The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1891-08-18
SCIENCE AND RELIGION.

w. H. SMITH, NJ. D., Phi. D., in the cur
rent number of the Popular Science Monthly,
has paper on 1.-The Practical Outcome of
Science" that Is well worth careful
perusal since it enumerates many of the
trIumphs of science which enter into the
practical affairs of life, and exhibits how
deeply society is indebted to science for
many of its blessings. One paragraph near
the conclusion of the paper we quote:
Nor have triumphs of science been less in
the moral than in the physical and intel
lectud world. When the curtain of an
tiquity rises upon our race we find its
moral condition Of the lowest and most de-
grading character. What, then, has raised
man out of that condition! 1t may have
been religion; but, in my opinion, scien-
titic progress, by introducing higher and
grander ideas, had much to do with it.
Whatever may have been the cause,
we have certainly left forever the dark
ages of our fathers beliefs. If we fiud a
woman troubled with nervous disorder,
we no longer look about for the person who
bewitched her, and cast that person in the
water to be drowned if innocent, or to float
and be burned as guilty; but we simply
treat the woman for hysteria. If man
falls down and goes into conclusive move
ments with foaming at the mouth, we are
not accustomed to follow the example of
the ancient Greeks and Romans, and say
he is possessed with an evil spirit; but we
give him bromide of potassium or some
other remedy to cure his epilepsy. If a
plague or pestilence break out and sweep
away half a city, we do not place our re-
lance on sacrifices and supplications ad-
dressed to the deities to avert their anger ;
but we seek the cause of it in a
lack of cleanliness and remove the
! filth. We have learned that these things
may be punishments sent from Con, yet
they come mediately, not for moral sin,
! but for violating one Of the physical laws
Of our being. Science found mankind
everywhere believing that each Tree, bush
or dark recess was peopied by an evil
demon, but by the glorious sunlight of the
nineteenth century she has banished those
shapes of darkness from off the civilized
earth, and planted in the brain of the PEG
pie that intelligence greater than en- angeI
with flaming sword, which shall forever
prevent their return"
Such are the learned doctors views oil
the triumph of science in respect to those
things; and surely it is grand enumera
ton of the achievements of science worthy
of all praise. Nor is it becoming in any one
to detract aught from these grand victories
which are here fairly set down to science
Yet one may see in too much infatuation Of
science and what she has accomplished s
lurking danger to revealed religion-to the
religion of the New Testament For in.
stance, we say, as in the above, "If mar
falls down and goes into convulsive move.
ments with foaming at the mouth, we ar,
not accustomed to following the example,
of the Greeks and Romans, and say he /,
possessed of an evil spirit; but we Civ,
him bromide Of potassium or some othe,
remedy to cure his epilepsy" What shall
we conclude from this. What will man,
conclude from 1t! That there never was ,