Year: 1874

ness OF the motives of the actors.


Professor Tyndau's Address.


There is nothing of which that eminent
philosopher, Professor Tyndan, is SO i'm
patient as the attempt to limit physical
science BY theological or religious creeds.
This is to him the objectionable sin. Errors
OF opinion upon other subjects he can toler-
ate indeed, he assumes them to be inevita-
BILE. But the error which would forbid human
reason absolute freedom in its search for
truth is to him fundamental wrong; and he
has always protested against it as the foe to
knowledge, honesty and progress. Yet he
never before uttered such protest as he has
done in his address delivered before the Brit
ish Association, August 10, at Belfast which
we published yesterday. It is o remarkable
production, and startling in the boldness of its
views.


The Church has ever been, in the estimation
OF Professor Tyndall, the enemy of science,
and the long night of ignorance that enshrouded
the world from the time of the Greek philo-
sophers to Copernicus he considers to be the
shadow of religion. He is not entirely wrong
Religion, as it was for centuries taught, was
an obstacle to science. The Church in
Galileo's time undertook to stop the revolu-
ton of the planets; in our own age it has,
with equal zeal, but less power. arrayed it.
self against the revelations of geology.
The struggle has always been one
sided. Theology has always retreated;
science has always advanced The result
is that Christianity itself has been
modified by the preachings of the
silent rocks and the bright mysterious stars.
The Mosaic chronology is no longer taught in
the pulpit; the Deluge has become, even to
ordinary theologians, local food, and the
story of the sun which stood still for Joshua
at Ajalon is looked upon as beautiful poem
of the Hebrews. This conflict between q
literal Interpretation of the Bible and the
hard facts of physical science has been in
part averted by the prudence of theologians
and philosophers who have declined to join
issue. A compromise WAS also effected. De
Quincy pointed out more than thirty years ago





because science did not exist when the
sacred volumes were revealed. God disclosed
His will to the Hebrews in the language they
understood; spiritual truths were uttered
which are immutable, but physical phenom-
ena were spoken of by Moses as they seemed
to be. The intelligent Christian world almost
universally accepted this theory of De Quin-
cey, and there was o truce between religion
and science, each working apart, until Mr..
Darwin came with his theory Of develop
ment, denying man to be the immediate crea-
ton of God. This was challenge that the
Church could not decline. There is no com
promise possible here.


These facts must be recalled in order to un-
derstand the position which Professor Tyndall
has at last boldly assumed 1t is unnecessary
for US to say that he never recognized the
Bible as authority upon the questions of the
origin, the nature or the destiny of the human
race. Its morality he may have accepted as
founded upon fundamental laws of thought,
but he admitted neither its history of the past
nor its prophecy of the future. He pursued
the mystery of life as it fed from him
in other directions, and has found it
an insoluble mystery. But to this
conclusion he has finally comeAthat matter is
in itself sufficient to account for life even for
the production of human reason (the highest
form Of life we know, or could by any posi-
bihty know, and that creative, interfering
God is an unnecessary hypothesis We do not
find that Professor Tyndall denies the possible
existence of God, but he emphatically afirms
that in matter itself 'exists the promise and
potency of every form and quality of life."
This is the theory of evolution carried to its
ultimate extreme. 1t is absolute materialism.
Beyond this is mystery to which he bends,
but which he believes to be inscrutable to the
intellect of man.


Thus, casting away all compromise, aban-
doning all disguise, Professor Tyndall has dis.-
missed Christianity. With al the sefssds which
preceded it, as simply an effort of the human
mind to fix conception which cannot be
fixed, but must perpetually change. The
boldness Of this avowal will command the at
teution Of the world /; for here we see that
modern science is not merely study of
rocks, fossils, analogies of structure and
function, chemical affinities and elements of
matter. Professor Tyndalrs address must,
therefore, not be looked on az simply an in
quiry into what we call science; it is q
search into what we know as religion in
the highest sense of the word. We cannot
blame him that he speaks that which he be-
lieves; intellectual hypocrisy is Of no help to
the world, and while we may shrink from such
views as Professor Tyndall has declared, we
cannot deny his claim that, whether right or
wrong freedom of discussion must be ad-
mitted. True Christianity itself has, in the
persons of its noblest disciples, conceded to
science the unrestricted rights of search it de-
mands, and is ready to meet the issue with