64 THE rOPLLAU SCJEXCE MONTHLY. 



hypothesis of a primiiive tongue and tlie correlation of all the facts 

 gathered from all the kindred forms of speech. It is the same with 

 social science. And although I am aware of the notion of many doc- 

 tors, both of divinity and medicine, that theology is a fixed deposit, 

 as distinct from inductive knowledge, and indeed that there is an 

 eternal conflict of religion and science, yet I am bold to say that it is 

 a vulgar eri'or. There is a more palpable movement in the science of 

 Nature, because it has to do wnth material forces, while the theologian 

 explores the more subtile laws of thought and moral history. "We do 

 not deal with scalpel or microscope, yet we recognize the method of 

 analysis. It might be a curious pursuit if you should study medical 

 history from the day of Galen, through the middle age, and note how 

 the same speculative notions of soul and body entered into the current 

 dogmas of the Church and the healing art. The central truths of 

 Christianity are always the same; but Biblical criticism, the compara- 

 tive study of Hebrew^ or Christian epochs, the domain of doctrinal 

 thought, are growths of the human mind, and every advance has been 

 the fruit of experimental searching. And if we have some clergymen 

 as guiltless of modern ideas as the Englishman who moved the i-isibles 

 of a scientific circle by claiming that the fossils of the caves were the 

 bones of the rebel angels, jDOSsibly you may have a few doctors of 

 medicine almost unable to appreciate the scientific criticism of the 

 four Gospels. 



But, as we have thus recognized this law of method as the fruit of 

 our cidture, we shall be able to see the interdependence of all these 

 branches of knowledge. All our gains are helpful to each other. I 

 might sum the vast history of science in a Avord that it has taught 

 us the harmony of law, not only in the correlation of natural forces, 

 but of the moral and social forces of human life. But I look more 

 especially at the studies which employ your profession, as they have 

 shed such light on the marvelous secrets of the inner man. The cun- 

 ning laws of cerebration ; the wondrous rhytlim that runs between 

 the several powers of memory, feeling, will, and the sensitive nerve- 

 centres ; the dependence of thought on the supply of the chemical 

 brain-food; the explanation of the riddles of our dream-life; the re- 

 lation of our mental functions to the loss or decay of our organs ; the 

 phases of disease as aftecting voluntary action all these are as need- 

 ful a study for the intellectual or the Christian thinker as for the nat- 

 uralist. These researches have not only cured many mistakes of our 

 psychology, but have given us sounder views of life and education. 

 It is not too much to say that our theories of social and religious cult- 

 ure have been far too often aflected by a partial view of our spiritual 

 nature, which lost sight of its dependence on the body and the healthy 

 laws of action. But while I gratefully acknowledge this debt, I hold 

 that our scientific culture will, if faithful to its aim, lead us to a nobler 

 knowledge of those truths that pass beyond a bald materialism. I 



