Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1875-07-23

external world, as theologians have at
tempted TO do, l need the belief in God
to assure the existence of things without.
c)me now TO the second of those
grounds on which science bases her SUI
preme claim-greater utility, more need
ful service. The world is not likely to for
get the debt it owes to science. That is
daily and hourly obligation for most of the
comforts aud convenieuces of life. l have
no desire TO make light of that debt. But
see that the grandest things the world
contains are not the products of science,
but OF faith. Science could have had no
beginning had not religion first lifed man
out of The dust and tanned his fierce pas
sions, and given him an interest in life
which made it worth his while to study
the secrets of nature, and 10 learn the rea-
son and constitution Of things. And not
only 50, not only the worlds emancipation
from brutal ignorance, and savage enslave-
ment to animal life, but those material
products which are justly esteemed the
ornaments Of earth; those works OF the
hand, those wonders of art which draw the
curious across the globe-temples, pyra-
mids, statutes, paintings, things which
travellers compass sea and land 10 behold
are due to the same source; they owe TO
religion the impulse which gave them birth.
OF these The poet could say, what may not
be said of the railway or the telegraph, that
Mature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them equal date
With Andes and with Ararat."
And even those discoveries and inventions
of which science claims the credit could
never have been accomplished by science,
alone, without the aid of faith for science
can only see, not do. She is the ghost ra-
ther than theology. 'Star-eyed science"
has speculation in Ler eyes, but no force in
her hand, no blood in her veins. Not one
of those Improvements by which man be-
comes civilized, and more civilized from
age to age, could ever have been achieved
without the aid of faith. 1t was faith that
thrust a steel lancet into the eye TO remove
a cataract. 1t was faith that first inroduc-
ed poison into human veins 10 foreslall
greater evil by less. Geographers in the
fifteenth century had OWNED the existence
of an ether earth beyond the Atlantic waste,
but 1t needed the faith of Columbus 10 fol-
low the setting sun across the deep and
unlock the gates of the West. The philos-
ophers of the eighteenth century had con-
jectured the identity of lightning with
what " as then called the electric fluid"
but it needed the faith Of Franklin TO send
up the kite which brought confirmation OF
the conjecture from the skies. DIR. Jack
son, in our own day, had discovered the
:, 4 4 Il, t;a., 81, ,sI,o L., I.
ed the faith of Morton TO first administer
the Grug which dsarms the surgeons knife
of its terrors.
Faith and science, religion and science,
together have built mp the world in which
we live, this s. cial, civil, intellectual, eccle-
siastical world of mankind. Both were
ne eded TO make The world what it is, TT
bode for rational beings. 1t would be
hard TO say which in time past has been
the more needful, the more indispensable
agent of the two. But if it be ask ed which
now of the two could best be spared, it
see ms 10 me that the question is not dtfi-
cult. If now ard heucefOrth the alterna-
tive for mankind were the end and arrest
of scientific progress, or The death of faith,
the shutting up Of our churches, the chok-
ing forever of the voice Of prayer, the de-
| rubrcation of the calendar, the equalZa-
| ion Of the week, the utter secularization
of life, then l say the arrest of science
would be the lesser evil of the two. For
society can exist without more knowledge;
but take away faith and you sap the main
| spring in the clockwork of life. You take
away that without which 'star-eyed sci
ence" herself would soon become blind.
You spread darkness over all the face of
lh EARTH and make universal shipwreck
of mans estate. For this human world,
maintain, with never so much science at
the helm, cannot be sailed by "dead reck-
oning'' alone. There must be somewhere
an observation of The heavens, or the ship
which bears us all will founder.
One thing more. There has been mucn
talk of n conflict between religion and sci
ence; learned savant of our own country
has written work on the subject. ! take
| ii upon me TO say that there never has been
and never can be, any such conflict, any
conflict between religion and science. In
that loose way Of speaking which the use of
abstract terms is apt to engender, other
con flicts have taken that name. Conflicts
there are between The speculations of sci
entific men and the convictions of religious
men. There are conflicts between scientif-
c facts. IL you will, and religious prefu
dices, conflicts between discoveries aud
traditions conflicts between certain bibli-
cal statements and the testimony of the
rocks, hut between religion proper and sci
ence proper, each on its own legitimate beat,
there never has been and can be no con-
fci, no more than there can be a conflict
between Kepler's third law and the first
verse of the Fourth Gospel. When, thirty
years ago, Leverrier, with his mathematic-
al divning-rod, detected the latent planet,
now q known constituent of our solar
system, religion thanked God, who had
given such power unto man, and congrat-
ulated science on the triumph of her great
detective. When DIR. Tyndall published
his exposition of the laws of light aud heat,
the pulpit had no fault to find with his teach
ing. But when this same Tyndall propos-
ed TO test the value of prayer by statistics,
then religion Indignantly rebuked the man
for meddling with a matter Of which, to
borrow a comparison of the late Father
Taylor, he knew as little as Balaam's ass
did of Hebrew. This was not a conflict of
religion with science, but conflict with
nesclence.
Let science pursue The path marked out
for her by her own great leaders, the path, b,
not of vague speculation, but OF firm aud
patient induction, and religion will rejoice
with her in all her discoveries, will thank
her, and thank God for every fact which