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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Keligion and Science," he would have 

 disarmed criticism, and saved himself 

 from a great deal of theological abuse ; 

 but he preferred to credit people who 

 profess religion with having it and 

 being influenced by it, in their treat- 

 ment of science. There is, indeed, no 

 ground for impeaching the general 

 sincerity of religious people who are 

 alarmed at the advancement of science, 

 and denounce it as subversive of faith. 

 Their difficulty is simply that of nar- 

 rowness and ignorance, inspired by a 

 fanatical earnestness. Atheism has now 

 come to be a familiar and stereotyped 

 charge against men of science, both on 

 the part of the pulpit and the religious 

 press. Not that they accuse all sci- 

 entific men of atheism, but they al- 

 lege this to be the tendency of scien- 

 tific thought, and the outcome of scien- 

 tific philosophy. It matters nothing 

 that this imputation is denied ; it mat- 

 ters nothing that scientific men claim 

 that their studies lead them to higher 

 and more worthy conceptions of the 

 Divine power, manifested through the 

 order of Nature, than the conceptions 

 offered by theology. It is enough that 

 they disagree with current notions upon 

 this subject, and any diflference of view 

 is here held as atheism. 



In this, as we have said, the theo- 

 logians may be honest, but they are 

 narrow and bigoted ; and it is surpris- 

 ing that they cannot see that, in ar- 

 raigning scientific thinkers for atheism, 

 they are simply doing what stupid 

 fanatics the world over are always 

 doing when ideas of the Deity differ- 

 ent from their own are maintained. 

 And it is the more surprising that 

 Christian teachers should indulge in 

 this intolerant practice, when it is re- 

 membered that their own faith was 

 blackened with this opprobrium at its 

 first promulgation. In a very able 

 article by Prof. Zeller, of Berlin, on 

 " The Contest of Heathenism with 

 Christianity," reprinted in The Poptj- 

 LAB Science Supplement, No. II., tliis 



interesting subject is taken up, and 

 the writer remarks upon it as follows : 



" To the heathen nations, the Christians 

 were in the first place atheists ; for in every 

 age this name has been given to those wlio 

 did not agree with tlie j)revailing conceptions 

 of the Deity ; not only when they denied liis 

 existence, but when they sought to instill a 

 more just and worthy idea of God. ' Down 

 with the atheists ! ' this was the war-crj' of 

 the heathen mob against the Christians. 

 It was with this cry, for example, that in 

 A. D. 156 the venerable Bishop Polycarp was 

 received on the race-course at Smyrna. 

 The only gods the people knew anything 

 about, whose temples they frequented, 

 whose statues they worshiped, to whom 

 they offered sacrifices and prayers, were 

 denied by the Christians; they were de- 

 clared to be the inventions of man's super- 

 stition, and sometimes to be evil spirits, 

 devils. Can we wonder that the people 

 who were still devoted to these gods felt 

 the attack upon them to be an attack upon 

 themselves, their most sacred and cherished 

 possessions ; that they were the more deep- 

 ly incensed at it the more seriously they 

 feared by toleration of it to lose the favor of 

 the gods on wliom their welfare depended ? 

 The reproach of atheism was therefore the 

 most dangerous that could be brought 

 against the Christians. In that 'Down 

 with the atheists ! ' with which the yells 

 of the mob greeted Polycarp at Smyrna, 

 was included the sentence of death, which 

 they at once proceeded to execute by pre- 

 paring tlie stake. And the cry was fol- 

 lowed in numberless cases by the same 

 results. If any public misfortune, any 

 alarming event occurred, which seemed to 

 indicate the displeasure of the gods a pes- 

 tilence, a dearth, a flood, an eclipse, an 

 earthquake superstition was always ready 

 to make the Christians responsible for it, 

 as enemies of the gods ; the exclamation 

 was sure to be heard, ' The Christians to 

 the lions ! ' Both the educated and uned- 

 ucated have always attributed every other 

 wickedness to the enemies of the gods, and 

 so it was with the Christians. Being athe- 

 ists, they were also criminals, and all man- 

 ner of horrible stories were told of them. 

 It was not enough that they were said to 

 worship a god with the head of an ass, 

 which we see represented to this day in 

 a caricature of that period, the well-known 

 mock crucifix in the Kircher Museum at 

 Kome ; it was said, also, that in their se- 

 cret assemblies they practised all sorts of 



