Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1882-02-17
Religion and Science.

The. religious spirit is the sincere
desire to know all the facts of our lives,
to conform our conduct completely to
them, and SO to scale the heights OF
being in action increasingly pure and
strong. When the law that is in US
and the law that is in the spiritual
universe lie parallel, then the wheels
OF action will have in them each a
living spirit, and will roll forward or
way bedded in the divine purpose, and
graded in ascent by the divine wisdom
and grace. Bat the religious tendency,
liable in its turn to become partial,
has its corresponding danger. Direct
ing its attention to action, it is too
ready to assume the complete posses
sion OF the conditions of action, to wit,
belief, and it in this way becomes IN
progressive in its intellectual spirit
1t thus opposes bigotry to skepticism,
and SO makes haste to divide with
science the evil as we'll as the good of
the world. This has been its failure,
hasty belief, while truth, like Paul in
the hands of Pharisees and Sadducees
has been in danger of being torn in
sunder by the conflicting parties.
Disagreement, latent or active, has
thus always been found between sci
ence and religion. The spirit of in
quiry, fearlessly pushing in all direc.
tons, mas been pronounced irreverent,
and warned Off from fields reserved for
religious faith. Are there then any
limits to sincere and careful inquiry !?
Is religion in some sense of the nature
of q reservation? There are no outside
restraints; the only restraints are these
which reason must set itself in view OF
its own powers and the topic before it.
The halts of reason are as rational as its
marches, and the command both to
halt and march must proceed from it.
self. Each thing indeed must be
sought into and known wisely according
to its own nature; and there is nothing
which it behooves science, ss science,
more thoroughly to understand or more
constantly to remember than this fact
To deal hastily with fundamental con-
victions is as unscienti6c as it is ire
ligious. The more sacred and august
atruth, the more searching, reverential
and protracted should be our inquiry
concerning it, that We may drink
freely and deeply at its fountains of
spiritual life. A prayer-gauge even
was not SO much wrong conception,
as it YVES bungling one. The efficacy,
and so the fitness OF prayer are certainly
open to inquiry, but to an inquiry that
thoroughly recognizes the subtitle con-
ditions of the problem. A steam gauge
and o in-gauge are useful instru.
ments, but We cannot measure with
them the force of the will, or the vol
ume of the affections. Let truth be
sought into everywhere-the higher
the truth, the better the search but
let it in each case be sought into by
methods aptly fitted to its coy nature,
with lenses SO deity and skillfully
shaped and handled that they shall
neither lose nor distort the image they
are to present. Both have erred; the
scientist has been quite too hasty, and
even maliciously aggressive, in his
form of inquiry; the religionist his
been quite too timid, and even resent
fully conservative, as to inquiry itself.
Yet the fact remains that to make in.
Quiry at once reverent, thorough and
wise is the concurrent labor of ALL
president lBsscom. of the Univ, Isl !.
of Wisconsin.