We might go over the battle-fields of Ethnology and note how, a few
years since, an honored American investigator, proposing in a learned
society the discussion of the question between the origin of the human
race from a single pair and from many pairs, was called to order and
silenced as atheistic, by a Protestant divine whose memory is justly
dear to thousands of us.[149]
Interesting would it be to look over the field of
Meteorology--beginning with the conception, supposed to be scriptural,
of angels opening and shutting "the windows of heaven" and letting out
"the waters that be above the firmament" upon the earth--continuing
through the battle of Fromundus and Bodin, down to the onslaught upon
Lecky, in our own time, for drawing a logical and scientific conclusion
from the doctrine that meteorology is obedient to laws.[150]
We might go over the battle-fields of Cartography and see how at
one period, on account of expressions in Ezekiel, any map of the
world which did not place Jerusalem in the centre, was looked on as
impious.[151]
We might go over the battle-fields of Social Science in Protestant
countries, and note the opposition of conscientious men to the taking
of the census, in Sweden and in the United States, on account of
the terms in which the numbering of Israel is spoken of in the Old
Testament.[152]
And we might also see how, on similar grounds, religious scruples have
been avowed against so beneficial a thing as Life Insurance.[153]