DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 67 



science falsely so called," "to tlie Greeks foolishness;" these are the 

 phrases of one of the earliest and highest of Christian authorities. 

 In our own country the two most powei-ful of Christian movements, 

 Puritanism and Evangelicalism, have been distinctly marked with this 

 characteristic feature, although it might be possible to mention one or 

 two learned Evangelicals and several learned Puritans. That there 

 have been, and ai-e, a vast number of men at the same time Christian 

 and learned, does not affect the fact that Christianity holds itself aloof 

 from and in a manner superior to learning. Such men, where their 

 Christian feeling has been intense, have often spoken disparagingly 

 of their own learning, as of a thing of little value, and have taken a 

 pride in placing themselves on a level with the ignorant. If it is true 

 that eloquent vindications of learning from the Christian point of 

 view might be quoted, lofty assertions of the sympathy of Christian- 

 ity for whatever is true and elevated, such assertions do not prove so 

 much as is proved by the necessity of making them. If we admire 

 them, it is rather because we love learning than because we love Chris- 

 tianity. We admire them as noble deviations from the Christian tra- 

 dition, in a point where we have a misgiving that Christianity may be 

 narrow. Yet this contempt for learning no Christian would admit to 

 be equivalent to a contemj^t for knowledge. Knowledge, a certain 

 kind of knowledge. Christians maintain to be the only thing worth 

 having. Wealth, power, every thing that is counted desirable, they 

 despise in comparison with a certain kind of knowledge. It is among 

 these things comparatively despicable that they class what is com- 

 monly called learning. They despise it not as learning, but as learn- 

 ing comparatively worthless in quality, as being but a counterfeit of 

 the true learning which it is happiness and salvation to possess. 



Now, in this respect quite an opposite school hold the very same 

 language. Scientific men resemble Christians, in treating with great 

 contempt what goes by the name of learning and philosophy, in com- 

 parison with another sort of wisdom which they believe themselves to 

 possess. Like Christians, they are no contemners of knowledge ; on 

 the contrary, in praise of knowledge they grow eloquent, and use lan- 

 guage of scriptural elevation. " Wisdom is the principal thing, there- 

 fore get wisdom; and with all thy getting, get understanding." It 

 is their unceasing cry that all good is to be expected from the increase 

 of true knowledge; that the happiness, both of the race and individ- 

 uals, depends upon the advance of real science, and the application of 

 it to human life. Yet they have a contempt for learning, which is 

 just as Christian in its tone as their love for knowledge. "Erudition" 

 and "philosophy" are terms of contempt in their mouths. The first 

 they consider to be, for the most part, a criminal waste of time ; philos- 

 ophy they denounce as consisting mainly of empty words, and offer- 

 ing solutions either imaginary or unintelligible of problems which 

 are either imaginary or unintelligible themselves. In some scientific 



