Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 Part 3

They are specially trained in ecclesiastical history and tradition, in Greek and Hebrew religious literature, and in the methods of interpretation which have been for ages in use among theologians.

Of late, however, they have shown a decided inclination to abandon the purely ecclesiastical approach to the controversy altogether, and this is especially remarkable in the discussion now pending over Huxley. They do not seek to defend the biblical account of the creation, or to reconcile it with the theory of the evolutionists.

Far from it, they have come down, in most of the recent cases, into the scientific arena, and are meeting the men of science with their own weapons. They tell Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall that their evidence is imperfect, and their reasoning from it faulty. Noticing their activity in this new field, and the marked contrast which this activity presents to the modesty or indifference of the other professions--the lawyers and doctors, for instance, who on general grounds have fully as much reason to be interested in evolution as the ministers, and have hitherto been at least as well fitted to discuss it--we asked ourselves whether it was possible that, without our knowledge, any change had of late years been made in the curriculum of the divinity schools or theological seminaries with the view of fitting ministers to take a prominent part in the solution of the increasingly important and startling problems raised by physical science. In order to satisfy ourselves, we lately turned over the catalogues of all the princ.i.p.al divinity schools in the country, to see if any chairs of natural science had been established, or if candidates for the ministry had to undergo any compulsory instruction in geology or physics, or the higher mathematics, or biology, or palaeontology, or astronomy, or had to become versed in the methods of scientific investigation in the laboratory or in the dissecting-room, or were subjected to any unusually severe discipline in the use of the inductive process. Not much to our surprise, we found nothing of the kind. We found that, to all appearance, not even the smallest smattering of natural science in any of its branches is considered necessary to a minister's education; no astronomy, no chemistry, no biology, no geology, no higher mathematics, no comparative anatomy, and nothing severe in logic. In fact, of special preparation for the discussion of such a theme as the origin of life on the earth, there does not appear to be in the ordinary course of our divinity schools any trace.

We then said to ourselves, But ministers are modest, truthful men; they would not knowingly pa.s.s themselves off as competent on a subject with which they were unfitted to deal. They are no less candid and self-distrustful, for instance, than lawyers and doctors, and a lawyer or doctor who ventured to tackle a professed scientist on a scientific subject to which he had given no systematic study would be laughed at by his professional brethren, and would suffer from it even in his professional reputation, as it would be taken to indicate a dangerous want of self-knowledge. Perhaps, then, the training given in the divinity schools, though it does not touch special fields of science, is such as to prepare the mind for the work of induction by some course of intellectual gymnastics.

Perhaps, though it does not familiarize a man with the facts of geology and biology and astronomy, it so disciplines him in the work of collecting and arranging facts of any kind, and reasoning from them, that he will be a master in the art of proof, and that, in short, though he may not have a scientific man's knowledge, he will have his mental habits.

But we found this second supposition as far from the truth as the first one was. Moreover, the mental const.i.tution of the young men who choose the ministry as a profession is not apt to be of a kind well fitted for scientific investigation. Reverence is one of their prominent characteristics, and reverence predisposes them to accept things on authority. They are inclined to seek truth rather as a means of repose than for its own sake, and to fancy that it is a.s.sociated closely with spiritual comfort, and that they have secured the truth when they feel the comfort. Though, last not least, they enter the seminary with a strong bias in favor of one particular theory of the origin of life and of the history of the race, and their subsequent studies are marked out and pursued with the set purpose of strengthening this bias and of qualifying them to defend it and spread it, and of a.s.sociating in their minds the doubt or rejection of it with moral evil. The consequence is that they go forth, trained not as investigators or inquirers, but as advocates, charged with the defence against all comers of a view of the universe which they have accepted ready-made from teachers. A worse preparation for scientific pursuits of any kind can hardly be imagined. The slightest trace of such a state of mind in a scientific man--that is, of a disposition to believe a thing on grounds of feeling or interest, or with reference to practical consequences, or to jump over gaps in proof in order to reach pleasant conclusions--discredits him with his fellows, and throws doubt on his statements.

We are not condemning this state of mind for all purposes. Indeed, we think the wide-spread prevalence of the philosophic way of looking at things would be in many respects a great misfortune for the race, and we acknowledge that a rigidly trained philosopher would be unfit for most of a minister's functions; but we have only to describe a minister's education in order to show his exceeding unreadiness for contentions such as some of his brethren are carrying on with geologists and physicists and biologists. In fact, there is no educated calling whose members are not, on the whole, better equipped for fighting in scientific fields over the hypothesis of evolution. Our surprise at seeing lawyers and doctors engaged in it would be very much less justifiable, for a portion at least of the training received in these professions is of a scientific cast, and concerns the selection and cla.s.sification of facts, while a clergyman's is almost wholly devoted to the study of the opinions and sayings of other men. In truth, theology, properly so called, is a collection of opinions. Nor do these objections to a clergyman's mingling in scientific disputes arise out of his belief about the origin and government of the world _per se_, because one does not think of making them to trained religious philosophers; for instance, to Princ.i.p.al Dawson or Mr. St. George Mivart. Some may think or say that the religious prepossessions of these gentlemen lessen the weight of their opinions on a certain cla.s.s of scientific questions, but no one would question their right to share in scientific discussions.

CIRc.u.mSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

Some of the letters from clergymen which have been called out by our article on the part recently taken by them in scientific discussion maintain that, although ministers may not be familiar with the facts of science, many of them are fully competent to weigh the arguments founded on these facts put forward by scientific men, and decide whether they have proved their case or not; or, in other words, that we were mistaken in saying that the theological seminaries did not afford severe training in the use of the inductive process, and that it could not be used effectively without knowledge of the matters on which it was used. More than one of these letters points, in support of this view, to the answer of the Rev. Dr. Taylor, of this city, to Professor Huxley's lectures, published some weeks ago in the _Tribune_, and we believe the _Tribune_ presented the author to the public as "a trained logician."

We have accordingly turned to Dr. Taylor's letter and given it a much more attentive reading than we confess we gave it when it first appeared, for the purpose of seeing whether it was really true that ministers were such dexterous and highly taught dialecticians that they could overthrow a scientific man, even on a subject of which they knew little or nothing--whether, in short, they could really treat the question of evolution algebraically, and, by the mere aid of signs of the meaning of which they were ignorant, put the Huxleys and Darwins to confusion. For Dr. Taylor opens in this way:

"Let it be understood, then, that I have no fault to find with Mr. Huxley as a discoverer of facts or as an exponent of comparative anatomy. In both of these respects he is beyond all praise of mine, and I am ready to sit at his feet; but when he begins to reason from the facts which he sets forth, then, like every other reasoner, he is amenable to the laws of argumentation, and his conclusions are to be tested by the relation which they bear to the premises which he has advanced, and by the proof which he furnishes for the premises themselves."

We pa.s.s over, as of no consequence for our present purpose, the various exceptions which he then takes to Huxley's arrangement of his lectures, to the tone of his exceptions, and to his mode of referring to the biblical hypothesis, and come to what he has to say of Huxley's evidence, which he truly calls "circ.u.mstantial evidence." The first thing he does is to define circ.u.mstantial evidence; but here, at the very outset, we have been surprised to find a logician who conceives himself capable of overhauling the argumentation of the masters of science, going to a lawyer to get "a statement of the principles which regulate the value of circ.u.mstantial evidence." This is a matter which lay logicians usually have at their fingers' ends, and we have never known one yet who would not be puzzled by a suggestion that he should do as Dr.

Taylor did--go to a "distinguished legal friend" for information as to the conditions of this kind of proof. For, as we have more than once pointed out, lawyers, as such, have no special skill or training in the use of circ.u.mstantial evidence as scientific men know it--that is, as evidence which derives all its force from the laws of the human mind. The circ.u.mstantial evidence with which lawyers, _qua_ lawyers, are familiar under our system of jurisprudence is an artificial thing created by legislation or custom, with the object of preventing the minds of the jury-- presumably a body of untrained and unlearned men--from being confused or led astray. Moreover, they are only familiar with its use in one very narrow field--human conduct under one set of social conditions. For example, a lawyer might be a very good judge of circ.u.mstantial evidence in America, and a very poor one in India or China; might have a keen eye for the probable or improbable in a New England village, and none at all in a Prussian barrack.

A familiar ill.u.s.tration of the restrictions on his experience of it is to be found in the rule which compels the calling of "experts"

when there is a question as to any point of science or art. "The words science or art," says Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, "include all subjects on which a _course of special study or experience is necessary to the formation of an opinion_," and the opinion of such an expert is a "relevant fact." So that Dr. Taylor's "distinguished legal friend," if a good lawyer, would not, in spite of his proficiency in circ.u.mstantial evidence, undertake to dispute with Professor Huxley about the relation of the anchitherium, hipparion, and horse; and if Dr. Taylor offered himself for examination on such a point he would be laughed out of court. In none of our courts is the presentation allowed of _all_ the circ.u.mstances which strengthen or weaken a probability.

A lawyer, therefore, though he might not be as ill fitted for a scientific discussion as a minister, is, _as such_, hardly more of an authority on the force and limits of that portion of scientific proof which is drawn from simple observation. Dr. Taylor's consulting one as a final authority as to the very nature of the argument on which he was himself about to sit in judgment is at the outset a suspicious incident. The definition of circ.u.mstantial evidence which he got from his legal friend was this:

"The process of proof by circ.u.mstantial evidence consists in reasoning from such facts as are known or proved, and thence establis.h.i.+ng such as are conjectured to exist. The process is fatally vicious, first, if any material circ.u.mstance from which we seek to deduce the conclusion depends itself on conjecture; and, second, if the known facts are not such as to exclude to a reasonable degree of certainty every other hypothesis."

"Now, tried by these two tests," says Dr. Taylor, "the professor's argument was a failure." Taking this definition as it stands, however, we think it will not be difficult to show that Dr. Taylor is not competent to apply the tests, or to say whether the professor's argument is a failure or not.

It is hardly necessary to say that all the evidence in our possession or attainable, with regard to the history of the earth and of animal and vegetable life on its surface, is circ.u.mstantial evidence. The sciences of geology, palaeontology, and, to a certain extent, biology are sciences of observation, and but few of their conclusions can be reached or tested by experimentation. They are the result of a collection of facts, observed in various places, at various times, and by various persons, and variously related to other facts; and the collection of these facts, and the arrangement of them, and the formation of a judgment as to their value both positive and relative, form the greater portion of the work of a scientific man in these fields. Professor Huxley's argument, which Dr. Taylor disposes of so summarily, consists of a series of inferences from facts so collected and arranged. They are the things "known or proved," on which, as his legal friend truly says, the reasoning in the process of proof by circ.u.mstantial evidence must rest.

Now, Dr. Taylor, by his own confession, is no authority in either geology, biology, or palaeontology. He has neither collected, observed, nor experimented in these fields. He does not know how many facts have been discovered in them, or what bearing they have on other facts in other fields. Therefore, he is entirely unable to say whether Huxley is arguing from things "known or proved" or not.

Moreover, he does not, for similar reasons, know whether Huxley's process has been "fatally vitiated" by the dependence of any "material circ.u.mstance" on conjecture, or by the insufficiency of the "known facts" to exclude every other hypothesis; for, first, he does not know what is in geological, biological, or palaeontological induction a "material circ.u.mstance"--nor does any man know except by prolonged study and observation--and, second, he does not know whether "the known or proved facts" are sufficient to exclude every other hypothesis, because he neither knows what facts are known nor what is the probative force of such as are known. We can, however, make Dr. Taylor's position still clearer by a homely ill.u.s.tration. A wild Indian will, owing to prolonged observation and great acuteness of the senses, tell by a simple inspection of gra.s.s or leaf-covered ground, on which a scholar will perceive nothing unusual whatever, that a man has recently pa.s.sed over it. He will tell whether he was walking or running, whether he carried a burden, whether he was young or old, and how long ago and what hour of the day he went by.

He reaches all his conclusions by circ.u.mstantial evidence of precisely the same character as that used by the geologist, though he knows nothing about the formal logic or the process of induction.

Now, what Dr. Taylor would have us believe is that he can come out of his study and pa.s.s judgment on the Indian's reasoning without being able to see one of the "known facts" on which the reasoning rests, or appreciate in any degree which of them is material to the conclusion and which is not, or even to conjecture whether, taken together, they exclude the hypothesis that it was not a man but a cow or a dog which pa.s.sed over the ground, and not to-day but yesterday that the marks were made.

Dr. Taylor further on makes a display of this inability to appreciate the logical value of scientific facts by asking: "Where is the evidence, scientific or other, that there was evolution? We see these fossils (those of the horse). Huxley _says_ they are as they are because the higher evolved itself out of the lower; we _say_ they are as they are because G.o.d created them in series." To recur to the former ill.u.s.tration, it is as if the Indian should show Dr. Taylor the marks on which he relied in his induction, and the doctor should calmly reply: "I see the marks; you _say_ they were made by a man's foot in walking; I, who have never given any attention to the subject, and have never been in the woods before, _say_ they were made by the rain." The fact is that if there were any weight whatever in this kind of talk--if no equality of knowledge were necessary between two disputants--it would enable an ignorant field-hand to sweep away in one sentence the whole science of geology and palaeontology, and even astronomy, and to dispose of every conclusion on any subject drawn from a skilled and experienced balancing of probabilities, or nice mathematical calculation, by simply saying that he was not satisfied with the proofs.

Dr. Taylor's reasons for believing that the appearance of fossil horses with a diminis.h.i.+ng number of toes is caused by the creation at separate periods of a four-, a three-, a two-, and a one-toed horse are, he says, "personal, philosophical, historical," and he opposes them with the utmost apparent sincerity to Huxley's a.s.sertion that "there can be no scientific evidence" of such creation. The "personal reason" for believing in successive creations of sets of horses with a varying number of toes can, of course, only be the reason so often urged in ball-room disputation--that "I _feel_ it must be so;" the "philosophic reason"

can only be the one with which those who have frequented the society of metaphysicians are very familiar, namely, a deduction from some eminent speculator's opinion about the nature of the Supreme Being, the conclusion being apparently that if the Creator wished to diminish the number of a horse's toes, it would not do for him to let one drop into disuse and so gradually disappear, but he would have to make a new horse, on a new design. What Dr. Taylor means by the "historical reason" we can only conjecture from his saying that it is of the same order as his historical reason for believing "that the Bible is the Word of G.o.d." The historical reason for this, we presume, is that there are various literary and traditional proofs that the Old Testament was held to be the Word of G.o.d by the Jewish nation at a very early period, and was by them transmitted as such to the modern Christian world, and that many of the prophecies contained in it have received partial or a complete fulfilment. But how by a process of this kind, partly literary and partly conjectural, and attended by great difficulties at every step, he would reach a fact of _prehistoric times_ of so much gravity as creation in series, we think it would puzzle Dr. Taylor to explain.

Indeed, the mere production in a controversy of this nature of these vague fancies, half pious, half poetical, conjured up in most cases as a help to mental peace, by a leading minister in the character of a logician, is a very remarkable proof of the extent of those defects in clerical education to which we recently called attention.

TYNDALL AND THE THEOLOGIANS

The recent address delivered by Professor Tyndall before the British a.s.sociation at Belfast, in which he "confessed" that he "prolonged the vision backward across the boundary of experimental evidence, and discerned in matter the promise and potency of every quality and form of life," produced one by no means very surprising result. Dr.

Watts, a professor of theology in the Presbyterian College in that city, was led by it to offer to read before the Biological Section of the a.s.sociation a paper containing a plan of his own for the establishment of "peace and co-operation between science and religion." The paper was, as might have been expected, declined. The author then read it before a large body of religious people, who apparently liked it, and they pa.s.sed him a vote of thanks. The whole religious world, indeed, is greatly excited against both Tyndall and Huxley for their performances on this occasion, and papers by no means in sympathy with the religious world--the _Pall Mall Gazette_, for instance--are very severe on them for having "recourse to a style of oratory and disquisition more appropriate to the chapel than the lecture-room," or, in other words, for using the meetings of the a.s.sociation for a sort of propagandism not much superior in method to that of theological missionaries, and thus challenging the theologians to a conflict which may make it necessary, in the interest of fair play, to add a theological section to the a.s.sociation. Of course, when Professor Tyndall pa.s.sed "beyond the boundary of experimental evidence," and began to see with his "mind's eye" instead of with the microscope and telescope, he got into a region in which the theologian is not only more at home than he, but which theology claims as its exclusive domain, and in which ministers look on physicists as intruders.

But then, Dr. Watts's "plea for peace and co-operation between science and religion" is one of many signs that theologians are, in spite of all that has as yet been said, hardly alive to the exact nature of the att.i.tude they occupy toward science. They evidently look upon scientific men as they look on a hostile school of theologians--as the Princeton men look on the Yale men, for instance, or the New looked on the Old School Presbyterians, or the Calvinists on the Arminians--that is, as persons having a common standard of orthodoxy, but differing somewhat in their method of applying it, and who may, therefore, be induced from considerations of expediency to suppress all outward marks of divergence and work together harmoniously for the common end. All schools of theology seek the glory of G.o.d and salvation of souls, and, this being the case, differences on points of doctrine do seem trifling and capable of being put aside.

It is this way of regarding the matter which has led Dr. Watts to propose an alliance between religion and science, and which produces the arguments one sometimes sees in defence of Christianity against Positivism, drawn from a consideration of the services which Christianity has rendered to the race, and of the gloomy and desolate condition in which its disappearance would leave the world.

Tyndall and Huxley do not, however, occupy the position of religious prophets or fathers. They preside over no church or other organization. They have no power or authority to draft any creed or articles which will bind anybody else, or which would have any claims on anybody's reverence or adhesion. No person, in short, is authorized to bring science into an alliance with religion or with anything else. Such "peace and co-operation" as Dr. Watts proposed would be peace and co-operation between him and Professor Tyndall, or between the theologians and the British a.s.sociation, but "peace and co-operation between science and religion" is a term which carries absurdity on its face. Science is simply a body of facts which lead people familiar with them to infer the existence of certain laws. How can it, therefore, be either at peace or war with anybody, or co-operate with anybody? What Professor Tyndall might promise would be either not to discover any more facts, or to discover only certain cla.s.ses of facts, or to draw no inferences from facts which would be unfavorable to Dr. Watts's theory of the universe; but the only result of this would be that Tyndall would lose his place as a scientific man, and others would go on discovering the facts and drawing the inferences.

In like manner, the supposition that Christianity can be defended against Positivism on grounds of expediency implies a singular conception of the mental operations of those persons who are affected by Positivist theories, and indeed, we might add, of the thinking world generally. No man believes in a religion simply because he thinks it useful, and therefore no man's real adhesion to the Christian creed can be secured by showing him how human happiness would suffer by its extinction. This argument, if it had any weight at all, would only induce persons either to pretend to be Christians when they were not, or to refrain from a.s.sailing Christianity, or to avoid all inquiries which might possibly lead to sceptical conclusions. It is therefore, perhaps, a good argument to address to believers, because it may induce them to suppress doubts and avoid lines of thought or social relations likely to beget doubt; but it is an utterly futile argument to address to those who have already lost their faith. Men believe because they are convinced; it is not in their power to believe from motives of prudence or from public spirit.

However, the complaints of the theologians excited by Professor Tyndall's last utterances are not wholly unreasonable. Science has done nothing hitherto to give it any authority in the region of the unseen. "Beyond the boundary of experimental evidence" one man's vision is about as good as another's. It is interesting to know that Professor Tyndall there "discerns in matter the potency and promise of every quality and form of life," but only because he is a distinguished man, who gives much thought to this cla.s.s of subjects and occupies a very prominent place in the public eye. As a basis for belief of any kind, his vision is of no more value than that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who would probably in that region discern the promise and potency of every form of life in a supreme and creative intelligence. Scientific men are continually pus.h.i.+ng back the limits of our knowledge of the material universe. They have during the last eighty years made an enormous addition to the sum of that knowledge, but they have not, since Democritus, taken away one hair's-breadth from the Mystery which lies behind. In fact, their labors have in many ways deepened this Mystery. We can appeal confidently to any candid man to say, for instance, whether Darwin's theory of the origin of life and the evolution of species does not make this globe and its inhabitants a problem vastly darker and more inscrutable than the Mosaic account of the creation. Take, again, the light thrown on the const.i.tution of the sun by the spectroscope; it is a marvellous addition to our knowledge of our environment, but then, does it not make our ignorance as to the origin of the sun seem deeper? No scientific man pretends that any success in discovery will ever lead the human mind beyond the resolution of the number of laws which now seem to govern phenomena into a smaller number; but if we reached the limit of the possible in that direction to-morrow, we should be as far from the secret of the universe as ever. When we have all got to the blank wall which everybody admits lies at the boundary of experimental evidence, the philosopher will know no more about what lies beyond than the peasant, though the peasant will probably do then what he does now--people it with the creatures of his imagination. If a philosopher in our day likes to antic.i.p.ate that period, and hazards the conjecture that matter lies beyond, he is welcome to his guess, but it ought to be understood that it is only a guess.

The danger to society from the men of science does not, we imagine, lie in the direction in which the theologians look for it. We do not think they need feel particularly troubled by Professor Tyndall's speculations as to the origin of things, for these speculations are very old, and have, after all, only a remote connection with human affairs. But there are signs both in his and Professor Huxley's methods of popularizing science, and in those of a good many of their followers, that we may fear the growth of something in the nature of a scientific priesthood, who, tempted by the great facilities for addressing the public which our age affords, and to which nearly every other profession has fallen a victim, will no longer confine themselves to their laboratories and museums and scientific journals, but serve as "ministers of nature" before great crowds of persons, for the most part of small knowledge and limited capacity, on whom their hints, suggestions, and denunciations will have a dangerously stimulating effect, particularly as the contempt of scientific men for what is called "literature"--that is, the recorded experience of the human race and the recorded expression of human feelings--grows every year stronger, and exerts more and more influence on the ma.s.ses. The number of dabblers in science--of persons with a slight smattering of chemistry, geology, botany, and so on--too, promises to be largely increased for some time to come by the arrangements of one sort or another made by colleges and schools for scientific education; and though there is reason to expect from this education a considerable improvement in knowledge of the art of reasoning, there is also reason to fear a considerable increase of dogmatic temper, of eagerness for experimentation in all fields, and of scorn for the experience of persons who have never worked in the laboratory or done any deep-sea dredging. Now, whatever views we may hold as to the value of science in general and in the long run to the human race, and in particular its value for purposes of legislation and social economy, which we are far from denying, there is some risk that lectures like Professor Huxley's at Belfast, dressed up for promiscuous crowds, and produced with the polite scorn of infallibility, in which the destruction of moral responsibility is broadly hinted at as one of the probable results of researches in biology, will do great mischief. For what does it matter, or rather ought it to matter, for social purposes, in what part of a man's system his conscience lies, or whether pressure on a particular portion of the brain may convert him into a thief, when we know, as of experience, that the establishment of good courts and police turns a robbers' den into a hive of peaceful industry, and when we see the wonders which discipline works in an ignorant crowd?

THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE

A considerable body of the graduates of the Irish Catholic University, including members of the legal and medical professions, presented a long and solemn memorial to Cardinal Cullen and the other Catholic bishops at the late commencement of that inst.i.tution, which throws a good deal of light not only on the vexed question of Catholic education in Ireland, but on the relations of the Catholic Church to education everywhere. The memorial examined in detail the management of the university, which it p.r.o.nounces so bad as to endanger the existence of the college. But what it most complains of is the all but total absence of instruction in science. The memorialists say that the neglect of science by the university has afforded a very plausible argument to the enemies of the university, who never tire of repeating that the Catholic Church is the enemy of science, and that she will carry out her usual policy in Ireland with respect to it; that "no one can deny that the Irish Catholics are miserably deficient in scientific education, and that this deficiency is extremely galling to them; and, in a commercial sense, involves a loss to them, while, in an intellectual sense, it involves a positive degradation." They speak regretfully of the secession of Professor Sullivan, to take the presidency of the Queen's College, Cork, and declare that "no Irish-Catholic man of science can be found to take his place." They then go on to make several astounding charges. The lecture-list of the university does not include for the faculty of arts a single professor of the physical or natural sciences, or the name of a solitary teacher in descriptive geometry, geology, zoology, comparative anatomy, mineralogy, mining, astronomy, philology, ethnology, mechanics, electricity, or optics. Of the prizes and exhibitions, the number offered in cla.s.sics equals that of those offered in all other studies put together, while in other universities the cla.s.sical prizes do not exceed one-fourth of the whole. They wind up their melancholy recital by declaring that they are determined that the scientific inferiority of Irish Catholics shall not last any longer; and that if they cannot obtain a scientific education in their own universities, they will seek it at Trinity or the Queen's Colleges, or study it for themselves in the works of Haeckel, Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Lyell. They make one other singular complaint, viz., that no provision is made for supplying the lay students with instruction in theology.

It ought to be said in defence of the cardinal and the bishops, though the memorialists probably could not venture to say it, that the church hardly pretends that the university is an efficient or complete instrument of education. It has been in existence, it is true, twenty years, but the main object of its promoters during this period has apparently been to hara.s.s or frighten the government by means of it into granting them an endowment, or giving them control of the Queen's Colleges. Had they succeeded in this, they would doubtless before now have made a show of readiness to afford something in the nature of scientific instruction, because, as the memorialists remark, there is no denying "that the physical and natural sciences have become the chief studies of the age." But the memorialists must be either very simple-minded or very ignorant Catholics, if they suppose that any endowment or any pressure from public opinion would ever induce the Catholic hierarchy to undertake to turn out students who would make a respectable figure among the scientific graduates of other universities, or even hold their own among the common run of amateur readers of Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall. There is no excuse for any misunderstanding as regards the policy of the church on this point. She has never given the slightest encouragement or sanction to the idea which so many Protestant divines have of late years embraced, that theology is a progressive science, capable of continued development in the light of newly discovered facts, and of gradual adaptation to the changing phases of our knowledge of the physical universe. She has hundreds of times given out as absolute truth a certain theory of the origin of man and of the globe he lives on, and she cannot either abandon it or encourage any study or habit of mind which would naturally or probably lead to doubt of the correctness of this theory, or of the church's authority in enunciating it. In fact, the Pope, who is now an infallible judge in all matters of faith and discipline, has, within the last five years, in the famous "Syllabus" of modern follies, p.r.o.nounced d.a.m.nable and erroneous nearly all the methods and opinions by which Irish or any other Catholics could escape the deficiency in scientific knowledge which they say they find so injurious and so degrading. It is safe to say, therefore, that a Catholic cannot receive an education which would fit him to acquire distinction among scientific men in our day, without either incurring everlasting d.a.m.nation or running the risk of it. Beside a danger of this kind, of course, as any priest will tell him, commercial loss and social inferiority are small matters.

Of course, if we take the facts of a great many branches of physical science by themselves, it would be easy enough to show that a good Catholic might safely accept them. But no man can reach these facts by investigations of his own, or hold to them intelligently and fruitfully, without acquiring intellectual habits and making use of tests which the church considers signs of a rebellious and therefore sinful temper. Moreover, n.o.body who has attained the limits of our present knowledge in chemistry, geology, comparative anatomy, ethnography, philology, and mythology can stand there with closed eyes. He must inevitably peer into the void beyond, and would be more than human if he did not indulge in speculations as to the history of the universe and its destiny which the church must treat as endangering his salvation. This is so well known that one reads the lamentations of these Catholic laymen with considerable surprise. They may be fairly supposed to know something of church history, and, even if they do not, they must profess some knowledge of the teaching given by the church in those universities of other countries which she controls. She does not encourage the study of natural science anywhere. Mathematics and astronomy she looks on with some favor, though we do not know how the spectroscope may have affected her toward the latter; and we venture to a.s.sert that these are the only fields of science in which any Catholic layman attains distinction without forfeiting his standing in the eyes of the clergy. We do not now speak of the French, Italian, and German Catholic laymen who go on with their investigations without caring whether the clergy like them or not, and without taking the trouble to make any formal repudiation of the church's authority over their intellects. We simply say there are no pious Catholic scientific men of any note, and never will be if the Catholic clergy can help it, and the lamentations of Catholics over the fact are logically absurd.

The legislation which Prussia is now putting into force on the subject of clerical education is founded on a candid recognition of the church's position on this matter. Prince Bismarck is well aware that in no seminary or college controlled by priests is there any chance that a young man will receive the best instruction of the day on the subjects in which the modern world is most interested, and by which the affairs of the State are most influenced. He has, therefore, wisely decided that it is the duty of the State to see that men who still exert as much power over popular thought as priests do, and are to receive State pay as popular instructors, shall also receive the best obtainable secular education before being subjected to purely professional training in the theological seminaries. The desperation of the fight made against him by the clergy is due to their well-grounded belief that in order to get a young man in our time to swallow a fair amount of Catholic theology, he must be caught early and kept close. The warfare which is raging in Prussia is one which has broken out in every country in which the government has formal relations with the church.

The appearance of a mutinous spirit among the Irish laity, and this not on political but scientific subjects, shows that the poison has sunk very deep and is very virulent; for the Irish laity have been until now the foremost Catholics in the world in silence and submissiveness, and there is nothing in ecclesiastical history which can equal in absurdity a request, addressed to Cardinal Cullen, that he would supply them with the kind of teaching which other men get from Tyndall and Huxley. With ecclesiastical insubordination arising out of differences on matters of doctrine or discipline, such as that manifested by the Old Catholics, it is comparatively easy to deal. Schismatics can be excommunicated by an authority which they have themselves venerated, and from an organization in which they loved to live and would fain have died. But over wanderers into the fields of science the church loses all hold. Her weapons are the jest of the museum and the laboratory, and her lore the babbling of the ignorant or blind.

THE CHURCH AND GOOD CONDUCT

The Episcopal Church, at the late Triennial Convention, took up and determined to make a more vigorous effort to deal with the problem presented by the irreligion of the poor and the dishonesty of church-members. It is an unfortunate and, at first sight, somewhat puzzling circ.u.mstance, that so many of the culprits in the late cases of fraud and defalcation should have been professing Christians, and in some cases persons of unusual ecclesiastical activity, and that this activity should apparently have furnished no check whatever to the moral descent. It is proposed to meet the difficulty by more preaching, more prayer, and greater use of lay a.s.sistance in church-work. There is nothing very new, however, about the difficulty. There is hardly a year in which it is not deplored at meetings of church organizations, and in which solemn promises are not made to devise some mode of keeping church-members up to their professions, and gathering more of the church-less working-cla.s.ses into the fold; but somehow there is not much visible progress to be recorded. The church scandals multiply in spite of pastors and people, and the workingmen decline to show themselves at places of wors.h.i.+p, although the number of places of wors.h.i.+p and of church-members steadily increases.

We are sorry not to notice in any of the discussions on the subject a more frank and searching examination of the reason why religion does not act more powerfully as a rule of conduct. Until such an examination is made, and its certain results boldly faced by church reformers, the church cannot become any more of a help to right living than it is now, be this little or much. The first thing which such an examination would reveal is a thing which is in everybody's mind and on everybody's tongue in private, but which is apt to be evaded or only slightly alluded to at ecclesiastical synods and conventions--we mean the loss of faith in the dogmatic part of Christianity. People do not believe in the fall, the atonement, the resurrection, and a future state of reward and punishment at all, or do not believe in them with the certainty and vividness which are needed to make faith a constant influence on man's daily life. They do not believe they will be d.a.m.ned for sin with the a.s.surance they once did, and they are consequently indifferent to most of what is said to them of the need of repentance. They do not believe the story of Christ's life and the theory of his character and attributes given in the New Testament, or they regard them as merely a picturesque background to his moral teachings, about which a Christian may avoid coming to any positive conclusion.

No man who keeps himself familiar with the intellectual and scientific movements of the day, however devout a Christian he may be, likes to question himself as to his beliefs about these matters, or would like to have to define accurately where his faith ended and his doubts began. If he is a.s.sailed in discussion by a sceptic and his combativeness roused, he will probably proclaim himself an implicit and literal acceptor of the gospel narratives; but he will not be able to maintain this mental att.i.tude alone in his own room.

The effort that has been made by Unitarians and others to meet this difficulty by making Christ's influence and authority rest on his moral teachings and example, without the support of a divine nature or mission or sacrifice, has failed. The Christian Church cannot be held together as a great social force by his teaching or example as a moral philosopher. A church organized on this theory speedily becomes a lecture a.s.sociation or a philanthropic club, of about as much aid to conduct as Freemasonry. Christ's sermons need the touch of supernatural authority to make them impressive enough for the work of social regeneration, and his life was too uneventful and the society in which he lived too simple, to give his example real power over the imagination of a modern man who regards him simply as a social reformer.

This decline of faith in Christian dogma and history has not, however, produced by any means a decline in religious sentiment, but it has deprived religion of a good deal of its power as a means of moral discipline. Moral discipline is acquired mainly by the practice of doing what one does not like to do, under the influence of mastering fear or hope. The conquest of one's self, of which Christian moralists speak so much, is simply the acquisition of the power of doing easily things to which one's natural inclinations are opposed; and in this work the ma.s.s of mankind are powerfully aided--indeed, we may say, have to be aided--by the prospect of reward or punishment. The wonderful results which are achieved in the army, by military authority, in inspiring coa.r.s.e and common natures with a spirit of the loftiest devotion, are simply due to the steady application by day and by night of a punis.h.i.+ng and rewarding authority. The loss of this, or its great enfeeblement, undoubtedly has deprived the church of a large portion of its means of discipline, and reduced it more nearly to the __role_ of a stimulater and gratifier of certain tender emotions. It contains a large body of persons whose religious life consists simply of a succession of sensations not far removed from one's enjoyment of music and poetry; and another large body, to whom it furnishes refuge and consolation of a vague and ill-defined sort in times of sorrow and disappointment. To these persons the church prayers and hymns are not trumpet-calls to the battle-field, but soothing melodies, which give additional zest to home comforts and luxuries, and make the sharper demands of a life of the highest integrity less unbearable. Nay, the case is rather worse than this. We have little doubt that this sentimental religion, as we may call it, in many cases deceives a man as to his own moral condition, and hides from him the true character and direction of the road he is travelling, and furnishes his conscience with a false bottom. The revelations of the last few years as to its value as a guide in the conduct of life have certainly been plain and deplorable.

The evil in some degree suggests the remedy, though we do not mean to say that we know of any complete remedy. Church-members.h.i.+p ought to involve discipline of some kind in order to furnish moral aid. It ought, that is to say, to impose some restraint on people's inclinations, the operation of which will be visible, and enforced by some external sanction. If, in short, Christians are to be regarded as more trustworthy and as living on a higher moral plane than the rest of the world, they must furnish stronger evidence of their sincerity than is now exacted from them, in the shape of plain and open self-denial. The church, in short, must be an organization held together by some stronger ties than enjoyment of weekly music and oratory in a pretty building, and alms-giving which entails no sacrifice and is often only a tickler of social vanity. There is in monasticism a suggestion of the way in which it must retain its power over men's lives, and be enabled to furnish them with a certificate of character. Its members will have to have a good deal of the ascetic about them, but without any withdrawal from the world.

How to attain this without sacrificing the claims of art, and denying the legitimacy of honestly acquired material power, and, in fact, restricting individual freedom to a degree which the habits and social theories of the day would make very odious, is the problem to be solved, and, it is, no doubt, a very tough one.

General inculcation of "plain living" will not solve it, as long as "plain living" is not defined and the "self-made man" who has made a great fortune and spends it lavishly is held up to the admiration of every school-boy. The church has been making of late years a gallant effort to provide accommodation for the successful, and enable them to be good Christians without sacrificing any of the good things of this life, and, in fact, without surrendering anything they enjoy, or favoring the outside public with any recognizable proof of their sincerity. We do not say that this is reprehensible, but it is easy to see that it has the seeds of a great crop of scandals in it.