Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/312

298 language, and manipulated by human interest, they have a common dominion over the soul of man. According to the method of their government, they may then come into collision even as the temporal and spiritual sovereigns of Japan occasionally did, before the recent changes in that country.

In answering the query above proposed, it will be necessary to separate the essential truths of religion from the accessories of tradition, usage, and, most of all, organizations and interpretations which have in the lapse of time gathered around the primitive or revealed truth.

With the latter, the scientific man must deal exactly like other men—he must take it or reject it, according to his spiritual gifts; but he must not, whatever be his personal views, discuss it or assail it as a man of science, for within his domain of investigation it does not belong.

With regard to the accessories of traditions, interpretations, etc., our answer may be clearer when we have briefly reviewed some recent events in what has been written about as the conflict of religion and science. Some centuries ago, great theological disgust was produced by the announcement that the sun and not the earth was the centre of the planetary system. A few decades ago profound dissatisfaction was shown that the evidence of organic life on the planet was very ancient. Recently some annoyance has been exhibited because human remains have been found in situations where they ought not to have been, according to popularly received interpretations; and yet more recently much apprehension has been felt at the possible derivation of man from some inferior organism; an hypothesis framed simply because, in the present condition of intellectual advancement, no other can be suggested.

Yet all these facts, but the last, which still is an opinion, have been accepted, after more or less bitter controversy on both sides, and the fountain of spiritual truth remains unclouded and undiminished. New interpretations for the sacred texts supposed to be in conflict with the scientific facts have been sought and found without difficulty. These much-feared facts have, moreover, given some of the strongest and most convincing illustrations to modern exhortation and religious instruction.

Thus, then, we see that the influence of science upon religion has been beneficial. Scholastic interpretations founded upon imperfect knowledge, or no knowledge, but mere guess, have been replaced by sound criticism of the texts, and their exegesis in accordance with the times and circumstances for which they were written.

It must be conceded by fair-minded men of both sides that these controversies were carried on at times with a rudeness of expression and bitterness of feeling now abhorrent to our usages. The intellectual wars of those days partook of the brutality of physical war, and