REVIEW.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1221, 1 February 1878, Page 3

REVIEW.

THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE*

[from the press.] This volume, of 130 pages, by an American professor, is written with vigor and thorough impartiality. The authority for every statement is given - at the foot of the page. Draper’s hook on the same subject is marred by diffuseness and irrelevant reasoning. Though the smaller book of the two, Dr White’s vohime conveys quite as much information, and is certainly more trustworthy in its matter, and altogether more helpful to the general reader. Yery clearly is it shown that the root-cause of the internecine war between the teachers of religion and the students of science is the assumption by the former that the Bible was intended to be a text-book of science as well as a revelation of doctrine and its consequent duties. From the first of the Fathers down to the last of the modern divines this has been the fundamental, and, it need not be said, most pernicious mistake. And this not by one section of the church only. Justice compels any one to say that the founders of Protestantism were no less zealous against the new scientific doctrines than the Homan Catholics. This is what Martin Luther said in reference to Kopernik (Copernicus):— “ People gave ear to an upstart astrologer, who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the sun and moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very beet. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy. But Sacred Scripture tells ns that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.” It would be easy to adduce scores of similar examples of dogmatic and perfectly intolerant assertions. The writer has no difficulty in proving to a demonstration that all interference with science in the supposed interest of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in the direst evils, both to religion itself and to science at large. To this may be added that all untrammelled investigation, no matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed, has invariably resulted in the highest good of religion and science. This is a rule to which history shows not a single exception. It is gratifying to see in most of our contemporary master thinkers an entire change of front. Each has benefitted by the folly of the past. The science teacher and the Christian thinker are now grasping hands, and recognising each other as earnest brother workers, though in different spheres. They stand together as allies in the common light for truth against falsehood of every kind ; for right against wrong ; for the living kernel of religion rather than for the dried husks of superstitious dogma; and so between them they can be the means of ministering the richest and noblest blessings to the whole human race.