waters cover the sea. Let
that be done in the world that may most advance Thy glory. Let all
Thy works praise Thee. Let Thy wisdom, power, justice, goodness,
mercy, and truth be evident unto all mankind, that they may observe,
acknowledge, and admire it, and magnify the Name of Thee, the Eternal
God. In all the dispensation of Thy Providence, enable us to see
Thee, and to sanctify Thy 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 Thine
by which we are called, and that, as we profess ourselves to be Thy
children, so we may study and sincerely endeavor to be like Thee in
all goodness and righteousness, that we may thereby bring glory to
Thee our Father which art in heaven; that we and all mankind may have
high and honorable thoughts concerning Thee, in some measure suitable
to Thy glory, majesty, goodness, wisdom, bounty, and purity, and may
in all our words and actions manifest these inward thoughts touching
Thee 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 men 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 men. But if anyone tries to rest his
case against religion on the adverse opinions of great scientists, he
easily can be driven from his 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 men of science "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 men of religious spirit. Whatever argument
is to be based on the testimony of the scientists is rather for
religion than against it.
=For this cause I also, having heard of the faith in the Lord Jesus
which is among you, and the love which ye show toward all the saints,
cease not 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 unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge
of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know
what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his
inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his
power to us-ward who believe.--Eph. 1:15-19.=
_O Lord, who by Thy holy Apostle hast taught us to do all things in
the Name of the Lord Jesus and to Thy glory; give Thy blessing, we
pray Thee, to this our work, that we may do it in faith, and
heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. All our powers of body
and mind are Thine, and we would fain devote them to Thy service.
Sanctify them and the work in which we are engaged; let us not be
slothful, but fervent in spirit, and do Thou, 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 Thy glory and for the furtherance of Thy 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 Thee, and be known by Thee through and
in Thy Son Jesus Christ, that we may be Thine 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 man's 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
man's life is not represented_.
=Let no man deceive himself. If any man thinketh that he is wise
among you in this world, 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 that taketh the wise in their craftiness: and again, The
Lord knoweth the reasonings of the wise, that they are vain.
Wherefore let no one glory 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 ye are
Christ's; and Christ is God's.--I Cor. 3:18-23.=
_O Thou Infinite Spirit, who occupiest all space, who guidest all
motion, thyself unchanged, and art the life of all that lives, we
flee unto thee, in whom we also live and move and have our being, and
would reverence Thee with what is highest and holiest in our soul. We
know that Thou art not to be worshiped as though Thou needest aught,
or askedst the psalm of praise from our lips, or our heart's poor
prayer. O Lord, the ground under our feet, and the seas which whelm
it round, 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 Thee, and we know that Thou askest no homage
of bended knee, nor heart bowed down, nor heart uplifted unto Thee.
But in our feebleness and our darkness, dependent on Thee for all
things, we lift up our eyes unto Thee; as a little child to the
father and mother who guide him by their hands, so do our eyes look
up to Thy countenance, O Thou who art our Father and our Mother too,
and bless Thee for all Thy gifts. We look to the infinity of Thy
perfection with awe-touched heart, and we adore the sublimity which
we cannot comprehend. We bow down before Thee, and would renew our
sense of gratitude and quicken still more our certainty of trust,
till we feel Thee 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 men
through their experience as they were able to understand him, and as a
result the great Christian Book, like a true Christian man, 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 men what they could
understand:
=God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by
divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days
spoken unto us in his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things,
through whom also he made the worlds.--Heb. 1:1, 2.=
Of all limitations that are entirely obvious in the ancient
Hebrew-Christian world, the current view of the physical universe is
the most unescapable. To suppose that God never can reveal to men
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 have yet many things to
say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now" (John 16:12).
_O Thou who hast visited us with the Dayspring from on high, who hast
made light to shine in the darkness, we praise Thy holy name and
proclaim Thy wonderful goodness._
_We bless Thee 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 men's
eyes to the hills._
_We thank Thee that in the fulness of the times Thou didst gather Thy
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 Thou art eternally. Thou dost not abhor our
flesh, nor shrink from our earthly toil. Thou rememberest our
frailty, bearest with our sin, and tastest 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 Thy mind to the
day when we wake in Thy image; for the breathing of Thy spirit into
ours till we see Thee 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 man's history.
Stephen Leacock remarks that whenever a professor discusses anything,
he has to retreat at least 2,000 years 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 men. _At the
beginning men 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 man;
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 man did not cause the gods did.
If, therefore, a primitive man were asked the cause of rain, he had
but one answer: a god made it rain. That was his _scientific_
answer, for no other explanation of rain could he conceive. That was
his _religious_ answer, for he worshiped the spirit on whom he
must depend for showers. This significant fact, therefore, stands
clear: _To primitive man 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 worshipped 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 man 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 be he
that removeth his neighbor's landmark" (Deut. 27:17).
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!
"I've dreamed of sunsets when the sun, supine,
Lay rocking on the ocean like a god,
And threw his weary arms far up the sky,
And with vermilion-tinted fingers,
Toyed with the long tresses of the evening star."[4]
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, he
must understand the rules of grammar. Were one to make grammar his
exclusive specialty, the Bible to him, so far as he held strictly to
his 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, she suffuses them
with her preferences and her 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 man 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 his canvas; and a man
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; Gen. 7:11);
it was stationary (Psalm 93:1; Psalm 104:5); the heavens, like an
upturned bowl, "strong as a molten mirror" (Job 37:18; Gen. 1:6-8;
Isa. 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 man (Gen. 1:14-19); there was a sea above
the sky, "the waters which were above the firmament" (Gen. 1:7; Psalm
148:4), and through the "windows of heaven" the rain came down (Gen.
7:11; Psalm 78:23); beneath the earth was mysterious Sheol where dwelt
the shadowy dead (Isa. 14:9-11); and all this had been made in six
days, a short and measurable time before (Gen. 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 man's idea of the solar
universe, when for the first time in man's 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 showeth his handiwork" (Psalm 19:1).
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 he
answered, By the word of God at a stroke. That was his scientific
answer, and his religious answer too. When, therefore, the evolving
universe was disclosed by modern science, when men 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 men 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 man has 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.
"A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where cave men dwell.
Then a sense of Love and Duty
And a face turned from the clod,
Some call it Evolution
And others--call it God."
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 man 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 men
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 men 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 mankind, 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 man's statement of the way, according to his
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 men; 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," he
says, "doubtless wrote Hamlet." A specialist on the influence of
geography on human nature interprets everything as the reaction of man
to seas, mountains, plains, and deserts, and Lombroso even thinks the
revolutionary temperament especially native to men who live on
limestone formations! Specialists in economic history are sure that
man is little more than an animated nucleus 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 man 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 man 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._ Man himself is the supreme Fact, and
all the world that man could bow before, man's 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 man, and not with
what lies below him.
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 man from the rest of the
universe, and endeavor an interpretation of the unhuman remainder.
They forget that man is 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 man 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 man; all
the controlling convictions of the other are drawn from the heights
and depths of man's own life. The first approach inevitably leads to
irreligion, for Spirit cannot reveal itself except in spirit and until
one has found God in man he 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 man 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 his wire
nerves and painted muscles is unlike a real man. 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,
man 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. Man 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 man's 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 man's fraternity may be woven into fact. When Christian physicians
heal the sick or stamp out plagues that for ages have been man's curse
and his 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 man's life is relieved of crushing handicaps; when old
superstitions that had filled man's life with dread for ages are
driven like fogs before science's illumination, and religious faith is
freed of their incumbrance; 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 man's 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 thee, though
thou hast not known me" (Isa. 45:5).
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.
[4] J. G. Holland.