Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 9 Supplement.djvu/52

660 other names for Atheism and Materialism, which scientific men do not trouble themselves about, and which no one holds but those who avowedly are Materialists or Pantheists. I say not one word about these refined speculations; they have their place and their use in dogmatic theology, treated as a science, but for the world at large it is not wise nor fair to mix these up with what is essentially different.

The great error which is over and over again committed is in thinking that we can so foresee the results of any discovery that we are justified in opposing it on account of its supposed consequences. We forget that we have nothing to do with consequences. The question is not "If we admit this or that, then so and so will follow this dire evil or that pernicious error;" but it is, "Is this true or false? Is this right or wrong?" If it is true or right, then our place is to believe or do it. We have no right to speculate as to effects, as an element influencing our belief or action. Effects and consequences are God's, and His alone; and how often, in our short-sighted conceit, do we condemn and deplore what, in His mysterious ordering of events, turns out the wisest and best even to our view? At best, we cannot see an inch beyond our noses; and it is ours, in all meekness and humility, to accept day by day our daily bread as He sees meet to reveal truth after truth to us. The one crucial test for us—Is it true? And if so, we are bound to accept and believe it; and we dare not, with loyalty to truth, compound with our consciences by saying this will produce such and such evils, and therefore we reject it. Another great principle which is lost sight of often is, the distinction between the spiritual and the physical. Science has to do with the latter, and the latter alone; and if sometimes, in its investigations of man, the fact of his dual nature seems to be forgotten or ignored, we must not conclude that therefore it is denied. That it is sometimes—by Materialists—denied, is true, but even then it is denied because simply unknown. With them, man's spiritual nature is but "a dream of the imagination," "the poesy of the soul." But shall we allow ourselves to be robbed of it because some know nothing of it? Could we demonstrate it, it would be gone for us. The scalpel of the anatomist cannot reveal it; the microscope, by its wondrous revelations, cannot show it; the chemist, by his powerful alchemy, cannot detect it: but for those who know it—who have experienced its power, and have grasped in their yearning hearts its reality and force—for those who have known and witnessed its potent action in this world of sin and sorrow for ages that are passed—surely to them it is as much a fact as any other in God's world; to them it is a force which in its own place cannot be gainsaid or put aside. They are not to be robbed of that which they know to be true simply because others know nothing of it. And the attitude of the great bulk of scientific men is this: They count not its elements into their chemistry, simply because it is beyond and above their sphere.

But besides, the teachings of science (apart from Materialism) in these our days, all go to requiring the existence of God as a fundamental necessity in any attempt to explain things as we see them. This world had a beginning, and therefore a Creator. Nor, however much the battle may have raged in times that are past over astronomy and geology, is there much difference of opinion now between science and theology as to the continuity of operations and the working of natural forces in the organic world: it is when we come to the organic that the existing differences appear. Biology is the great battle-ground of the present day; and when we think of the innumerable phenomena connected with it, and the essential unity of its phenomena with things we have hitherto looked upon as essentially different, such as fermentation, fevers, phosphorescence, heredity, etc., we cannot wonder that much that has been observed should conflict with