7 34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



birth as " vitiating the primal curse against woman " ; in France, 

 the nse in clerical schools of a historical text-book from which 

 Napoleon was left out ; and, in America, the use of manuals in 

 which the Inquisition is declared to be a purely civil tribunal, or 

 the Puritans tolerant. 



So, too, among multitudes of similar efforts, abroad we have 

 during centuries the fettering of professors at English and Scotch 

 universities by test oaths, subscriptions to articles and catechisms 

 without number. In our own country we have had in a vast 

 multitude of denominational colleges, as the first qualification for 

 a professorship, not ability in the subject to be taught, but fidelity 

 to the particular shibboleth of the denomination controlling the 

 college or university. 



Happily, in these days such attempts generally defeat them- 

 selves. The supposed victim is generally made a man of mark 

 by persecution, and advanced to a higher and wider sphere of 

 usefulness. As regards withstanding the march of scientific 

 truth, any opposing Conference, Synod, Board of Commissioners, 

 Board of Trustees, or Faculty, is but as a nest of field-mice in the 

 path of a steam plow. 



The harm done to religion in these attempts is far greater 

 than that done to science; for thereby suspicions are widely 

 spread, especially among open-minded young men, that the ac- 

 cepted Christian system demands a concealment of truth, with 

 the persecution of honest investigators, and therefore must be 

 false. Well was it said in substance by President McCosh, of 

 Princeton, that no more sure way of making unbelievers in 

 Christianity among young men could be devised than preaching 

 that the doctrines arrived at by the great scientific thinkers of 

 this period are opposed to religion. 



Yet it is but justice here to say that more and more there is 

 evolved out of this past history of oppression a better spirit which 

 is making itself manifest with power in the leading religious 

 bodies of the world. In the Church of Rome we have to-day 

 such utterances as those of St. George Mivart, declaring that the 

 Church must not attempt to interfere with science; that the 

 Almighty in the Galileo case gave her a distinct warning that the 

 priesthood of science must remain with the men of science. In 

 the Anglican Church and its American daughter we have the acts 

 and utterances of such men as Archbishop Tait, Dean Stanley, 

 and many others, proving that the deepest religious thought is 

 more and more tending to peace rather than warfare with sci- 

 ence ; and in the other churches, especially in America, while there 

 is yet much to be desired, the welcome extended in many of them 

 to Alexander Winchell, and the freedom given to views like his, 

 augur well for a better state of things in the future. 



