Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/93

Rh He wrote as follows in the pages of this Review a few years ago (November, 1878): "It is against the mythologic scenery, if I may use the term, rather than against the life and substance of religion, that Science enters her protest." But how, in the name of common sense and charity, is religion—that special provision for bringing strength to the feeble-minded, elevation to the lowly, and wisdom to the ignorant—to be brought home to all mankind, without the use of even coarse symbolism, which is as "relative" to the masses for whom it is intended as scientific conceptions are to philosophers? In both cases the realities behind are most imperfectly represented; and a higher intelligence, if it were not loving as well as intelligent, would certainly display impatience with Professor Tyndall's own kindly effort a few pages further on, where he says, "How are we to figure this molecular motion? Suppose the leaves to be shaken from a birch-tree; and, to fix the idea, suppose each leaf to repel and attract," and so on. Is it not clear that the Professor is here doing the very same thing, in order to bring science home (all honor to him!) to the unlearned, which he refuses to the ministers of religion when they try to bring home the Gospel to the poor? How can such subtile ideas, such far-reaching thoughts, as those of theology be brought home to the mass of mankind without the boldest use of symbol and of figured speech? How can that most precious result of Christianity, a unity of general conceptions about mankind and about the Great Unknown, be secured without a symbolism of the very broadest and most striking kind? Panoramas can not be painted with stippling-brushes. Nor, indeed, does any sort of painter aim to compete with the bald truthfulness of photography. He does not imitate—he merely hints. He throws out things. He summons the imagination of the spectators themselves to his aid and awakens their finer susceptibilities. And by this means a "picture," which is in itself the most unreal of all unrealities, becomes in skillful hands a fruitful reality for good, perhaps, to a hundred generations.

If, then, any scientific man does not for himself need rituals and symbols, still let him remember how invaluable an aid these things are to the mass of mankind. Let him reflect how the purest and loftiest ideas of the Eternal lie enshrined within every form of Christian adoration, and how the most touching memories speak in every Christian sacrament. Is it nothing, too, to be brought in contact with the boundless gentleness and tolerance of Christ; to hear such words as "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it," and "He that is not against us is on our side"? Is it nothing to feel the sympathy of such a devoted benefactor of Europe as St. Paul, and to accept his judgment that "he who regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it"? Nay, is it nothing to bow the knee in acknowledged