Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/252

 Religion and science, viewed broadly, do not clash so much as they combine. To the devout and deeply studious mind, the marvels of science are the truths of religion made manifest. But this is what the clergy seem to miss persistently out of all their teaching and preaching. Take, for example, the text: "In My Father's house there are many mansions." What a noble discourse could be made hereon of some of the most sublime facts of science!—of the powers of the air, of the currents of light, of the magnificent movements of the stars in their courses, of the plenitude and glory of innumerable solar systems, all upheld and guided by the same Intelligent Force which equally upholds and guides the destinies of man! Unhappily for the world in general, and for the churches in particular, preachers who select texts from Scripture in order to extract therefrom some instructive lesson that shall be salutary for their congregations, do not always remember the symbolic or allegorical manner in which such texts were originally spoken or written. To many of them the "literal" meaning is alone apparent, and they see in the "many mansions" merely a glorified Park Lane or Piccadilly, adorned with rows of elegantly commonplace dwelling-houses built of solid gold. Their conceptions of the "Father's house" are sadly limited. They cannot shake off the material from the spiritual, or get away from themselves sufficiently to understand or enter into the dumb craving of all human nature for help, for sympathy, for love—for sureness in its conceptions of God—such sureness as shall not run counter to the proved results of reason. For reason is as much the gift