Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/19

Rh the angels, etc. It is from the type of mind that conceived such notions of the universe as this that we inherit our theology. But it may be replied, men may be feeble in science but great in religion. True, the fathers, many of them, were great in religion, they were great on the moral and spiritual side; but the system of theology they founded aims to be a science; it deals with exact propositions; it is not the work of their subjective religious natures but of their scientific faculties, and as such it is just as artificial, just as puerile and unreal, as the notions of the physical universe to which I have adverted.

The whole Christian dispensation, as expounded by the popular theology, is as little in keeping with the physical order of the world as disclosed by science, or with the natural moral order as disclosed by the conscience, as Indian medicine is in keeping with modern pathology. The whole scheme hinges upon the fall of Adam in paradise as an historical event, an act of disobedience on the part of the original progenitor of the human family, in consequence of which sin and death entered the world, and the suffering and death of Jesus became necessary to bring about a reconciliation between an angry God and rebellious man, etc.; with the attendant doctrine of the mystery of the atonement, of salvation by grace, of the eternal punishment of the pre-Christian nations, etc. Now this conception as science, or as a rational explanation of the world as it is, and of man's salvation, is on a par with Cosmas's theory of the earth with the sky glued to the outer edges. It shows the working of the same type of mind, it rests upon the same arbitrary and artificial view of things.

But, in all these matters, the question now is whether the ancient or the modern point of view shall prevail; whether evolution, or revelation, is the law of the world. The ancient point of view, as we have seen, was exclusive and arbitrary; it looked upon the universe as something made and governed by a being or beings external to it. In medicine, it regarded all disease as the work of evil spirits, that were to be exorcised by charms or amulets or incantations. In politics, it inculcated the divine right of kings, that the king can do no wrong, etc. In political economy, it taught that the interests of nations were mutually antagonistic and destructive of one another. In physical science, it encouraged the notions we have seen. The fathers taught that all men were under condemnation from the moment of their birth, and that at death the souls of unbaptized infants went straight to hell. St. Augustine taught, and the Catholic Church still holds, that when water from the hands of a priest falls upon the head of an unconscious infant, a miraculous change is wrought in its spiritual nature—a change by which it becomes essentially a new and a higher being; and the Church says, with characteristic charity, of him who believes not this impossible doctrine, "Let him be accursed!"

It is this type of mind which fostered alchemy, astrology, sorcery, witchcraft, and demonology. The air and the earth and the waters