EDITOR'S TABLE. 



407 



%(ixXox's "^iiUt. 



ANXIOUS ORTHODOXY. 

 "TTTE are all familiar witli the 

 VV troubles of the hen that, having 

 hatched duck's eggs, sees with dismay 

 her foster progeny betaking them- 

 selves to the water. Very similar, it 

 seems to us, is the distress of mind 

 which ecclesiastical authorities now 

 and then display over the evident 

 determination of the modern world 

 to betake itself to the truths of sci- 

 ence rather than to the dogmas of 

 theology. From the ecclesiastical 

 point of view the latter constitute 

 terra firma ; the former are nothing 

 but a heaving sea of uncertainty a 

 treacherous element which threatens 

 to ingulf all who trust themselves 

 to it. 



A conspicuous exhibition of this 

 state of mind is furnished by an ar- 

 ticle in the Chiu'ch Standard of Phil- 

 adelphia from the pen of the Right 

 Eeverend Hugh Miller Thompson, 

 D.D., LL.D., Episcopal Bishop of 

 Mississippi. "The scientists," it ap- 

 pears from Bishop Thompson's ar- 

 ticle, have been professing that, in 

 certain cases of hopeless disease, a 

 period should mercifully be put at 

 once to life and to suffering. This 

 is perfectly terrible. It is true Bishop 

 Thompson does not tell us who the 

 scientists are who have made this in- 

 human proposition ; but that is all 

 the better, as the odium can thus be 

 spread evenly over all of them. 

 Neither does he give the exact terms 

 of the proposition ; and that again 

 is all the better, as it enables him to 

 expand and vary it at will to give 

 us such versions of it, for example, 

 as the following : '' When a man's 

 father becomes toothless and child- 

 ish, the son will lovingly give him 

 the happy dispatch, and enter on 



possession of his estates. When the 

 mother becomes feeble and old, the 

 loving daughter, with her own gentle 

 hands, will drop into the spoon and 

 carry to the lips that kissed her baby 

 face the precious dose that will put 

 the dear old soul out of the way of 

 troubling her longer." In a word, 

 the right reverend bishop has a good 

 time of it banging away at " the sci- 

 entists" through a four-column ar- 

 ticle made up almost wholly of just 

 such inconsequent verbiage as we 

 have quoted. 



The broad fact which writers of 

 this class all seek to ignore is that 

 it is precisely since science began 

 to be a power in the world that 

 there has been the most notable 

 improvement in the manners and 

 morals of mankind. The bishop 

 tells us that, " if man be a develop- 

 ment from the primeval slime, an 

 improved oyster or ape," he fails to 

 see " where there is any room to talk 

 about the sacredness of human life." 

 It seems to us that, far more impor- 

 tant than talking about the sacred- 

 ness of human life, is it to treat hu- 

 man life as sacred ; and if the bishop 

 will pretend that there is any com- 

 parison between the practice of the 

 present day in this respect and that, 

 say, of the eighteenth, seventeenth, 

 and sixteenth centuries, not to go 

 further back, we shall be very much 

 surprised. What science, or, in other 

 words, the progress of knowledge, 

 does is to give the human mind 

 scope and verge for the exercise of 

 its faculties ; and it is this enlarged 

 intellectual activity which leads to 

 the improvement of life in general. 

 If it is impossible to-day to read any 

 history of past ages without shud- 

 dering at the butcheries and cruelties 



