The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1876-02-12
THE PACIFIC
Commercial AOOertiser
SATURDAY Y, FEBRUARY L.
Written for the p. c. Ad7ertlserI
The Conflict Between Religion and
Science

Science
Is the title Of q new and notable book, written
by John W. Draper, a welI-known author, and
a man Of deep and varied culture. From this
book may be CLEANED, perhaps better than from
any other one volume, the existing relations of
the two modes of thought indicated in the title.
1t is not with the work in particular that |
wish to deal, but with the criticisms and notices
Of the work that have appeared from time to
time, from the press, as the work is doubtless
what it claims to be, a concise history Of Religion
and Science from the earliest to the present time.
As far as hs facts are concerned, probably no
one would be inclined to doubt or dispute them;
but as the bias of the author toward pantheism
may be seen running through all his vast collec-
ton of data, l can hardly see the relevancy of the
commentator of the work, by periodicals the
editors of which would probably feign offence it
charged even with the rejection of the doctrine
of Christianity.
One editor says, in reviewing this book, and
eulogizing both it and the author, that while
Draper recognizes Roman Christianity and science
to be utterly incompatible, he admits that Protest.
dntisn1 and science may be easily reconciied. If he
has read the volume with care, he will see that
the conditions of reconciliation laid down by
Draper, are the remuneration of all forms of faith
in revealed religion, and an acknowledgment of
the supremacy of science, substituting for justi-
fcation by faith, that of justification by demon
s~tration.
Yet the general tenor of the work must be al
together ignored to force out such a meaning as is
to be implied from these words when standing
alone in the review.
After speaking of the insuperable barriers to a
reconciliation between Jesuitism and science, al
though DR.. Draper does say that such a ~reconeil-
iation between Professionalism and science "would
easily take place, if the Protestant Churches
would only give up to the maxim taught by
Luther, i. e., the right of private Interpretation
of the Scriptures when We consider that
Protestant orthodoxy depends on the acceptance
of the following doctrines, viz: the fall of man,
regeneration, atonement, repentance, justification
by free grace, &C., and that DR.. Draper, ad-
uniting no such thing as revelation, sees in them
only a form of thought dependent upon material
evolution from " antecedent intellectation,' - and
also sees at present 'a rapidly increasing departure
from the Public Religious Faith - we cannot but
conclude that he considers the church in 30 de-
cayed q state that but q single step more is
necessary to its final dissolution, and when this is
accomplished, science will befriend her remains,
by building over them her temples, perhaps, to
the " unknown God"
This is what he styles " a friendship alienated
to be restored - but while he does not express in
any single sentence the exact conditions of the
restoration, it must take a great deal of blind
confidence in a great author because of his
greatness, to put any other construction upon his
real meaning than that just intimated. While by
a peculiar facility of expression and a dextrous
yelling of what would otherwise be very obnox-
ious to the mind of any Christian in the matter
constituting the body of this book, we have had
it represented to US in a very favorable light by
the periodical press, there is something SO covert
if not sinister, in the handling it has received,
that no intelligent and true Christian but will
deplore the means as not justifable by the end,
when he has read the book for himself.
Though, of course, the two are vastly different
men, the author of this book is as thoroughly an
infdel as was ever Tomas Paine, and his book as
subversive of all religious institutions as was the
1" Age of Reason" and yet when the very name
of the latter would not be received without a
shudder, the former, through the effects of enco-
miums issued from the press, might be received
Will every maEk VI grace.
The open bluntness of such men as Huxley,
when he meets in opposition what he calls " the
tattoo of the drum ecclesiastic," is certainly far
more manly than the indecisive but insinuating
mode of procedure SO common to scientific men OF
the present day, and which is fast becoming the
style to which the press generally is suiting itself.
Whether it be the dread of men or a queasy
conscience which makes so many of the scientific
materialists of to-day refrain from giving an I'M
equivocal expression to their thoughts, it is i'm
possible to say; but the fact remains, and may be
plainly seen, which ever way the eye be turned
When the &" drum ecclesiastic 5" beats, how
few we see come directly to the front, although
so many have sneered and limited at the L" dis
cordant sound parading round and round :"
What was it Mill had dreaded so much as to
cause him to tacitly deceive the world as to his
religious belief until he had passed beyond the
reach of worldly opinion, leaving to those who
had consoled themselves with the idea that Sc
great a thinker was surely on their side, the very
unwelcome legacy of a ~posthumous confession oil
atheism, salved over by the concession that it was
barely possible that Christianity might be true
Nothing can be more dangerous to the church
than this skulking enemy that deals not in open
warfare, out gives q PACK thrust from @ covered
retreat.
The great tendency of the scientific mind oil
to-day is toward the theory of evolution in con,
tradistinction from creation by a direct ~providen.
tial act, but 10th to come into open warfare it often
attempts the seduction of its enemies by repre-,
senting itself as not hostile to religion, and paci'
flying them by saying, 60 either way, it matters
little, physically or morally, either mode implies
the same omnipotence, and wisdom, and foresight
and protection - when really one mode is tanta-
mount to atheism and the other, its antagonist,
forms the only hope of the Christian. As Hugh
Miller remarks 1t is not its incompasibility
with belief in a First Great Cause that has to be