NO CONFLICT.

Thames Star, Volume IX, Issue 3066, 12 December 1878, Page 4

NO CONFLICT.

A cable despatch reports that professor Tait, of the University of Edinburgh, has written and..will .probably! publish an essay demonstrating that there is no incompatibility between religion and science. Professor Tait is one of the great lights of science in Great Britain, and he holds a trenchant pen, and will doubtless publish an eminently readable essay. But it scarcely needs his help to prove to sensible people that there can be no conflict between science and religion. Science has relation tothe phenomena ot nature, and aims at the discovery of facts, of their relations to each other and'of the laws which rule natural phenomena. Religion has relation to the conduct of men, and aims to instruct and improve their moral nature and lead them to live in harmony with moral lawsl '":■',','. There has been conflict at different times 'between..men! who mistook the real objects of science and religion, but between really scientific and religious teachers there can be no conflict, because they do not anywhere cross each other's paths. If a scientific man should as such declare there is no God. and no future life he would not deserve the least attention; the sufficient reply to him would be that these are matters' which, as he cannot prove them, are beyond the pale of science, and that when he preten'iJsitO speak with authority on these questions he shows that he does not comprehend the limits of scientific inquiry. .There can be no conflicts between truths;, if this were possible, confusion would be introduced into the unirerse, and those: who pretend ,that the facts of science and the truths of religion can conflict show themselves to lack the power to understand either or both. - : J ; i

Whatever fact is clearly established, such as that twice two make four; -cannot conflict with any otherfact or/truth;i if it could science would be pursued 'only in bedlam. But the limits of scientific investigations are very straightly drawn ; for every,,truly, scientific man acknowledges that inquiry, while it establishes phenomena and their interrelations, by no means discovers the reasons for what are called natural laws. Scientific inquiry has established the curious fact, called the law of falling bodies, that an object left without support falls through 16ft of distance in tfoe first second, three times that distance in the next, and soon. But no scientific man pretends to know, or even to hope to discover, why this is so, or why an object should not fall 10ft. the first second and sft. the next. On the other hand, if , religious teachers anywhere pretend that the established truths of science conflict with or can iDJure religion, they on their part show, themselves to be shortsighted and ,of little faith. They forget that the law of of gravitation is a part of the work of the Creator of the universe.—New York Herald.