Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/140

130 repeats itself." It belongs to the literature of reconciliation of religion and science, and does over again what had been so often done before that its repetition should be superfluous—that is, if people were not so stupid.

When the laws of planetary motion were discovered, devout Bible-believers took the alarm and denounced the doctrine as destructive of religion. A war arose between the new science and the old Church, which was at length composed by a reinterpretation of Scripture passages, and everybody has become reconciled except Brother Jaspar.

But no sooner was the Bible brought into harmony with astronomy, than the same difficulty broke out in another place. Geologists found that the earth and the life upon it are a good deal older than have been supposed; but this was vehemently declared to be in conflict with the text of the old Hebrew oracles. The geologists were charged with being subverters of religion, and there was a long battle about it. But a way was discovered to reconcile Genesis with the new views of the earth's history, and the alarmed believers found not only that they had been a good deal more scared than hurt, but, greatly to their gratification, that Moses was the true founder of geological science.

One would think that by this time something might have been learned, and very much indeed has been learned, but there are multitudes of religious people who are still exactly where stood the religious people of three centuries ago. Another religious panic is upon us, from the same old cause. Science has proclaimed evolution as an established law of nature, and the believers in the killing letter of Scripture see another crusade of infidelity which, cloaking itself with the name of science, aims at the subversion cf Christianity. Dr. Brunton's work crows out of this crisis, and is devoted to the old task of reconciliation.

There arc many nominally religious people upon whom this sort of labor is quite thrown away. There must be some sincere solicitude for truth before there can be much concern about its agreements. It is not to be expected that those who are religions in obedience to the requirements of Mrs. Grundy will greatly trouble themselves about the conflicts of their faith. Then there arc others, not wanting perhaps in sincerity, to whom religion is a mere safeguard against future life-dangers, and these, of course, will care little about the relations of their religion to knowledge. They have nothing to reconcile, nothing to be explained away. They have merely a system of supernaturalism to be professed, with divers accompaniments, as a means of escaping from everlasting perdition. But there are still many conscientious people who, having arrived at no general principles to govern the case, are perplexed at the disagreements between the accepted tenets of religious belief and the progressive doctrines of science. Dr. Brunton's book is written for this order of minds, and with reference to the new issues between the Bible and science which have arisen in our own age. But it is best to let the author speak for himself in regard to his purpose. He says: "Many people consider the doctrine of evolution, or, as it is not unfrequently termed, Darwinism, as necessarily atheistic, and regard it with horror mingled with fear. They look upon it with horror, because they think that its spread will be injurious to religion and morality; and they fear it, because they see that every year its adoption is becoming more general, and that, notwithstanding their dislike to it, they are unable to stop its progress. In addition to this, some have a lurking dread that the doctrine may be true, and that they may by-and-by be forced, in spite of themselves, to acknowledge its truth, and to give up the cherished religious beliefs which have been their joy and strength. Feelings of this sort induce some people to remain willfully ignorant both of what the doctrine of evolution really is, and the arguments that may be adduced in support of it, while others refuse to see the force of the arguments; and others, again, are rendered most unhappy by their inability to deny their truth. The objects of the present work are to give a brief and popular sketch of the data on which the doctrine is founded, and to show that instead of being atheistic it is the very reverse, and is no more opposed to the Biblical account of the creation than those geological doctrines regarding the structure and formation of the earth's crust which were once regarded as