Page:The church, the schools and evolution.djvu/71

 meant by what He wrote? And who but the rationalist and the unbeliever can ever refuse to let Him reveal the perfect harmony between the facts of nature and the scientific references of Scripture?

It is the divine prerogative to cause us to understand the Book. When the risen Christ appeared suddenly among the disciples, first frightened and then scarcely believing for joy, He first convinced them that it was really He to whom they had already given their hearts, thus quickening their faith into renewed activity, "Then opened He their mind that they might understand the Scriptures." First faith and then knowledge of the truth; this is the scientific order.

Luther saw this when he wrote to Spalatin:


 * Above all things it is quite true that one cannot search into the Holy Scriptures by means of study, nor by means of the intellect. Therefore begin with prayer that the Lord grant unto you the true understanding of His Word.

Even Spencer had a glimpse of this seientific principle toward the end of his life. In his essay on "Feeling Versus Intellect" he showed that he had lost faith in his former estimate of the place of the intellect in the moral realm when he said:


 * Everywhere the cry is educate-educate-educate! Everywhere the belief is that by such culture as schools furnish, children, and therefore adults, can be molded into the desired shapes. It is assumed that when men are taught what is right, they will do what is right-that a proposition intellectually accepted becomes morally operative. And this conviction, contradicted by