Year: 1874

Il Faith Dead9


The eccentricities of modern scientists are
very interesting as signs Of the times and
as illustrations Of the absolute freedom of
thought in the nineteenth century. With no
restraint whatever these intellectual free lances
roam the planet, ready to tilt with any adver-
sary, and SO eager to draw the sword Of an
undaunted logic that it makes little difference
whether their opponent is superannuated
superstition, which is unhorsed at the first
onset or mature faith, against whose coat of
mail they dull the edge Of their Damascus
blades Science is like Admirable Crichton
in the comeliness and fascination of its person
and in the reckless willingness with which it
enters controversy or o tournament Strong
in its confidence in its own logic and power
it has become Of late years fanatical and i'm
patient Of oil tradition, and so completely
iconoclastic that it would clear the Church
universal Of its present objects of faith and
substitute facts for God


Taken in all their badness, and without
that circumlocution which covers their
shoulders with the purple of eloquent
rhetoric, tho facts which we are expected to
receive in the stead of religion are exceed
ingly amusing. Mr.. Tyndall for instance,
having tried to weigh the mystery of prayer in
his balances and found it imponderable, con-
cludes that it has no more value than
dream that it is, at best only an act of self
magnetism, and, therefore, practically .
myth, delusion, which ought to be exploded
in the name of scientific truth. If the world
is unwilling to discontinue its daily petitions
on the strength of his ipse diru he proposes
to try an experiment-namely, to open the
sluiceway of the worlds vocabulary and see
whether the stream will or will not turn Gods
mill In word, he proposes to summon
the Almighty to the bar of scientific cross
examination, and, unless the questions put are
answered promptly and according to the
technical knowledge OF the counsel, the func-
ton of prayer is to be denounced as de-
lusion, and the act of prayer is, in legal
phrase to cease and determine


In like manner Mr.. Huxley disposes Of hu-
man accountability as being simply the diff
ferent phases of disease. man is q con-



vicious according to the degree Of internal
Inflammation. He is a very cunningly con-
trived mo, not contrived, because contrivance
proves personal authorship-a very curious
conjunction of particles, sort of chemical
compound that takes its only color and COM
plexion from surrounding circumstances, q
kind of chameleon, which, clinging to church
steeple, becomes religious, and, living in
shanty, becomes brutal That is the sum
total of manhood. Such statement as this
involves change in the whole economy Of
society of course. Instead of prisons we
ought to have hospitals. in which the molecu--
lar forces can be coaxed into that conjunc-
ton which is virtue, and instead of sermons
we ought to have medicine. Paregoric, and
not theology, is the moving energy of the
world. A murderer is a clock with the main
spring broken, and drunkard is an engine
whose regulator is out of order. Both should
be sent to the mechanic for repair, and not to
the Protestant or Catholic confessional for
help.


AS though these two were not enough to
effect the general destruction of faith Mr.
Mill in a work on religion, which, for good
and sufficient reasons he did not care to have
published until he had been laid under the
sod, opens running fire along the whole line
of popular belief, as if he expected that
all the creeds of history would soon follow
him to the grave. 1t is very sad fact that
mankind has ever built church, and has
been 80 weak, intellectually as to be tempted
into credence in revelation, a miracle or a
personal God. But he consoles himself with
the fervent hope that the spirit of progress,
like the India-rubber end of pencil will
erase such follies and fill up the blank thus
caused with science, metaphysics and psy-
chology.


That small class Of the community will be
affected by these vagaries none will deny.
There is in every generation certain proper
ton who know just enough to doubt who will
grow robust on this sort of pabulum, and who
will make these wholesale denials the excuse
and the basis Of social insanities, of disrupt
ing and disntegrating theories of domestic
life. They will rush to all sorts of unheard
Of extremes, and, after painful parturition,
give birth to matrimonial and communal
deformities which healthy political economy
can never adopt.


But so far as that religious faith is con-
cerned which has woven the marvellous fabric
of history it remains and will remain undis-
turbed. The pulpit of all lands will speak
long after eternal silence shall be set as a seal
on the lips OF doubt. Mans consciousness of
personal accountability is not an accretion
which may be removed by the surgeon knife,
but is as inseparable from his nature as its
perfume is inseparable from the rose A
stately ship on her voyage TO distant lands