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RELIGION AND HEALTH
BY
JAMES J. WALSH, M.D., Ph.D., Sc.D. etc.
MEDICAL DIRECTOR OF FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY,
PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY, CATHEDRAL COLLEGE
LECTURER ON PSYCHOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY, MARYWOOD COLLEGE,
SCRANTON, PA., MT. ST. MARY'S, PLAINFIELD, N.J.
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1920
_Copyright, 1920_,
By Little, Brown, and Company.
_All rights reserved_
Published October, 1920
_Norwood Press_
Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Cushing Co.,
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
To
HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS
AN EXEMPLAR OF RELIGION AND HEALTH
FOR OUR GENERATION
CONTENTS
Page
Introduction 1
CHAPTER
I Can We Still Believe? 8
II Prayer 33
III Sacrifice 59
IV Charity 80
V Fasting and Abstinence 109
VI Holydays and Holidays 120
VII Recreation and Dissipation 132
VIII Mortification 147
IX Excesses 168
X Purity 184
XI Insanity 205
XII Nervous Disease 217
XIII Dreads 234
XIV Suffering 254
XV Pain 265
XVI Suicide and Homicide 277
XVII Longevity 294
XVIII The Bible and Health 306
XIX Health and Religion 319
Index 333
{1}
RELIGION AND HEALTH
INTRODUCTION
Physicians are agreed that there is no entirely satisfactory
definition for health. We all know quite well what we mean when we use
the word, but it does not admit of such exact limitations as would
make a scientific formulation of its meaning. Religion is another of
the words which, in spite of its common use, is extremely difficult to
define exactly, and it has often been said that we have no definition
that will satisfy all those who profess religion and certainly not all
those who have made a study of it from the standpoint of the science
of theology. As is true of health, each of us knows pretty thoroughly
what we mean when we use the word, though our definitely formulated
signification for it might not meet with the approval of others,
especially of those who are exacting in their requirements. With the
two principal words in the title incapable of exact definition, it
might seem that the subject matter of this book would be rather vague
at best and unpromising in practical significance. But all this
indefiniteness is in theory. There are no two words in the language
that are more used than health and religion, none that are less vague
in practice and no two subjects have a wider appeal or a more
paramount interest. The linking them together for discussion in common
because of their mutual influence will serve to {2} throw light on
both of them and undoubtedly help toward a better understanding of
each.
Ordinarily the most satisfactory definition of a word can be obtained
from its etymology. Unfortunately in the matter of religion there is a
very old-time division of opinion as to the derivation of the word
which makes etymology of less definite significance than usual. Cicero
suggested that _religio_ came from _relegere_, to go through or over
again in reading, speech or thought, as prayers and religious
observances generally are repeated. On the other hand St. Augustine
and Lactantius insisted on deriving _religio_ from the Latin verb
_religare_, which means to bind again, to bind back, to bind fast. The
word obligation has an analogous origin and illustrates the meaning of
religion as if its form from etymology should have been religation.
It is this latter derivation that has been most commonly accepted in
the modern time. A man may recognize the existence of God and yet not
feel any particular obligations toward Him, but if he binds himself
anew to the deity whom he recognizes, by trying to make his life
accord with the divine will as he views it, then he practices
religion. James Martineau said, "By religion I understand the belief
and worship of Supreme Mind and Will, directing the universe and
holding moral relations with human life."
What will occupy us in this book is the effect of this profound
feeling and sense of obligation toward a higher power on health, that
is, on that wholeness of body and mind which constitutes a normal
condition for human beings.
There are many more relations between the two words than would at
first be suspected or that most people {3} might think possible. The
old high German word _haelu_ or _haelo_, from which our word health is
derived, meant also salvation. The original root _hal_ means haleness
or wholeness and also refers to healing, and curiously enough the word
holiness is derived from the same root. Holiness has now come to refer
to perfection, or at least normality of soul, while health refers to
normality of body. Our word health is related more directly to whole
than it is to heal, in spite of the feeling there might be because of
the spelling that the latter word must represent its immediate origin.
Holiness of soul exactly corresponds in etymology with wholeness of
body.
Cardinal Newman would, I suppose, be an authority on the subject of
religion as satisfying for most people as could be found. In his
"Grammar of Assent", which he wrote in order to define as exactly as
might be possible just how men came to admit certain propositions with
special reference to the acceptance of religion, he gave a definition
of what he meant by the word in as simple words as it is possible to
use, perhaps, to express so large a subject. He said: "By religion I
mean the knowledge of God, of His Will, and of our duties toward Him."
Matthew Arnold, who represents among English-speaking peoples almost
the opposite pole of thought to Cardinal Newman, in what concerns
religion, suggested in "Literature and Dogma" that "Religion, if we
follow the intention of human thought and human language in the use of
the word, is ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; the
passage from morality to religion is made when to morality is applied
emotion." Both of these men, in spite of their distance apart, insist
on duty as the essence of religion. Matthew Arnold calls it ethics and
says nothing as to the foundation of it; the great English {4}
Cardinal speaks very simply of our duties toward God. Newman says
nothing of the emotions but appeals only to the reason, while,
curiously enough, the rationalizer in religion emphasizes the
emotions.
Between these two definitions there is a world of difference that we
shall not attempt to bridge, for we want to treat of the relations and
above all the interaction of religion and health in the widest sense
of these terms. The "Century Dictionary" definition more nearly
resembles that of Cardinal Newman than Matthew Arnold's formula, but
it generalizes in a way that would describe the practice of religion
for a greater number of people and especially for those who still
believe that there are more gods than one. It runs: "Recognition of
and allegiance in manner of life to a superhuman power or superhuman
powers, to whom allegiance and service are regarded as justly due."
Even this definition is not too broad for the subject matter of this
book, for I am one of those who believe that there is a blessing on
every sincere effort of worship of the Higher Power, no matter how
groping it may be. Above all, every regulation of life with reference
to a power above us felt to have a Providence over the world in which
we live has an almost inevitable reaction on health and will lead to
better things. The sincere pursuit of good conduct as an end in life
under a Providence that is recognized will almost necessarily lead to
better knowledge of our relations to the higher powers, and also of
our relations to ourselves and the world around us.
With these preliminaries we are ready to consider religion and health
and their mutual influence, but the inevitable question that suggests
itself is, "Is religion a living force in our time? Has not science
given it its {5} death blow? While it walks the earth as yet, is it
not only as the ghost of an outworn phase of human interest? Is it any
more than merely a superstition in the sense once suggested as the
etymology of this word by James Russell Lowell as if derived from
_superstes_, a survivor, representing, as all superstitions do, a
survival from a previous state of thinking, the reasons for which have
disappeared, though the mental inertia of human beings still keeps
them in vogue?" A good many people in our time, including not a few
of those who are rather prone to consider themselves above the rest of
the world, have not hesitated to express the view that it is only old
fogies and especially those ignorant of modern science who continue to
think that religion can still be taken seriously. Some few of them
have the best of good will in the world and appreciate how much of
benefit was derived from religious belief, benefit which they confess
did good both for the mind and the body of man; and they are even
ready to express sorrow that it has outlived its usefulness, but they
feel that they must insist that religion is now only the wraith of its
former self, a misty congeries of old-fashioned beliefs which the
ignorant alone reverence, accepting it very much as they do ghost
stories in general.
President Schurman of Cornell in an address before the Liberal Club of
Buffalo thirty years ago, [Footnote 1] reminded us that there are a
number of people who are always ready to proclaim the end of religion
and to weep for it. Religion continues to be as living a force and as
lively as ever in spite of their proclamations, and this has been true
generation after generation practically since the beginning of
Christianity. President Schurman said:
{6}
"Every now and then we hear the requiem of religion chanted alike by
the spirits who mock and by the pious souls who have 'no language
but a cry.' I suppose we shall always have professional mourners.
But it is greatly to be desired that their services should not be
prematurely given. If there is anything in the world that is alive
and active, it is just this religious spirit, for whose demise
certain mourners go about the streets. The body of religion changes,
the spirit and the life abide forever. To the assertion that
religion is defunct, I reply by pointing to the intense interest
which men to-day everywhere feel in religion. It was recently stated
by a Massachusetts Judge--Burke observed truly that we Americans
like to appeal to the law--that there is nothing in the world
perennially interesting but religion. The ground of this dictum is
to be found in the constitution of humanity; for the human soul
which the things of sense fail to satisfy can attain its true home
and its complete self-realization only in conscious communion with
the Spirit behind the veil."
[Footnote 1: "Agnosticism," Scribners, New York, 1895. ]
The recent death of Mrs. Humphry Ward recalled the experience with
regard to her book "Robert Elsmere." In a certain narrow circle of
intellectuals it was supposed that this novel represented a veritable
death blow to a series of compromises which had permitted people
familiar with modern progress and science, and especially with the
higher criticism, to continue to practice their religion in peace in
spite of the fact that belief had long since departed. How amusing it
is now and indeed how almost incomprehensible to learn that Mrs.
Humphry Ward's husband, a well-known English critic, suggested shortly
after its publication that her novel had {7} "shaken the very pillars
of Christianity." It is surprising indeed how often the foundations of
religion are supposed to have been completely undermined, and yet the
edifice itself continues to stand and to be the shelter for the vast
majority of mankind from the buffetings of a world that without it
would be almost shelterless for them and a place of trial too hard to
bear.
Men are incurably religious, and just as no tribe has been found,
however low in the scale of savagery, which has not formulated for
itself some system of worship of a higher power and definite feelings
of dependence on it, so even those whose minds under the influence of
certain phases of intellectual development lead them away from formal
religion find deep in their hearts the belief and appreciation of
their relations to a power that makes for good, even though it may be
difficult to understand the mystery of it. Long ago the Scriptural
expression was formulated that only the fool who thinketh not in his
heart says there is no God. Due acknowledgment of the thought in
practice, however imperfect it may be, is religion.
Religion has been with us for all the period that we know anything
about man, for the very cave man buried his dead with manifest
confidence in a hereafter, and there seems no doubt that it will be
with us until this stage of mundane affairs has passed. It affects the
body as well as the mind, as indeed do all the great modes of thought,
and it deserves to be cultivated, not only for its effect on the soul
but also on the mind and heart and the bodily powers. There is no
doubt at all that it means very much, and there is only the question
of facing its significance for the whole man candidly and
straightforwardly.
{8}
CHAPTER I
CAN WE STILL BELIEVE?
There is no doubt that man's quite instinctive attitude toward the
mystery which surrounds him, out of which he came and into which he
goes, has always so influenced his attitude of mind toward his body
and its processes as to affect them deeply. The medicine man with his
appeal to the religious as well as the superstitious feelings of man
always had a potent influence over the most primitive of mankind, but
culture has not obliterated this source of special reaction in men.
Even now, for the great majority of men it still remains true that no
matter how vague their religious instinct may be, it continues to
affect, to a notable extent, their physiological and psychological
functions. An eclipse of the religious instinct is at the basis of the
increase in suicide and also undoubtedly of insanity in our day. The
lack of an abiding faith in Providence is the source of many dreads
and worries that affect health. Every physician is sure to know of
highly educated patients whose ills reflect their mental relation to
the mystery of life and whose symptoms take on or lose significance,
according to their religious feelings.
The question that in our time, however, is coming insistently into a
great many minds is, Can we, as intelligent human beings, reasonably
in touch with man's recent progress in science, be fair with ourselves
and still continue {9} to believe in the great religious truths that
affected our ancestors so deeply? While we may realize all the depth
of the mystery in the midst of which we are, can we, with our little
minds, hope to fathom any of it? This is the questioning feeling that
will not down for a certain number of those who have had educational
advantages. Must we not just confess our inability to, know anything
definite in reality with regard to it, and feel that those who have
thought that they held the key of the mystery were deluding themselves
or allowing themselves to be caught by pseudo-knowledge, an
inheritance from unthinking generations, instead of realities?
Has not the modern advance in science made it very clear to us that
all we can hope to say of man's origin and man's destiny is that we do
not know just what all this mystery that surrounds us is about? Will
not this very rational attitude of mind preclude at least the educated
intelligent people of our generation from having their health affected
in any way by their religion? Above all, if religion is to influence
health, must there not be some regular practice of it, and have not
the scientists of the last generation made it quite clear that this is
out of the question in any sincere and serious way for any one who
knows enough of science and appreciates the present position of our
knowledge of the facts of the relationship of man to the universe?
For a large and growing number of people, as the result of the
prevalence of this impression, the practice of religion seems to be an
interesting but entirely worn-out relic of an older generation when
folk were more easily satisfied with regard to such things than we are
in our enlightened scientific era. Religion is surely not something
that our contemporaries, with their broader {10} outlook on the
meaning of life, can be brought to conform to very readily. The
question "Can We Still Believe?" would seem then to have for answer in
our time at best, "Speculatively, perhaps yes! but practically, no!"
We may still feel the religious instinct, but we can scarcely be
expected to acknowledge religious obligations in any such strictness
as would demand in our already overstrenuous daily life with its many
duties the devotion of time to religious exercises. We surely cannot
be expected to assume any additional obligations or rebind ourselves
to a divinity who seems to be getting farther away from us.
Almost needless to say, if all this be true, then religion can have,
in our time, only a very slight and quite negligible influence on
health. Men may be incurably religious in the mass, as yet, but this
instinct is manifestly passing, for the educated at least, and for
sensible people is now without any significance for physical
processes, though it may at times even yet affect psychological
states.
There is only one fair and practical way to reply to this question
"Can We Still Believe?" especially for those who think that modern
science has obscured the answer, and that is to turn to the lives of
the men who made our modern science and see how they answered it in
their definite relations to religion. The surprise is to find that
while so many people, and not a few of them professors in colleges and
even universities, are of the very often expressed opinion that
science makes men irreligious or at least unreligious, that is not
true at all of our greatest scientists. Most of the men who have done
the great work of modern science have been deeply religious, and a
great many of them have practiced their {11} religion very faithfully.
It is true that not a few of the lesser lights in science have been
carried away by the impression that science was just about to explain
everything, and there was no longer any need of a creator or creation
or of Providence, but that is only because of their own limitations.
Francis Bacon, himself a distinguished thinker in science, declared
some three hundred years ago that his own feeling was that a little
philosophy takes men away from God, but a sufficiency of philosophy
brings them back. His opinion has often been reached by our deepest
thinkers in the modern time, and it is just as true for natural
philosophy as it was for the metaphysical philosophy of the older
time, for Bacon's aphorism had been more than once anticipated in the
early days of Christianity, notably by St. Augustine, and it would not
be hard to find quotations from Greek thinkers along the same line.
The Scriptures said very emphatically, "Only the fool who thinketh not
in his heart says there is no God."
While young scientists then are so prone to feel that science and
religion are in opposition, and a certain number of scientific workers
never seem to outgrow their youthfulness in this regard, it must not
be forgotten that the greatest scientists of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries have practically all been firm believers in
religion. Lord Kelvin, at the beginning of the twentieth century, at
the moment when he was looked up to by all the world as the greatest
of living physical scientists, did not hesitate to say that "science
demonstrates the existence of a Creator." As president of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science he declared: "But strong,
overpowering proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie all
around us; and if ever {12} perplexities, whether metaphysical or
scientific occur, they turn us away with irresistible force, showing
to us, through nature, the influence of free will, and teaching us
that all living beings depend on one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."
Once when particularly disgusted with the materialistic views of those
who, while denying the existence of the Creator, attributed the
wonders of nature, animate and inanimate, to the potency of a
fortuitous concourse of atoms, Lord Kelvin wrote to Liebig, the great
chemist, asking him if a leaf or a flower could be formed or even made
to grow by chemical forces, and received the emphatic reply, "I would
more readily believe that a book on chemistry or on botany could grow
out of dead matter by chemical processes."
Expressions similar to those of Lord Kelvin and Liebig are
commonplaces in the history of science. Sir Humphry Davy declared,
"The true chemist sees God in all the manifold forms of the external
world." Linnaeus, to whom the modern world confesses that it owes so
much in the organization of botanical science, once exclaimed in what
has well been called a spirit of rapture:
"I have traced God's footprints in the works of His creation; and in
all of them, even in the least, and in those that border on
nothingness, what power, what wisdom, what ineffable perfection!"
It would be very easy to make a long list of extremely great
scientists who were firm believers. Clerk Maxwell once said to a
friend, "I have read up many queer religions; there is nothing like
the old one after all; and I have looked into most philosophical
systems, and I have seen that none will work without a God." Pasteur
declared in his address before the French Academy, when {13} admitted
as a member, "Blessed is the man who has an ideal of the virtues of
the Gospel and obeys it." He had once said, impatient at the
pretensions of pseudo-scientists: "Posterity will one day laugh at the
sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I
study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I
pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory."
Kepler, the great astronomer to whom we owe so many significant basic
discoveries, once said:
"The day is near at hand when one shall know the truth in the book
of nature as in the Holy Scriptures, and when one shall rejoice in
the harmony of both revelations."
Sir Isaac Newton, whose modesty was equaled only by the magnitude of
his discoveries, was so impressed with his own littleness in the
contemplation of the wonderful works of God that he declared, a short
time before his death, "I seem to have been only like a boy playing on
the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother
pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of
truth lay all undiscovered before me."
Dumas, the great French chemist, for many years the secretary of the
French Academy of Sciences, once suggested the great difference there
is in the matter of religious belief between the original worker in
science and those who know their science only at second-hand. Those
who have acquired their knowledge of science easily have no idea of
the difficulties which the original investigator had to encounter and
how deep are the mysteries which he knows lie all around him. The
second-hand scientist becomes conceited over his {14} knowledge, but
the original investigator becomes humble. Dumas said:
"People who only exploit the discoveries of others, and who never
make any themselves, greatly exaggerate their importance, because
they have never run against the mysteries of science which have
checked real savants. Hence their irreligion and their infatuation.
It is quite different with people who have made discoveries
themselves. They know by experience how limited their field is, and
they find themselves at every step arrested by the incomprehensible.
Hence their religion and their modesty. Faith and respect for
mysteries is easy for them. The more progress they make in science,
the more they are confounded by the infinite."
Professor P. G. Tait, professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh
University for the last forty years of the nineteenth century, and who
was the co-author with Lord Kelvin of Thomson's and Tait's "Natural
Philosophy" (the well-known T+T) summed up the question of the
supposed conflict of religion and science rather strikingly and in a
way that makes it easy to comprehend many modern misunderstandings. He
said:
"The assumed incompatibility of Religion and Science has been so
often confidently asserted in recent times that it has come to be
taken for granted by writers of leading articles, etc., and it is,
of course, perpetually thrust by them broadcast before their too
trusting readers.
"But the whole thing is a mistake, and a mistake so grave that no
true scientific man (unless indeed he be literally a
specialist--such as a pure mathematician, or a mycologist or
entomologist) runs, in Britain at least, the smallest risk of making
it.
"When we ask of any competent authority who are the {15} 'advanced',
the best, and the ablest scientific thinkers of the immediate past
(in Britain), we cannot but receive for answer such names as
Brewster, Faraday, Forbes, Graham, Rowan Hamilton, Herschel, and
Talbot. This must be the case unless we use the word 'science' in a
perverted sense. Which of these great men gave up the idea that
Nature evidences a Designing Mind?"
Lord Rayleigh, the physicist and mathematician, professor of
experimental physics at Cambridge and then Tyndall's successor as
professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution, who, after
having been secretary of the Royal Society for some ten years, was
elected to what has been called the highest official position in the
scientific world--the presidency of the Royal Society--wrote in
answer to a question: [Footnote 2] "I am not able to write you at
length, but I may say that in my opinion true Science and true
Religion neither are nor could be opposed.
"A large number of 'leading scientists' are not irreligious or
anti-Christian. Witness: Faraday, Maxwell, Stokes, Kelvin, and a large
number of others less distinguished."
[Footnote 2: I owe this and a number of other quotations in this
chapter to Tabrum "Religious Beliefs of Scientists," London, 1911.]
Practically all the men whose names are connected with the evolution
of electricity in the nineteenth century were thorough-going believers
in revealed religion. Galvani, Volta, Coulomb, Ohm, Ampere, Oersted,
Faraday, Sir Humphry Davy, and many others are among the believers.
Faraday once declared when the dark shadow of death was creeping over
him, "I bow before Him who is the Lord of all, and hope to be kept
waiting patiently for His time and mode of releasing me, {16}
according to His divine word and the great and precious promises
whereby His people are made partakers of the divine nature."
Earlier in life, in the very maturity of the intellectual powers which
made him immortal in science, lest perhaps some one should suggest
that he had lost his mental grasp toward the end, he said: "When I
consider the multitude of associate forces which are diffused through
nature; when I think of that calm and tranquil balancing of their
energies which enables elements, most powerful in themselves, most
destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated
together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from
the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the
beneficence, and grandeur beyond our language to express, of the Great
Disposer of all!"
It would be easy to multiply quotations such as this from the great
original workers in modern electricity. Hans Christian Oersted, for
instance, the great Danish scientist, to whom we owe the discovery of
the "magnetic effect" of the electric current, the demonstration of
the intimate relationship between magnetism and electricity, whose
name all Europe rang with in the early part of the nineteenth century,
was a man of really great genius and scientific penetration and yet of
deeply fervent piety. He did not hesitate to say that genuine
knowledge of science necessarily produced a feeling of religious piety
towards the Creator. Lord Kelvin once quoted some words of his in this
regard on a memorable occasion, which are particularly to our purpose
here:
"If my purpose here was merely to show that science necessarily
engenders piety, I should appeal to the great truth everywhere
recognized, that the essence of all {17} religion consists in love
toward God. The conclusion would then be easy, that love of Him from
whom all truth proceeds must create the desire to acknowledge truth
in all her paths; but as we desire here to recognize science herself
as a religious duty, it will be requisite for us to penetrate deeper
into its nature. It is obvious, therefore, that the searching eye of
man, whether he regards his own inward being or the creation
surrounding him, is always led to the eternal source of all things.
In all inquiry, the ultimate aim is to discover that which really
exists and to contemplate it in its pure light apart from all that
deceives the careless observer by only a seeming existence. The
philosopher will then comprehend what, amidst ceaseless change, is
the Constant and Uncreated, which is hidden behind unnumbered
creations, the bond of union which keeps things together in spite of
their manifold divisions and separations. He must soon acknowledge
that the independent can only be the constant and the constant the
independent, and that true unity is inseparable from either of
these. And thus it is in the nature of thought that it finds no
quiet resting place, no pause, except in the invariable, eternal,
uncaused, all causing, all comprehensive Omniscience.
"But, if this one-sided view does not satisfy him, if he seeks to
examine the world with the eye of experience, he perceives that all
those things of whose reality the multitude feels most assured never
have an enduring existence, but are always on the road between birth
and death. If he now properly comprehends the whole array of nature,
he perceives that it is not merely an idea of an abstract notion, as
it is called; but that reason and the power to which everything is
indebted for its essential nature are only the revelation of a
self-sustained Being. How can {18} he, when he sees this, be
otherwise animated than by the deepest feeling of humility, of
devotion and of love? If any one has learned a different lesson from
his observation of nature, it could only be because he lost his way
amidst the dispersion and variety of creation and had not looked
upwards to the eternal unity of truth."
The great contemporary and colleague of Oersted in the demonstration
of the intimate relations between magnetism and electricity who was
quite as outspoken as the Danish scientist in his recognition of the
relations of science and religion, was the Frenchman Ampere, whose
name was chosen as a term for one of the units of electrical science,
because of his great original work in extending our knowledge of
electricity. This choice of his name was made by an international
congress of scientists who felt that he deserved this very great
honor. Ozanam, to whose thoroughly practical Christianity while he was
professor of foreign literatures at the University of Paris we owe the
foundation of the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul, which so long
anticipated the "settlement work" of the modern time and have done so
much for the poor in large cities ever since, who was very close to
Ampere and indeed lived with him for a while, said that, no matter
where conversations with him began, they always led up to God. The
great French scientist and philosopher used to take his broad forehead
between his hands after he had been discussing some specially deep
question of science or philosophy and say: "How great is God, Ozanam;
How great is God and how little is our knowledge." Of course this has
been the feeling of most profound thinkers at all times. St.
Augustine's famous vision of the angel standing by the sea emptying it
out with a teaspoon, which has been rendered so living {19} for most
of us by Botticelli's great picture, is but an earlier example of the
same thing. One of Ampere's greatest contemporaries, Laplace, reechoed
the same sentiment, perhaps in less striking terms, when he declared
that "What we know is but little; while what we do not know is
infinite."
Writing of Ampere after his death Ozanam, who knew him best, brought
out this extremely interesting union of intellectual qualities, his
science, his faith, his charity to the poor which was proverbial, and
the charming geniality of his character, as well as his manifold human
interests, in a passage that serves very well to sum up the meaning of
the great Frenchman's life.
"In addition to his scientific achievements this brilliant genius
has other claims upon our admiration and affection.... It was
religion which guided the labors of his mind and illuminated his
contemplations; he judged all things, science itself, by the exalted
standard of religion.... This venerable head which was crowned by
achievements and honors, bowed without reserve before the mysteries
of faith, down even below the line which the Church has marked for
us. He prayed before the same altars before which Descartes and
Pascal had knelt; beside the poor widow and the small child who may
have been less humble in mind than he was. Nobody observed the
regulations of the Church more conscientiously, regulations which
are so hard on nature and yet so sweet in the habit. Above all
things, however, it is beautiful to see what sublime things
Christianity wrought in his great soul; this admirable simplicity,
the unassumingness of a mind that recognized everything except its
own genius; this high rectitude in matters of science, now so rare,
seeking nothing but the truth and never {20} rewards and
distinction; the pleasant and ungrudging amiability; and lastly, the
kindness with which he met every one, especially young people. I can
say that those who know only the intelligence of the man, know only
the less perfect part. If he thought much, he loved more."
Ohm, after whom another of the units of electricity is named, was
another of the scientists who realized very clearly the existence of
Providence and in one very disappointing circumstance in life, when he
found that some of his work at which he had spent much time was
completely anticipated by a Norwegian investigator, he said very
simply, "Man proposes but God disposes"; and he chronicled the fact
that without the bait of this discovery which he vaguely foresaw at
the beginning he would not have taken up the work, and yet during the
time when he was at it "A number of things of which I had no hint at
all at the beginning of my researches have come to take the place of
my original purpose and compensate for it." When he undertook his next
work he foresaw that he might not be able to finish it; he had hoped
against hope that he would, and in the preface to the first volume he
declared that he would devote himself to it at every possible
opportunity and that he hoped and prayed that "God would spare him to
complete it." This simplicity of confidence in the Almighty is indeed
a striking characteristic of the man of whose discovery of the law of
electricity Lord Kelvin declared that it was such an extremely simple
expression of a great truth that its significance is probably not
confined to that department of physical phenomena, but it is a law of
nature in some much broader way. Professor George Chrystal of
Edinburgh in his article on electricity in the "Encyclopaedia
Britannica" (IX Edition) says that {21} Ohm's law must now be allowed
to rank with the law of gravitation and the elementary laws of
statical electricity as a _law of nature_ in the strictest sense.
Volta, whom the international congress of electricity so deservedly
honored by giving his name to one of the units of electricity, is the
genius who first constructed an instrument which would give a
continuous flow of electricity. The Voltaic pile is a very great
invention. Volta was much more, however, than merely an ingenious
inventor. He was a great scientist who made discoveries not only in
electricity but in various other branches of physical science. He was
one of the eight foreign members of the French Institute, Knight
Commander of the Legion of Honor, one of the first members of the
Italian Academy and the gold medalist of the French Academy. There was
nothing he touched in his work that he did not illuminate.
His was typically the mind of the genius, ever reaching out beyond the
boundaries of the known,--an abundant source of leading and light for
others. Far from being a doubter in matters religious, his scientific
greatness seemed only to make him readier to submit to what are
sometimes spoken of as the shackles of faith, though to him belief
appealed as a completion of knowledge of things beyond the domain of
sense or the ordinary powers of intellectual acquisition.
In Volta's time as in our own some of the less important workers in
science had their faith disturbed by their knowledge of science and
attributed that result to science rather than to the limitations of
their own minds. One of them declared that though Volta continued to
practice his religion, this was more because he did not want to offend
friends and did not care to scandalize his {22} neighbors and
especially the poor folk around him in his country home, whom he did
not want to be led by his example into giving up what he knew to be
the most fruitful source of consolation in the trials of life, rather
than because of sincere conviction. Volta, having heard this report,
deliberately wrote out his confession of faith, so that all the world
of his own and the after time might know it. When he wrote it he was
just approaching his sixtieth year and was in the full maturity of his
powers. He lived for twelve years afterwards, looked up to as one of
the great thinkers of Europe and as one of the most important men of
Italy in his time.
"If some of my faults and negligences may have by chance given
occasion to some one to suspect me of infidelity, I am ready, as
some reparation for this and for any other good purpose, to declare
to such a one and to every other person and on every occasion and
under all circumstances that I have always held, and hold now, the
Holy Catholic Religion as the only true and infallible one, thanking
without end the good God for having gifted me with such a faith, in
which I firmly propose to live and die, in the lively hope of
attaining eternal life. I recognize my faith as a gift of God, a
supernatural faith. I have not, on this account, however, neglected
to use all human means that could confirm me more and more in it and
that might drive away any doubt which could arise to tempt me in
matters of faith. I have studied my faith with attention as to its
foundations, reading for this purpose books of apologetics as well
as those written with a contrary purpose, and trying to appreciate
the arguments pro and contra. I have tried to realize from what
sources spring the strongest arguments which render faith most
credible to natural reason and such as cannot fail to make {23}
every well-balanced mind which has not been perverted by vice or
passion embrace it and love it. May this protest of mine, which I
have deliberately drawn up and which I leave to posterity,
subscribed with my own hand and which shows to all and every one
that I do not blush at the Gospel--may it, as I have said, produce
some good fruit.
"Signed at Milan, January 6, 1815, Alessandro Volta."
Silvio Pellico, whose volume, "My Ten Years' Imprisonment", is one of
the precious little books of literature that seem destined to enduring
interest, had doubted in the midst of his trials and hardships the
presence of Providence in the world and the existence of a hereafter.
In the midst of his doubts he turned to Volta.
"In thy old age, O Volta!" said Pellico, "the hand of Providence
placed in thy pathway a young man gone astray. 'Oh! thou,' said I to
the ancient seer, 'who hast plunged deeper than others into the
secrets of the Creator, teach me the road that will lead me to the
light.' And the old man made answer: 'I too have doubted, but I have
sought. The great scandal of my youth was to behold the teachers of
those days lay hold of science to combat religion. For me to-day I see
only God everywhere.'"
In spite of traditions to the contrary great physicians in their
relation to faith are like the great discoverers in electricity. As a
rule the greater they are as original workers in the medical sciences
the more emphatic their expressions of their belief in religion and
its efficacy in the relief of human ills. The opinions of a few of our
greatest physicians in the modern era of medicine are quoted here as
examples of their attitude of mind.
Sir Richard Owen, probably the greatest anatomist of {24} the
nineteenth century, was a convinced Christian and saw nothing in
scientific truth inimical to the Christian faith. In an address before
the Young Men's Christian Association, he asked his "fellow
Christians":
"Has aught that is essentially Christian suffered--have its truths
ceased to spread and operate in mankind--since physical doctrines,
supposed or 'declared contrary to Holy Writ', have been established?
"Allay, then, your fears, and trust in the Author of all truth, who
has decreed that it shall never perish; who has given a power to man
to acquire that most precious of his possessions with an
intellectual nature that will ultimately rest upon due demonstrative
evidence."
Sir James Paget, sometime president of the Royal College of Surgeons
of England and vice-chancellor of London University, looked upon as
one of the most distinguished of medical scientists in his time, after
whom a special disease described by him has been named, in answer to
the question as to the attitude of scientists toward religion said:
"You will find among scientific men very few who attack either
theology or religion. The attacks imputed to them are made, for the
most part, by those who, with a very scanty knowledge of science, use,
not its facts, but its most distant inferences, as they do whatever
else they can get from any source, for the overthrow of religious
beliefs."
Sir Samuel Wilks, another of the presidents of the Royal College of
Physicians and distinguished in many other ways among the physicians
of Great Britain, in his Harveian Oration expressed himself very
definitely in this matter of the relations of science and religion,
and his quotation from our own Oliver Wendell Holmes adds to the
interest of what he has to say.
{25}
"Hear what a learned professor of anatomy, Wendell Holmes, can say:
'Science represents the thought of God discovered by man; by
learning the natural laws he attaches effects to their first cause,
the will of the Creator', or in the poetic language of Goethe:
'Nature is the living garment of God.'
"Science conducts us through infinite paths; it is a fruitful
pursuit for the most poetic imagination. We take the world as we
find it and endeavor to unravel its mysteries; but the Alpha and
Omega we know not. Enough for us to look at what is lying around us;
it is a part we see and not the whole, but we can say with the poet,
'We doubt not, through the ages one increasing purpose runs.'"
Professor Sims Woodhead, well known as one of the distinguished
contributors to pathology in the nineteenth century and who was,
before being professor of pathology at Cambridge the director of the
Laboratories of the Conjoint Board of the Royal College of Physicians
(London) and Surgeons (England) may very well be taken as a
representative of the medical scientists of the last generation of the
nineteenth century. It has been said that where there are three
physicians there are two atheists, and perhaps this may be true among
the smaller fry of the profession, but it certainly is not among the
most distinguished members of it. Such men as Pasteur, Lord Lister,
Robert Graves, Corrigan, Laennec, Claude Bernard, Johannes Mueller, are
the outspoken contradiction of it. Pathology and anatomy, in both of
which subjects Professor Woodhead was a teacher, are often said to be
rather serious in their inroads on the faith of the men who pursue
them closely. Professor Woodhead is on record categorically with
regard to this subject of {26} the relations of the Bible and
religion, and science and religion, and his words are well worth while
quoting here.
"As regards the statement that 'recent scientific research has shown
the Bible and Religion to be untrue', nothing is further from the
real fact; the more the Bible is tested the more it is found to be
made up of historical documents. Moreover, it is recognized that the
Bible, as a record of truths, never falls foul of Science in its
search after truth, and scientific men are too true to themselves to
take the stand that they will not accept truth of any kind.
"I agree with you that certain theories put forward in the name of
Science may be opposed to certain theological dogmas; but men are
certainly coming to see that between the facts of Science and the
essential teachings of the Christian religion there is never any
real opposition; and by the 'Christian Religion' I mean the religion
of Christ, not what some people have wished to read into it; and by
'science' I mean a search for truth and knowledge, and by 'men of
science' I mean men engaged in that search."
Professor John W. Taylor, one of the distinguished physicians of Great
Britain and president of the British Gynecological Society, summed up
the answer to the question "Can We Still Believe?" in words that show
how devout a great medical scientist can be:
"What can we 'hold by' as Christians? We can hold by the Faith of the
early Apostles as enunciated in the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds,
and plainly foreshadowed in 1 Cor. xv. This was written within thirty
years of our Lord's crucifixion and must have been 'received' by St.
Paul immediately on his conversion." Any one who will turn to that
chapter of First Corinthians will {27} find that it contains all the
essentials of Christian faith, yet here is a great modern physician
finding in it the expression of his own mental attitude toward
religion in our time.
Biologists, in spite of popular impressions to the contrary, have
paralleled physicians in this regard. To cite but one or two:
Professor George Romanes, who was considered not alone one of the
leaders of scientific thought in England, but one of the foremost
naturalists of modern times, after expressions as a younger man that
showed his deep and even devout belief in religion, wrote somewhat
later a defense of atheism on scientific grounds. Some years
afterwards, in the maturity of his powers, he prepared a
thorough-going recantation of this in the shape of a work designed to
show the fallacy of his former atheistic views, in which he said:
"It is a general, if not a universal rule that those who reject
Christianity with contempt are those who care not for religion of
any kind. 'Depart from me' has always been the sentiment of such. On
the other hand, those in whom the religious sentiment is intact, but
who have rejected Christianity on intellectual grounds, still almost
deify Christ. These facts are remarkable."
"Unbelief," Professor Romanes concluded, "is usually due to
indolence, often to prejudice, and never a thing to be proud of."
In every department of science one finds the representatives of the
various branches of scientific study in harmony on this subject of
religion and science. Professor George Boulger, whose work has been
mainly done in botany and who was a fellow of a number of the
scientific societies of England and vice-president of the Selborne
{28} Society, has some very direct expressions in the matter that add
to the significance of what has been said by others.
"In philosophy, in physics, and in astronomy I am content to place
myself on the side of Bacon, of Newton, of Napoleon. I believe, with
Bacon, that 'a little Philosophy inclineth Man's Minde to Atheisme;
but depth in Philosophy bringeth Men's Mindes about to Religion.'
With Newton I am content to 'seem to have been only like a boy
playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then
finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst
the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.' With
Napoleon--not a man of science but a man of the world, a man of
action--I would say to our neo-Epicureans as he did to his sceptical
officers, pointing to the stars, 'Gentlemen, you may talk all night,
but who made all these?'"
He recognized how many difficulties there might be for the scientist,
but felt, as Cardinal Newman once said, that hundreds of difficulties
may not make a single doubt. Professor Boulger has dealt with some of
these cruder difficulties with trenchant directness.
"I am perfectly aware of the temptation of the physiological
laboratory, when one is face to face with the facts of the
localisation of brain-functions and the influence of purely physical
conditions upon mentality, until one is almost led to Buchner's
gross misstatement that 'the brain secretes thought as the liver
secretes bile'; but here, as ever, it is at the very base of the
problem that the unsolved mystery shows itself insoluble. Force,
Matter, Life, Thought, Will,--what are they, whence come they?
Science deals with their phenomena, their manifestations. With John
Ray I would term the study of nature a pious duty, one suited to a
Sabbath day and not {29} improbably one of the main occupations of
the endless Sabbaths hereafter.... But true science will never
presume to say that it can deal with anything beyond these
phenomena. As I am as convinced that the Christian Faith is a Divine
revelation as I am that 'Nature' is the creation of the Divine First
Cause, it is, of course, to me unthinkable that there could be any
conflict between them."
Not only the scientists themselves but the philosophic students of the
whole range of modern thought who took the information imparted by the
specialists and coordinated it for the purpose of finding the
philosophic conclusions to be drawn from it all as to man's life and
destiny and the meaning of it all have recognized the place of
religion in Life and its significance for humanity.
Mr. Frederic Harrison, the well-known English apostle of Comte, whose
Positivism might possibly have been expected to lead him away from
such ideas, did not hesitate in the midst of that wave of skepticism
which spread over Europe shortly after the "silly seventies" when so
many even of the well-informed thought that natural selection was
going to explain everything for us and solve all the mysteries, to
utter some very strong words on the subject that well deserve to be
recalled. In his book, "The Creed of a Layman," he said, for
instance:
"I believe that before all things, needful beyond all else, is true
religion. This only can give wisdom, happiness and goodness to men
and a nobler life to mankind. Nothing but this can sustain, guide
and satisfy all lives, control all characters and unite all men.
True religion must rule in every heart, brain and will, over every
people of the whole earth; inspire every thought, hallow every
emotion and be the guide of every act."
{30}
And by what he termed the true religion Mr. Harrison did not mean
merely some vague deism or some shadowy belief in a vaguer power that
made for righteousness, but a very definite personal relationship to a
personal God who was not only to be looked up to and reverenced but
who was to be loved.
"The paramount importance to Man of Religion--at once dominant over
brain and heart--a living reality and working power--the necessity
for this has not only never left me at any time but year by year has
grown deeper as a conviction and more familiar as a rule of life.
But as the indispensable need of true religion grew stronger in my
mind, I more and more came to feel that religion would end in vague
sentimentality unless it has an object of devotion distinctly
grasped by the intellect and able to kindle ardent emotions. The
nature--if not the name--of the Supreme Being is in truth decisive.
Unless the Supreme Power be felt to be in sympathy with the
believer, be akin to the believer, be in active touch with his life
and heart, such a religion is merely a dogma; it cannot be a guide
of life in the spring of action--the object of love."
Agnosticism, so fashionable in educational circles at the end of the
nineteenth century, has practically disappeared, or at least has
suffered such an eclipse that its adherents are comparatively few.
There was a time in the generation that is still alive when a great
many educators who felt that they were the leaders of thought in our
time were quite sure that agnosticism would be the only mode of
intellectual reaction which the educated man could possibly think of
allowing to take place in him by the time the year of grace 1920 had
come. Instead agnosticism, like so many other movements of similar
{31} kind founded on human thinking, in accord with the fashion of the
moment, has dwindled into insignificance. Fortunately there were some
educators who even twenty-five years ago recognized the real portent
of it and stated their opinions so emphatically as to keep the
educational world of their time from being entirely run away with.
President Schurman of Cornell said:
"Agnosticism is the apotheosis of skepticism. It is skepticism as a
creed, as a system, as an ultimate resting-place. Those who proclaim
it strangely misread the processes and the conditions of our
spiritual life. _They make the aimless gropings of the youthful
intellect an ideal for the thinking of mature men_. Only, instead of
the awful earnestness of the inquiring youth, they often affect an
indifference to the great problems which oppress him. As though we
could be indifferent to the highest interests of the human spirit!
So long as life lasts, so long must we strive to grasp the ultimate
truth of things. To shut our eyes to problems is an ostrich policy.
Man is called by an inner voice to strive, and strive, and strive,
and not to yield. Agnosticism would eradicate this noble endeavor.
Its only justification, so far as I can see, is that men never
attain the absolute truth, but only make successive approximations
to it."
Such men seem to forget the great lesson that the differential
calculus has taught us. It represents one of the greatest developments
of modern mathematics. It does not solve problems by absolute
solutions but by such approximations as make the answer which cannot
be reached very clear. It has been of immense value in adding to the
knowledge of mankind and in giving science particularly a command over
principles that would otherwise seem impossible. Religion requires
{32} faith to complete it. Knowledge can never more than approximate
conclusions with regard to many religious questions. Such
approximations, however, like the answers in differential calculus,
represent real advances on the road to knowledge that are of great
value in directing men toward what is best in life.
Mr. Frederic Harrison has answered this question "Can We Still
Believe?" by insisting that belief in the hereafter is the most
precious heritage that man has, to be fostered above all else. He
said:
"The great truth of a life beyond the grave is indeed one of the
best possessions of Man, the fondest of all noble, living and
working doctrines on earth. When Paul first preached it in that
sublime song of triumph over death, which has so often thrilled us
to the marrow as we stood round the coffined dead, he gave the human
race a new and imperishable hope to last while the planet
endures.... Let us cherish and hold fast this glad tiding of good
things."
Any one who faces the question of religion seriously realizes that not
only it is not a thing of the past but that the rationalistic
tendencies of the later nineteenth century have had their usual
inevitable reaction emphasized by the Great War, so that men are
readier to be swayed by religious influences than ever before. The
more one studies the problems of health of mind and of body connected
with religion, and the strong factor that it is for the making of
character, the shaping of destiny and the cultivation of happiness,
the more one realizes the truth of Napoleon's expression that if
religion were to disappear we should have to reinvent it, because of
the immense benefit that it represents for mankind.
{33}