12 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In this light, science sees that the love of Christ, or of God, may trans- 

 form a man's life, but not by any peculiar and supernatural process, 

 but by a universal and well-known law, namely, that we grow like that 

 which we love. Every object we look upon or think of with the emo- 

 tion of love, that object in a measure we become. But, to begin with, 

 we are not capable of loving it until we are in some degree, either po- 

 tentially or actually, like it. No radically un-Christlike nature will 

 ever come to love Christ. Hence the subtile truth in the old doc- 

 trines that have been so hardly and literally stated, "Except God 

 work in you to will and to do," etc. The Christian, the virtuous, 

 pious soul, is born, and not made, just as truly as is the poet or artist, 

 and the " new birth," in the one case, can mean no more than it 

 does in the other. The true Christian only gives a new name to his 

 natural piety or aptitude for Christianity, but in no sense is there a 

 radical change of nature. It is simply a transference of allegiance, as 

 in the case of Paul. All these things may be so stated as to har- 

 monize with the rest of our knowledge, but as expounded in theologi- 

 cal books they do not so harmonize, but run counter to it completely. 

 Subjective truths are stated as if they were objective facts ; qualities 

 of the mind and spirit are expounded as if they were realities of the 

 experience. 



Certain of the alleged miracles of the New Testament, as the heal- 

 ing of the sick by an act of faith, agree with what we now know to 

 be true. Certain human ailments, mainly diseases of the mind and the 

 nervous system, have in recent times undoubtedly yielded to an act of 

 faith in the supreme efficacy of certain rites, or to an unwonted mental 

 resolution. But the remedy is subjective and not objective. The 

 virtue was not in the hem of the garment touched, but in the effort of 

 the will of the person who touched it. 



What is at variance with the rest of our knowledge in the New 

 Testament are such things as grew up naturally in a superstitious age 

 around the person and teachings of such a transcendent being as Jesus 

 was the notion that he was more than human, that he had no earthly 

 father, that he had some superhuman control over the forces of Nature, 

 that he rose from the dead, that his death bore some mysterious rela- 

 tion to the sins of the world, etc. When a man talks about the value 

 and importance of the ethics of Christianity of charity, of mercy, of 

 justice, of gentleness, of purity, or righteousness, or of what the world 

 has in all ages taught to be highest and best we can understand him ; 

 he speaks the language of truth and soberness. When he says, with 

 Marcus Aurelius, that there is but one thing of real value "to culti- 

 v.-iv truth and justice, and live without anger in the midst of lying 

 and unjust men"; or when he says with Peregrinus that "the wise 

 man will not sin, though both gods and men should overlook the deed ; 

 for it is not through the fear of punishment or of shame that he ab- 

 stains from sin : it is from the desire and obligation of what is just 



