Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/291

Rh of those teachings. It was taught that Jesus was the son of God himself, miraculously conceived; the doctrine of the Trinity was invented and more stress came to he laid on the value of believing these doctrines than in doing the things Jesus declared to be good. The doctrine of salvation by faith became dominant and with this became associated many other conceptions, the general effect of which was to paralyze the growth of the germ of good contained in the religion. These conceptions divided man from man, race from race; they taught men to value their own salvation more than the happiness of others, and their general effect was selfish and opposed to the feeling of human brotherhood, which Jesus sought in every way to arouse, and which is the basis of morality. So completely did they modify that religion that they made of it for centuries a blight instead of a blessing, detrimental alike to moral, physical and intellectual progress. On the whole, therefore, it must be admitted that the good produced by the Christian religion has not been unmixed with evil.

Since the Christian religion was built on the same foundation as morality, not morals on that religion, and since the effect of the religion was both good and bad we can understand how it happens that the decadence of theology does not involve the decadence of morality, but may coincide with its improvement.

Morals, however, have not only not declined; they have actually improved, owing to a change in that instinct on which morality rests. The past century has seen a tremendous growth in the feelings of human brotherhood; the social instinct has been wonderfully stimulated. This is the most glorious achievement of science.

Science besides its material conquests of nature has developed human pity and compassion. It is the greatest preacher of the brotherhood of man since Jesus. Science, as a matter of fact, is developing in us just those feelings Jesus himself sought to arouse. By teaching man the causes of his own conduct, he is filled with charity and pity; by annihilating distance and time, it has broken down artificial barriers between groups of individuals; and, by the solution of the transportation problem, it has brought distant nations close together. It has shown the human race to be actually one great family, of which the misery of any part necessarily affects the happiness of the whole. The evolutionary hypothesis, the germ theory of disease, the telegraph, the telephone, the locomotive, the printing press, the daily paper, wireless telegraphy, these are the great moral apostles of the age, for they knit men together, conquer prejudice and extend our sympathies. Every discovery in science is a step forward in morality. Science is, indeed, in this way one of the greatest, if not the greatest, moral influence the world has beheld.

But science has done still more for morality than to stimulate