Year: 1870

Harmony Of Nature and hevciation.
In former editorial we have shown the
Importance Of the newspaper as an evangel-
izing agency. We have now to treat Of it as


medium of conveying scientific and general


truths to the world. The amount Of inquiry
! and of actual scientific knowledge that we find
| in possession of the masses of Europe and


America has often caused considerable sur


prise and favorable comment. In acquiring


knowledge Of history, travels, biography


and general literature they have little or no


time to read books treating of those subjects,


but their daily newspaper steps in and supplies
them with condensed volumes on each. Like
huge telescope it reflects all the wonders Of
the sky and brings the occurrences of remote
continents into our homes and places them
upon our breakfast tables. The most remote
and improbable agencies are seen hurrying
through the air and over the sea to deliver
their separate tidings to MS in our morning
paper. A discovery In science in any part of
the world is known in the antipodes in few
hours or days through the medium Of the tele-
graph and the press; and in this way the
masses are becoming every day more enlight-
ened and educated upon every subject. Upon
no other theory can we account for the inte-
rest which they display in such abstruse sub
jects as are presented By our scholars and
savans. Hence scientific lecture in New
York or London can, upon few hours notice,
gather an audience OF workingmen capable of
filling the largest public hall in either of those
cities.


Extensive reading leads to habits Of thought
and inquiry; for reading people must be or
become thinking people. The first effect Of
scientific investigation upon the minds of
the masses is to materialize thought and to
produce species of insidious inidelity, which
denies the existence of personal Creator and
attributes all the changes in nature to a vital
power inherent in matter. But as the investi-
cation is continued it leads ultimately to the
fullest conviction that the most perfect har-
mony exists between the truths of nature and
those Of revelation. They will be further
convinced that the God of Nature and the God
of the Scriptures is one.


During long series of years Christianity
has had to contend against this species of inf
deity. Physical truths have been pitted
against spiritual, as If they really antagonized
and contradicted each other. The students
and professors Of theology have been at
swords points with the students and professors
of astronomy, geology, chemistry and natural
history upon some presumed discrepancy of
fact or statement made by Moses, or Herschel,
or Faraday, or some other savant. This religiO-
scientific war arose from the ignorance or
insufficient information of both contending
parties and from the dogmatic interpretations
given to the Mosaic records by theologians
who had rarely or never examined the subject
for themselves until science-teachers began to
PROFOUND other doctrines and to draw away
men from the faith. Then they investigated
and found, according to the testimony of the
geologist and the astronomer, that the world
was more than six thousand years old, and that
the work of creation, which was supposed to
have been finished long ago, is still carried on
in remotest space. The Darwinian theory of
the development of our race, which for while
created such dutter in the scientific world,
and in the religious, has been so thoroughly ex-
ploded by modern scientists that shreds enough
of it cannot be gathered together wherewith
to convince any intelligent man that his grand
father was monkey and his great-grandfather
toad. Chemistry, also, in its later devel- |
opments, upsets the infdel theory that the
effect and the cause are identcal-that God |
and nature are one, and that there is nothing |
greater than matter deserving of our supreme |
affection and worship. Chemists have sought !
In matter, in each of its forms, for the vital
find it. The depth saith, 1t is not in me; and
the sea saith, 1t is not with me. Ethnologists
and philologists still assert that their sciences
teach plurality of human species, and it
must be admitted that they have consider
able number of believers in their theories.
But we know that prejudice of caste has much
to do with this belief. The Caucasian race
claims superiority over all others, and cannot
easily admit that God hath made of one blood
all nations of men to dwell on the face of the
earth, and hath determined the bounds of
their habitations, that they should seek the
Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and
find Him.


But as we become more familiar with
the other members or divisions of the human
family we shall probably outgrow these
false theories also. And in this effort the
railroad, the telegraph and the press are
rapidly and effectually doing their work.
Christian civilization, as represented in
the Eastern hemisphere by England and
in the Western by America, is pressing
against the great wall Of China, and soon the
Atlantic and Pacific and Indian oceans the
continents of Asia, Africa and South America
will be cIasped within their Christian embraces
and will become one in sentiment, purpose,
aim, as well as in origin. Here is the young
Giant of the West, less than a century old,