74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the aiuials of the world. But if modern science be right in these 

 opinions, the very notion of God is removed altogether from the 

 domain of practical life. So long as God appeared certainly to exist, 

 he necessarily eclipsed and reduced to insignificance all other exist- 

 ences. So long as it was held possible to discover his will and mind, 

 all other incpiries might reasonably be pronounced frivolous. But all 

 is changed as soon as we begin to regard his existence as a mere 

 hypothesis, and his will as inscrutable and beyond the reach of the 

 human understanding. Not only is all changed, but all is reversed. 

 Instead of being the one important question, God's will now becomes 

 tiie one W2important question, because the one question which it is 

 essentially impossible to answer. Whereas, before we might charge 

 men with frivolity who neglected this inquiry for inquiries the most 

 important in themselves, now we may pronounce the shallowest dilet- 

 tant, the most laboriously idle antiquary, a solid and sensible man, 

 compared to the theologian. They pursue, to be sure, very minute 

 objects, but they do or may attain them ; the theologian attempts an 

 impossibility he is like the child who tries to reach the beginning of 

 the rainbow. 



It would appear, then, that that which I have called "human wis- 

 dom," and which is the butt, at the same time, of theology and science, 

 is so because it is a kind of middle party between two mortally hostile 

 factions. It is like the Girondins between the Royalists and the 

 Jacobins ; both may ojipose, and may even in a particular case com- 

 bine to oppose it, and yet on that account they may not have the 

 smallest sympathy with each other. And the middle party once 

 crushed, there wull follow no reconciliation, but a mortal contest 

 between the extremes. Is this so or is it otherwise ? The question is 

 whether the statement given above of the theological view of the uni- 

 verse is exhaustive or not ? Is it all summed up in the three proposi- 

 tions that a Personal Will is the cause of the universe, that that Will 

 is perfectly benevolent, that that Will has sometimes interfered by 

 miracles with the order of the universe ? If these propositions exhaust 

 it, and science throws discredit upon all of them, evidently theology 

 and science are irreconcilable, and the contest between them must end 

 in the destruction of one or the other. 



It may be remarked, in the first place, that these propositions are 

 not so much an abstract of theology as of the particular theology now 

 current. That God is perfectly benevolent is a maxim of popular Chris- 

 tianitv, and it mav be found stated in the Bible. But it is not neces- 

 sary to theology as such. Many nations have believed in gods of mixed 

 or positively malignant character. Other nations have indeed ascribed 

 to their deities all the admirable qualities they could conceive, but 

 benevolence was not one of these. They have believed in gods that 

 were beautiful, powerful, immortal, happy, but not benevolent. It 

 may even be said that the Bible and Christianity itself have not uni- 



