EDITOR'S TABLE. 



361 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



TEE CONFLICT OF RELIGION AND 

 SCIENCE. 



IT is a common remark that there is 

 no necessary hostility between re- 

 ligion and science ; and this is unques- 

 tionably true. That they will be ulti- 

 mately harmonized we cannot doubt; 

 but the world is very far from having 

 yet reached that blessed consummation. 

 The scientist and the religionist can get 

 on comfortably together as long as they 

 talk in very general terms; but when 

 they come to close quarters, and press 

 earnestly for definitions, collision is 

 pretty certain to ensue. This is partly 

 due to the one-sidedness of the parties; 

 much to still unresolved difficulties in 

 the relation of the subjects ; and not a 

 little, it must be confessed, to that spir- 

 it of pugnacity by which humanity is 

 still eminently animated. It is an age 

 of propagandism and proselyting by 

 tongue and pen ; and the graceless mul- 

 titude, moreover, always enjoys a good 

 fight. The Archbishop of York was 

 called to Edinburgh to lecture before 

 the Philosophical Society, and the 

 chance of pommeling some of our 

 modern so-called philosophers was too 

 good to be lost. Prof. Huxley hap- 

 pened to be engaged to give a lecture 

 in the same town shortly after, invited 

 by a religious body, and he would have 

 been more a saint than his predecessor, 

 if he could have refrained from giving 

 back some of the archbishop's blows. 

 In vindicating his school from the 

 charge of materialism, Prof. Huxley 

 felt it incumbent upon him to inquire 

 into the nature of the juices of living 

 things, and thus innocently kindled the 

 great war of protoplasm that has stirred 

 the combative propensities of the reli- 

 gious and scientific world to this day. 

 And again, from the way the Pres- 

 ident of the British Association has 

 been lately belabored by religious and 



semi-religious people of all sorts, we 

 must conclude that the temper of an- 

 tagonism is far from having yet died 

 out, and that there must be a good deal 

 more vigorous campaigning before a 

 peace will be finally conquered. 



Indeed, this conflict just now threat- 

 ens to assume far larger proportions, 

 and to be renewed upon a scale which 

 we have been accustomed to consider 

 as belonging to the distant past. The 

 entire population of Europe is estimated 

 at about 301,000,000, of which 185,000,- 

 000 are Roman Catholics, 71,000,000, 

 Protestants, broken up into numerous 

 sects, and the remainder are Greek 

 Catholics, Jews, and Mohammedans. 

 The adherents of the Roman Catholic 

 Church are thus more numerous, by 

 69,000,000, than all sorts of religious 

 people taken together. The Roman 

 Church is the most extensive and pow- 

 erfully organized of all modern socie- 

 ties, and with a mighty prestige of his- 

 toric associations and traditions, claims 

 to be supreme, infallible, to act under 

 a divine commission, to have for its 

 head the vicegerent of God, and to ex- 

 act the most implicit obedience from 

 all the members of its communion. It 

 had long been believed that the Roman 

 Church, silently yielding to the advance 

 of intelligence and the growing spirit of 

 liberality in modern times, has abated 

 something of its ancient and arrogant 

 pretensions ; but there is not a little 

 reason to think that this was an erro- 

 neous impression. In his "Encyclical 

 Letter," put forth by the head of the 

 Church, in 1864, the pope denounces 

 that "most pernicious and insane opin- 

 ion, that liberty of conscience and of 

 worship is the right of every man, and 

 that this right ought, in every well- 

 governed state, to be proclaimed and 

 asserted by law ; and that the will of 

 the people, manifested by public opin- 



