Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/105

93. cosmical religion will be the religion of science. It will not consist of religious indifference nor of a toleration of any and every, opinion as is so often erroneously proclaimed as the ideal of liberalism. On the contrary it will be in a certain sense the most orthodox religion, for its maxim will be to stand on the truth and nothing but the truth. And the truth is not at all indifferent or tolerant. The truth is extremely intolerant and surfers no error beside it, although, as a matter of course, the truth is very tolerant in so far as it sanctions no violence but employs only the spiritual sword of conviction by argument and logical proof.

We have given up the idea of special acts of creation as the calling forth disconnectedly of something out of nothing. We conceive the whole world as an orderly cosmos, well regulated by laws and evolving the forms of life in agreement with its laws. Is there less divinity in a cosmos than in a half chaotic world in which God makes exceptions and counteracts his own ordinances? Is the idea of creation less religious if it ceases to mean an origination of something out of nothing? Is not man at least just as wonderful if evolved step by step out of the dust of the earth through innumerable stages in the long process of evolution as if he were made directly out of clay? And is there less divinity in his soul, is he any less shaped unto the image of God because his growth took place according to natural laws? Natural laws, in the conception of purified religion, of the religion of science, are nothing but the ideas of God, eternal and immutable, and formulated by scientists not on the ground of special revelations but on the ground of the universal and unchangeable, and throughout consistent revelation of God in his works. The science of language and the science of life are two important highroads to the cognition of truth. That both sciences will be consistent with each other, that their results will finally be seen to harmonise perfectly is beyond all doubt and also that their bearing upon religious ideas will contribute much to their purification. Prof. F. Max Müller and Prof. George John Romanes are two great scholars, each one is a leader in his own branch of knowledge, and