RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 261, 19 March 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

RELIGION AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH.

At the opening of the recent Wesleyan Conference the President (the Rev P. W. Fairclougb, in the course of his opening adJress, said: It is, unhappily, the crjß<bow man (the man behind the times) who lores to challenge the world to single combat. He speaks boldly on behalf of the army, and is often taken as its true representative. He maintains positions long abandoned, and with flippant ignorance assails theories and Htutementn which, though they may not endure, command the respect of the strong intellects of the world. He convinces those who woreconvinced before, but he confirms the enquirer in his doubts. lam firmly convinced that foolish attempts to defend religion against ssience and the modern spirit have been a most fruitful cause of infidelity. They havo confirmed the belief that there is essential hostility. They have confounded hostility to some of the opinions of some religious people with hostility to religion itself. They have treated science as if it were the expression of the innate badness or of the wanton caprice of its professors; but as it is only the expression of awakened intellect, they have repelled the awakened. The divorce between religion and intellect so seriously threatened within the last generation, but now, happily, less imminent, was largely camed by the stubborn prejudice with which religious teachers regarded the new world of thought. Armies of Freethougbt lecturers flourished on demolishing positions which ought to have been matters of indifference to religion. To set up a new infallibility, to lay a new embargo on thought, to create a new sin of inquiry, was to repeat the folly which rei t the ancient church and drenched Europe with blood I am far from pretending that all the assertions and theories of scientific men are true. What I say is that religion should not be staked upon their proving untrue. Why should anyono think that the Sermon on the Mjunt is a safe guide—if only they don't find the *' missing link " ? Why should any fancy that the dit«overy of a trace of Israel in iigypt makes the chapter on charity more forcible ? What is the relation between the Golden Rule aud Nebular Hypothesis ? Can stone heads and stone axes in any position destroy the character of Jesus? Can Elamite tablet? or elemental organs make self-sacrifice ignoble ? I jHere is our bedrock foundation. Why may we not rejoice in it, and not vex our soul over the defence of the various mosses that any grow upon it? The kingdom of God is not a bundle of opinion?, or a group of institutions, but a ■et of eternal and indestructible principles elevating and sweetening life—" not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy." It is •• whatsoever things arc true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are jnst, whatsoever things are pure, wbats-->ever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report." " If there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," continues the Apostle, '• think of these things,"—aye, and teach them and defend them. In devoting yourself to the practical teaching of Christ, to temper and conduct, to new heart and life, to the foroes of love and goodness, to works of righteousness and sympathy, we 6hall be troubled little by unbelief and less by strata, and cave earth.

Intellectual speculations, if we be live men, must interest us. But there is no occashn for our being moro than interested and impartial onlookers. We can afford to let investigation take its course—and it will, whether we agree or not. It can do nothing against the truth. Bo calm, therefore. If any opinion of ours is true we shall not lose is. If it be not true, more truth, unpossessed as yet, waits to enrich us,