Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/618

600 precedent. But, unfortunately, it is not so. The alarm is sounded along our own shores, and the Presbytery of Belfast finds an echo in many of our so-called evangelical churches, and even in some of those which are miscalled liberal. Our preachers seem to delight in aiming a sarcasm or shaft of ridicule at the "advanced thinkers," not forgetting to add all possible irony to tone and inflection. One sacrifices his usual taste and discrimination, and selects the epithet Pickaninny to contain his sneer. "Pickaninny Tyndall!" Does it mean any thing? If so, what? Another makes a somewhat singular classification of "infidels," putting Voltaire, Hume, Tom Paine, and Tyndall, into the same category, and consigning them all to a common and speedy oblivion. Another, more in sorrow than in anger, speaks of the "ponderous sentences of unbelief" in the Belfast Address, but quotes none of them. In a newspaper article, written at Christmastide to inculcate "charity, in its largest, broadest, most comprehensive sense," we read that "Science throttles Religion in high places—or tries to." By these scared theologians, scientific men are declared to be trying to annihilate the Bible, to dethrone the Lord Christ, and to exterminate the living God. Similar latent motives have always been imputed to the fraternity, and it seems quite unnecessary to disclaim them, since their own minds are entirely preassured of the safety of Deity.

Now, sneers, innuendoes, and glittering generalities, may be convenient weapons with which to assail unwelcome arguments and conclusions, but they are certainly very ineffective. Such opposition will never end the controversy. The very animus of Protestantism is investigation, and shall New England Christians ally themselves with the pope in endeavoring to suppress its processes and ignore its results? It is only the new truth, the latest discovery, the undeveloped scheme, that is thus assailed and abused. After it has stood before the world a few decades—some other startling thought having in the mean time stepped to the front—it quietly takes its place among established facts or principles, Biblical interpretations adjust themselves, and its exponents, living or dead, are duly applauded and honored. A long catalogue of names might be cited in illustration, including, besides many scientists, some of the noblest reformers, whose diaries record every shade of treatment from their contemporaries, from the most virulent abuse to cordial recognition. What name stands fairer to-day than that of William Lloyd Garrison? And what living: man has been more defamed and reviled than was he while he stood in advance of public sentiment on the question of slavery? In the eyes of the American churches it was their "peculiar institution" which he was covertly attacking, making only a blind of the great Southern evil which his soul abhorred. All the familiar idioms of the sects were liberally used in his behalf, and he was "throttled" in Boston with something more tangible than rhetoric.