DEEPER HARMONIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION. 73 



tcrated and drugged, so as to suit our human feebleness. If we can- 

 not produce from the authoritative documents of religion texts directly 

 sanctioning it, this is because the particular problem was not presented 

 in ancient times to the nation which gave us our religion. Those doc- 

 uments are full of passages expressing in poetic forms and in language 

 suited to another age the spirit of modern science. Notably, the book 

 of Job, not in occasional passages only, but as its main object and 

 drift, conti-asts the conventional, and, as it were, orthodox view of the 

 universe, with the view which those obtain who are prepared to face 

 its awfulness directly. 



Thus the religious view and the scientific view of the universe, 

 which are thought to be so opposite, agree in this important point. 

 Both protest earnestly against human wisdom. Both wait for a mes- 

 sage which is to come to them from without. Religion says, " Let 

 man be silent, and listen when God speaks." Science says, " Let us 

 interrogate Nature, and let us be sure that the answer we get is 

 really Nature's, and not merely an echo of our own voice." Now, 

 whether or not religion and science agree in what they recommend, it 

 is evident that they agree in what they denounce. They agree in 

 denouncing that pride of the human intellect which supposes it knows 

 every thing, which is not passive enough in the presence of reality, 

 but deceives itself with pompous words instead of things, and with 

 flattering eloquence instead of sober truth. 



Here, however, it will be said, the agreement between religion and 

 science ends, and even this agreement is only apparent. Science pro- 

 tests against the idols or delusions of the hximan intellect, in order 

 that it may substitute for them the reality of Nature ; religion sacri- 

 fices all those idols to the greatest of them all, which is God. For 

 what is God so the argument runs but an hypothesis, which religious 

 men have mistaken for a demonstrated reality ? And is it not pre- 

 cisely against such premature hypotheses that science most strenu- 

 ously protests? That a Personal Will is the cause of the universe 

 this might stand very well as an hypothesis to work with, until facts 

 should either confirm it, or force it to give way to another either dif- 

 ferent or at least modified. That this Personal Will is benevolent, 

 and is shown to be so by the facts of the universe, which evince a 

 providential care for man and other animals this is just one of those 

 plausibilities which passed muster before scientific method was under- 

 stood but modern science rejects it as unproved. Modern science 

 holds that there may be design in the universe, but that to penetrate 

 the design is, and probably always will be, beyond the power of the 

 human understanding. That this Personal Will has on particular 

 occasions revealed itself by breaking through the customary order of 

 the universe, and performing what are called miracles this is one of 

 those legends of which histories were full, until a stricter view of evi- 

 dence was introduced, and the modern critical spirit sifted thoroughly 



